Well, I thought it would be a good idea to have a "Best Holiday Book" poll next given that it's almost Christmas/Hanukkah...but then I realized that there are precious few books specifically about the holidays (there's plenty set in December/winter, but the holidays don't really feature prominently enough for them to qualify.) So that poll probably won't happen.

So, I need ideas for what we should vote on next.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Whoops! I didn't realize when I closed the last poll that there was a tie between two of the books. So we need to have a tie-breaker.

The books tied are #3 - Mallory and the Ghost Cat and #25 - Kristy and the Middle School Vandal.

Any ideas on how we should do this tie-breaker? I'm thinking it needs to be different from simply voting again. I'll keep thinking, but I have to leave for work now. I'm open to suggestions!

How come some of you skip questions? Some of the questions have answers from everybody, but quite frequently there are skipped questions. This strikes me as very weird. I think it would be fairer if everybody answered every question, don't you?

I'd like to do a series of polls to determine Claudia's best outfit. Stacey's too, eventually. However, I don't own all the books and I don't have the time to compile a comprehensive list of outfits. So if you guys can please do some detective work for me, that would be really helpful. Leave comments to this post with the book number the outfit comes from and the description of the outfit.

I know not every book featured outfits, though. If you come across a book with no outfits, again leave a comment with the book number and just say, "no outfits". Once every book is accounted for we'll begin those polls. I'll add this post to the memories so it can be easily found.

In the meantime, while this info trickles in (and I'll look up a few myself - I know there are outfits in #2, #71, and #91, all of which I own) we'll do polls to determine Best Mystery, by random pairings. What I'll do is randomly draw two mystery titles out of a hat and they'll face off. Those winners will then face off against each other, etc., but no more "which of these five" is best. That should make the voting last a little longer and be more interesting. I should be able to get the first poll up later today on my lunch break.

( The All-Around Best Super Special Plot is: )

In other news, it seems like interest in this little project is waning...we have 108 members, but only 35 voted in the last poll. Is that because you guys didn't like the subject of the polls, or are you just bored of the polls in general?

Should we continue doing polls? If yes, what would you like to see polled next?

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of this community! Kind of hard to believe, huh?

I'll have the new poll up later today.

( The winner is... )

This one won by a landslide! I'll try to get the next poll up tomorrow, but I just want to let you guys know that for the next month I am going to be extremely busy because in addition to my full time job I am going to be in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Mikado" and the rehearsal schedule is INSANE! I'll be at rehearsals six nights a week for at least three hours a night (this is because our director has no sense of time management and although the show opens on August 9, he didn't start rehearsals until July 9. Yup - one month to learn an entire opera. Faboo.) Anyway, I'll do my best to keep the polls coming, but there's going to be longer delays in between. Once the show is over I'm sure I'll be able to get back on a twice a week schedule like before.

Hey guys,

I was just thinking about switching up the voting style so it's a little more "March Madness" style. I mean, I don't watch March Madness, so I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I imagine it's a series of matches between two teams, the winner moving on to challenge a new team until you get to a final two who vie for the title. I was thinking it would be much better to do this with our polls too, partly because it might be easier for you guys to choose between two options as opposed to three (and it will make my counting job easier too!), plus it just feels a little more official.

Trouble is, how exactly do I set that up? Using the current set of polls, there are 15 choices to work with, which isn't evenly divisible by 2. Plus I don't want it to get boring, with you guys voting for the same book over and over until it eventually wins (some polls win by a landslide).

So maybe we should keep the format we've got until we get down to the final 8. When it's time for the mini-winners to start facing off I could set up polls of two there. I know in football there are two main teams - NFL and AFL, which compete among themselves until they get to the Super Bowl. So how about I assign four sitters to Team A and four to Team B. Team A could be the original four sitters - Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Stacey; Team B is Dawn, Abby, Mallory, and Jessi. The first polls could then be Kristy vs. Claudia and Mary Anne vs. Stacey and Dawn vs. Abby and Mallory vs. Jessi. Say Kristy and Stacey win their respective polls, so they then go head to head, with the winner (let's just say Kristy) moving on to the final. Same in Team B with those winners (let's just say Dawn wins that one.) Then the final round would be Kristy vs. Dawn for the Ultimate title.

I think that sounds pretty good - it draws out the polling process a bit and is easier to deal with.

Opinions?

I had an interesting idea on what the next set of polls should entail. I like these long ones that stretch out over a good period of time, so I came up with one that should last a few months at least! I thought it would be fun to see what the best/favorite sitter-in-a-super-special subplot is. So how we'll do it is we'll go one sitter at a time. The first poll will be Kristy, with each of her 15 super special subplots listed in three groups of five. Those three winners will face off in the second round to determine the favorite Kristy subplot (example: Kristy's relationship with Michel in Super Special 15 and her struggles to learn the part of Peter Pan in Super Special 9.) We'll repeat that process for each of the remaining sitters (Logan and Shannon will not be included in this because while they sometimes have individual chapters in the Super Specials, they don't feature heavily enough in all of them to make it fair.) Similarly, I may waive Abby from this since she's only in three Super Specials. You guys tell me if you want to include Abby or not.

Anyway, once we have one subplot for each sitter, they'll face off against each other until we have one final best subplot winner.

The first Kristy poll will be up later tonight (I have some research to do first!)

It was a close vote (26 to 22!) but ( the tribe has spoken )

Sorry for the delay again guys - Saturday was my sister's birthday and I didn't get home until about 2 a.m. and didn't feel like updating the community. Then I got sidetracked by life...anyway, I'll seriously try harder to stay on schedule from now on.

That said, the winner of "Worst Abby Book" is:

( SUCK! )

Sorry I'm so late in posting this - I got pretty busy last week and forgot to update on Wednesday, and then I thought I should just let it wait until Saturday so as not to mess up the schedule of posting every Wednesday and Saturday...and then I forgot again yesterday. D'oh!

Anyway, the winner of Worst Dawn Book is...

( This book sucks like a Dyson (it never loses its suck) )