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And…The Top 100 Poll is Open for Voting!

voting_m-300x225 Over the summer the AAR staff has shared with you our top ten romances. These posts were fun for us, and now it’s your turn to join in the fun and tell us what your favorite romances of all time are. And we’re not asking you to list just your top 10 you can list up to 100 romances. Yes, today is the opening of the 2013 AAR Top 100 Poll with voting closing on Sunday, October 20 at midnight, United States Eastern Standard Time.

This is the sixth AAR Top 100 poll, with previous polls held in 1998, 2000, 2004, 2007, and 2010. The original poll in 1998 was prompted by the release of one of the many 100 Best Books of the Century List (see for example the Modern Library’s Top 100 and Radcliffe Rival 100 Best Novels ). The AAR poll quickly became a valuable resource for romance readers. Many new romance readers use the lists as a place to begin reading the “best of romance.”

As in the past this is a weighted list. You can list up to 100 of your favorite romances, but they need to be numbered, with your favorite book listed as #1, your second as #2, and so on. Because so many books have the same or similar titles, it’s also essential that you list the author’s name next to the title. So if you want to vote for the top three vote getters from the 2010 poll, your ballot would look like the following:

1. Lord of Scoundrels, Loretta Chase

2. Dreaming of You, Lisa Kleypas

3. Devil in Winter, Lisa Kleypas

For those of us who get overwhelmed by too much information, you don’t have to list 100 titles for your ballot to be valid. One of us had a first top 100 ballot with 36 titles on it but, in the 2010 poll she managed to get to 63 titles before feeling overwhelmed.

If you’ve voted in past Top 100 polls you know the drill. Click here to go to the ballot page, read the instructions, and start listing your choices. Haven’t voted before and don’t have a clue what to do? If you don’t keep a record of your reading (and many of us don’t), a good place to start is to check out the results of previous Top 100 polls, as well as some of the recent AAR Annual Reader Polls. A power search at AAR of books assigned specific grades (A, A-, B+, etc.) is also another resource for remembering some of your favorites.

While this is a busy time for us, it’s also an exciting time. The three of us love to read and enter your ballots, even though at times the numbers are rather daunting. For example, in 2010 readers voted for 4,639 titles by 1,296 different authors. And 2,605 of those books appeared on only one ballot. We expect to see even more titles receive votes this year and even more authors represented.

We look forward to receiving your ballot. We know that it can be time-consuming selecting, numbering, and recording your favorites, but we appreciate your help in keeping this wonderful resource at AAR alive!

Thank you and happy voting!

– LinnieGayl Kimmel, Lee Brewer, and Cindy Smith

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