Get Ready, Get Set, READ!

Well, folks, the results are in! We voted down the Pyrite Nominations to create a shortlist, and here it is:

I don’t think there are any real surprises here, except maybe the margin; Code Name Verity pretty much swept it.

Your task now, should you choose to join the fun (and regardless of whether you voted on the shortlist) is to read and/or reread these 10 books between now and mid-January; in the last week or two before the RealCommittee announces their Printz winner and honor titles, we will discuss each of these and put them all to a vote to determine the Pyrite Printz* winner. It will be interesting to see what happens, especially as I suspect the readership on some of the middle block of titles is still relatively low.

In the meantime, we’ll continue working our way through our still fairly large queue of books from the September contender list.

For those who want to see the full voting results, click through.

Sorry about the teeny-tiny font; we used SurveyMonkey, which I love for data collection, but the output options are limited. I find myself wondering about readership on the bottom end titles in particular; the two lowest placed titles are the nominations that were never on our Contenda list, and were relatively unbuzzed and low-starred; would they have fared differently here if folks had been talking about them as award contenders earlier?

29 of the 135 poll responders also submitted a write-in vote. Three books received 3 votes each — Endangered, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, and The Wicked and the Just — and 4 books received 2 votes each — My Book of Life by Angel, For Darkness Shows the Stars, In Darkness (Nick Lake), and No Crystal Stair.

In addition to In Darkness, the following three books were mentioned that have not been discussed here and that were not on any of our lists: Blind Spot by Laura Ellen; Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan; and Small Damages by Beth Kephart. These, along with formal Pyrite nominations Various Positions and Monument 14 and two books that have been mentioned to us in person (Vessel by Sarah Beth Durst and Shadows on the Moon by Zoë Marriott) comprise the pile of books we hope to get to. We’re still catching up on the original list of books we’d compiled, but we’re going to do our best to get everything, including all these dark horses and write-ins, read them before January 28, and we’ll keep an eye on the various year-end lists for other potentials that might have slipped under the radar.

Whew! That’s a lot of books, as I might have mentioned once or twice already.

*The Pyrite Printz, or Pyrite, is the Someday My Printz Will Come mock Printz deliberation, and should not in any way be confused with YALSA’s Michael L. Printz Award, often referred to here as the RealPrintz or Printz. Our predictions, conversations, and speculation about potential RealPrintz contenders and winners reflect only our own best guesses and are not affiliated with YALSA or the RealPrintz committee.

Filed under: Housekeeping, Pyrite