May 2022 List of the Month: EU Fiction: 1950-2022

It's hard to believe, but we're a third of the way through May, and that means it's (past) time to think about another List of the Month!

What do you all think? What theme should we select this time?

Topics/themes already requested include:

1. Non-English language works (this would need to be made far more specific)
2. Desert Island Books (not clear whether this means books you'd take to a desert island, or books about people on desert islands, i.e.: the Robinsonade)
3. The First Book(s) You Remember Reading
4. Best Books of a Certain Decade or Other Time Period
5. Best Youth or YA Fiction of a Certain Period
6. Your Country/State's Bestseller/Classic/Best/Most Recent Book
7. Best Sports Writing
8. Noirvember - Best Noir (for next November)
9. Best Books with Animal Protagonists
10. Best Graphic Novels
11. Best Books about Immigrants
12. Best Surreal Books
13. Books Made Into Great Movies
14. Australian Literature
15. Espionage Fiction / Spy-fi
16. Gardening Books

As always, we could go with something else entirely. Additional suggestions are always welcome, and if not adopted, will be added to the list above, for future consideration.

Europe Day is in May (EU holiday/celebration) so how about "Fiction set in the EU countries" or "EU authors" or something along these lines.

Also in May we have:
Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
Mother's Day in the US
World Migratory Bird Day

>2 AnnieMod: I like the EU authors idea.

Wouldn't EU authors end up as predominantly list of classics? Perhaps limiting it to post-WWII or some other period if it is to be something other than Austen, Dickens, Balzac et al.

>5 SandraArdnas:

Does the EU still get to claim Austen and Dickens?

>5 SandraArdnas: Austen and Dickens are not eligible :)

Even if it is the classics, it will be mostly non-English language classics. We can always precise the period but especially with the smaller languages, why would a 2022 translation into French or German (from say a 1934 Bulgarian novel) be a bad thing to have?

An EU list could be limited to works written after the formation of the EU and to authors from current member states.

Ah, yes silly me, forgot the Brexit. But even without Brits, French, German, Spanish and Italian classics are likely to dominate without something to exclude them in favor of less known and more diverse works from the area.

I think it makes sense to limit a "Europe Day" list to current EU countries and some "recent" timeframe. Wikipedia says the EU's Europe Day celebrates the Schuman Declaration in 1950, so I'd suggest "works originally published from 1950 and later", while admitting I kind of drew it out of a hat.

OK, so what about "EU Fiction: 1950-2022?"

Fictional works, written by authors from EU member countries, published subsequent to 1950?

Countries to include: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden.

OK, the list is up—please add your top ten picks for EU fiction published since 1950!

https://www.librarything.com/list/43603/all/EU-Fiction-1950-2022

(edited to change the number of permitted titles)

So much easier to decide now that the UK has left!

>12 AbigailAdams26: Is it possible to increase the limit? Five is a pretty meager limit when you're trying to cover twenty-seven countries, especially with that bug that makes thumbs count as votes.

It sure would be a lot easier to browse our libraries for qualifying books if (a) author nationality was visible in the catalog and (b) Original Publication Date was sortable. Hint hint.

>15 lorax: Including original language in one of the views is a partial solution for nationality. Spanish and Portuguese not so much ;), but for many it works.

I used the author nationality graph/listings to surface the authors in my library who wrote my selections.
https://www.librarything.com/stats/paradoxosalpha/nationality

>15 lorax: That would be handy. I use the links in the nationalities chart as a workaround.

I also looked at my author nationalities chart. I learned there are almost a thousand authors in my catalog whose nationality is not set.

I doubt I'll be able to fix a tenth of that this month.

Anyway, these monthly lists always lead me to look more closely at my book data. Thank you for that.

Question: How do we find the country (not nationality) map for authors, again?

Ugh. The Metamorphosis and Don Quixote have been added and I can't downvote them because of that bug that counts thumbs as votes.

>14 amanda4242: Because this isn't a "favorite" list (although I'm sure books added will often be just that), and because we want it to be more representative, I have increased the limit from 5 books to 10.

>15 lorax: These are things we will hopefully consider, when we get to LT2-ifying the Your books pages.

>22 AbigailAdams26: Because this isn't a "favorite" list
Then what does "top" mean in >12 AbigailAdams26:?

I did add five favorites.

>22 AbigailAdams26: If it is not a favorite list, then how should one pick which 5 (or now 10) books to add?

How do you add comments if you are not thumbing something down? I see some people added comments explaining their choices, and I don't know how to do that. Not that I really need to know...just curious.

>24 paradoxosalpha: Thank you for pointing me to that comment, I have edited it, so that it reflects the 10 titles permitted, as opposed to 5.

In terms of what "top" means, I suppose that, functionally, it will be people's favorites, which is why I mentioned that I expected that this is what it would be. When I described it as not being a "favorites" list, I mean that this idea wasn't officially reflected in either the list name or description, unlike many of our other Lists of the Month. So, some people are free to add their favorites, others (who might want a greater spread of national representation) might choose to select by that criteria, and so on.

>25 AnnieMod: However you would like, within the parameters. Favorites are perfectly OK. But if it was solely a "favorites" or "best of" list, that would be reflected in the list name and description. If that were the case, I would probably have kept it at 5 titles per member.

>26 al.vick: When you are looking at your books, on the list, you should see an "explain your choice" link in the right-hand column, under the score. Clicking on this will bring up a lightbox that will allow you to add a comment.

>27 AbigailAdams26: If the list isn't being formulated in terms of "favorites" or "best", perhaps you might consider giving members the option to not rank the titles they add (i.e., allow "unnumbered" as well as "numbered").

I find it very hard to rank books, particularly when it may include a very diverse set of titles (as in this list), and I strongly prefer to use the unnumbered option whenever it is allowed. (This means, among other things, that the point value assigned to my votes is distributed equally among the titles I select, rather than no. 1 being given more weight than no. 2 etc.)

Edit: Also, to clarify: is the new "flag" option an appropriate use for titles that don't qualify for the list? Given the issue with downvotes counting towards people's totals, perhaps flagging would be an alternative that avoids this problem.

>29 AbigailAdams26: Thanks! I often don't view my list that way, so I hadn't noticed.

>30 spiphany: My understanding is that the "flag" option was built for cases like this.

>32 hipdeep: The flags were created largely because there was one user deliberately abusing the lists for their own purposes. I'm not sure if there was a consensus reached about when the flags should be used in less egregious cases -- i.e., users inadvertently adding titles that are not eligible, or where there is disagreement about what "counts" for the list.

And we're still being instructed in the list description to downvote titles that are beyond the scope of the list. Hence, further information about the preferred way to proceed would be useful.

>30 spiphany: Apologies for the delayed response! I have gone ahead and changed it to both "numbered and unnumbered." Some will add their favorites, and can use the numbering, and some will select on other criteria, and don't have to.

In terms of the difference between downvoting and flagging, I don't know that we have formulated a specific policy. You should definitely downvote books which don't fit the theme, although there is still the outstanding bug (of which we are aware) in which you have to use one of your "votes" to do it. I think of flagging as being useful for egregiously unsuitable titles. Titles added to be insulting, or to deliberately undermine the purpose of the list.

>34 AbigailAdams26: But until the bug is fixed, if we should not flag items which do not match the list description, you are asking people to either give up their votes in order to assist making the list look correct or not to add their titles at all and serve just as a monitor. Or to just stop caring about how the list looks like...

>35 AnnieMod: Unfortunately, until the bug is fixed, the only options available are to:

1. Downvote inappropriate selections (which means sacrificing a vote for a book you want on the list)

2. Flag inappropriate selections (which is not really what the flag was created for)

3. Ignore inappropriate selections (which may adversely affect the list)

I recognize that none of these options is ideal, and am sorry for it. I hope that we will have a solution for the problem, but have no specific timeline to give, in terms of when that might be.