What do you all think about making an award for our favorite Christian Fantasy book of the year?

I was reading an article on how advertise your blog and the person suggested making an award instead of doing a contest to give away a book. I think this could be a great idea for marketing Holy Worlds and for honoring the author of our favorite book of the year. Once we get our sci-fi forum going, we could add a book award for that group as well.

I'm wondering if the book even has to be published in 2010. It could be a book that you read this year, since many of us may not have even read a good one that was published this year (myself included).

So, my two questions are:
1) What do you think about creating this award?
2) Should it be limited to books published in 2010 or books we read in 2010?

1. Yes, I think it's a great idea.

2. I don't think so.

I agree. I just looked through for Christian Fantasy books, and to limit it to 2010 would be very difficult, especially to find enough people that had read them and/or even liked them.

Creating an adequate authority to this award will require some reading on our part. It may not be enough that we all vote in the favorite of the year. We may as a group need to read the top three and then vote again. I think this would make this more credible both by giving the top books we haven't read a shot and by making sure the book we pick really is the best.

Also, we don't have to make it the Holy Worlds 2010 Book Award, it could just be the Holy Worlds Book of Excellence or something like that and pick it whenever we're ready. That way we don't have to do it before Jan. 1.

Yeah.

Good question. This will make me have to define Christian Fiction. I would say that what separates Christian Fiction would be the existence of a Messiah or People of God that come to God in faith and not works. It hopefully isn't overly preachy, but finds a way to present that truth without pointing attention to itself - like it is what it is as a fact in that world, not that you are trying to convince the reader that it is.

Lord of the Rings and Chronicles of Narnia are off the list simply because everyone has already heard of them. Part of the goal of this award is to get the word out to people about quality Christian Fantasy.

As for one of your top ten favorite books, the award should go to one that you read in 2010, other wise I think we'll have problems...but maybe not.

Question 3: Does it have to be a book we read in 2010?

This is a great idea! *runs and digs up all the Christian fantasy I've read over the past year*

Wait... why would we have problems if we used books we hadn't read in the past year?

Princess,
I'm not really sure why. That's one of my questions. Originally, it was because I wanted to make it an annual award based on 2010, but it may be better to take our time and choose the right book.

Question 4) What process should we use to pick the winner?

We could list our top five Christian Fantasy books and then narrow it down to the top three. Then whoever wants to vote has to have read (or have read) those top three. Then we vote for the winner.

I think when defining Christian fiction, particularly in this case, it would be a good idea to keep in mind this article by Robert Treskillard that Jay has on the blog. Basically it defines Christian fiction as fiction aimed towards a Christian audience, and I think that is probably the best definition to use. It does of course exclude books by Christians for secular audiences, but before you get into that, read the article.
In Christ,
Jordan

So, did we ever pick a book?

Hey guys, I was wondering how this was going?

*archives *