S. Worthen | Weblog

Thank you to everyone who competed and voted in this game of Humiliation! The race was an extremely tight one for most of the weekend, with Hamlet, The Hobbit, and Lord of the Rings within one or two points of each other. In the end, a few last minute voters who'd only read The Hobbit (of these three) added in their votes, with the prequel to the Lord of the Rings squeaking ahead to a four point victory. This is particularly impressive given that an amazing sixty-nine people voted!

Congratulations to kashmera, the winner of this weekend's round of Humiliation! Your prize is a homework assignment: go forth and read The Hobbit. I can even send you a copy, a much better reward for winning than, say, a humiliating little logo advertising your win.

Congratulations also to oursin and momiji, who gave kashmera very stiff competition along the way.

Commiserations to suffisaunce, who ended up with the fewest votes for Small World. If that's as popular a book you can come up with that you've never read, you must be very well-read indeed, despite your protestations to the contrary.

Among voters, beeswing read an amazing sixteen of the entrants, while wakarusa and chickenfeet2003 read fifteen of them. I counted rather quickly, so hopefully I didn't leave anyone out of the best-read voters list.

Given my own interests, I know a disproportionately high number of medievalists and science fiction/fantasy fans, all of whom are likely to have read Tolkien's most popular works. This is also why The Canterbury Tales (chickenfeet2003) was a serious contender in the early hours of voting, trailing the leaders by only a vote or so for the first day. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (lemur_catta) might also have done better than usual for this reason.

Teamwork seems somewhat self-defeating in a game like this. By choosing a book that someone else has already chosen, you're sacrificing one of your potential votes before the game has even begun. That said, I was expecting Pride and Prejudice to do somewhat better than it did.

If I were to run another edition of this game, I would
- Wait at least a month before doing so.
- Would disqualify the top three books from this time around.
- Might do a more focused thematic one - speculative fiction, maybe.

It'd be interesting to see a movie version of this game too - but I'm not going to run it. I have seen a rather small percentage of classic movies.