Feb 17, 2012
Towards A Mormon “Hall of Fame” of Books
Reading has always been in my blood. I can distinctly remember being 9 years old, losing feeling in my arm, being propped up on my elbow while underneath the covers with a flashlight and a book, and quickly turning the light off and switching positions any time I heard my parents walking outside my bedroom door. I have vivid memories of blasting through the first 4 books of the Harry Potter series on vacation when I was 16 years old, a stack of John Grisham books when I was 17 (and on vacation), and countless others.
Reading is what also got me into a more intellectual/scholarly based look at religion, and Mormonism in general. I realized when I was on my mission that the correlated Deseret Book published books and materials just weren’t whetting my whistle. I wanted something with a bit more substance, a bit more meat, something to help me understand my religion a bit better. After I returned home, I took a break to decompress from my mission, but as I returned to college, I was excited to experience BYU-level religion classes. Little did I know that my classes would be glorified CES Institute classes, with the same milk-type lessons and stories I had heard from my youth.
As I explored the bloggernacle, I realized there were people out there looking for a similar dialogue. I found the main Mormon periodicals, and I started expanding my library aside from the “bestselling” Deseret Book items that left me wanting more. My time in the online Mormon world has shown me that I’m not the only one that feels this sense of yearning for what is considered to be a “good” book for Mormon research. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked through blogs or Google with the search string “Essential Mormon Books,” or something along those lines.
During my searches, I’ve found that certain books keep popping up again and again when it comes to recommendations or “required readings” when it comes to Mormonism, for good and for bad. There are books that are well known for their quality of research, for their pivotal perspectives, and for their extensive use of awesome footnotes and primary sources. There are other books mired in controversy,
Here’s my goal.
I’d like to create a “Mormon Books Hall of Fame.” A place where people can go and find their “essential reading” when it comes to Mormonism. I think I’d like to leave the scriptures out of it, simply for the “duh” of it all, but everything else, I’d like to have fair game.
How? Well, first, let me describe two halls of fame that are very different, yet oddly similar. The first is the Professional Baseball Hall of Fame. The second is the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame.
Yes, we’re going to talk about pro baseball and professional wrestling on a Mormon themed blog. After your laughter subsides from the concept of “professional” wrestling, hear me out.
I wouldn’t want this hall of fame to be “The most popular Mormon books.” That’s easy to do. Take a look at the Amazon top 100 in the Mormonism section, you can find those. The different halls of fame out there seem to go along those lines – mainly, whoever is the most popular wins (I’m looking at you, Rock and Roll, Basketball, and Football halls of fame). But both the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Wrestling Observer (a pro wrestling periodical that looks at the “business” aspect of pro wrestling) take a more scientific look at things. There are requirements for consideration for each of the halls of fame.
Eligibility Requirements
Baseball
Eligible for consideration 5 years after retirement
Must have 10 years major league experience
Wrestling
Must be 35 years old with 10 years of major professional wrestling experience
Or
15 years since your major professional debut
I think that makes for good qualifications to be considered. In the case of the athletes, there needs to be time to review the course of the career. Was it one good season or match that made them great? Or are they a consistently good performer that should be taken seriously? Did they change the way baseball or wrestling is viewed/played/acted, were they someone who changed the “game,” things like that.
Let’s put that into the perspective of books.
Was that the best book in a weak year? Or was it a book that forced us to change our dialogue? Did the book bring to light new and different sources, or did it recycle sources? Did it force us to look differently at the religion, or parrot what others have said?
I think that in the age of scholarly periodicals, more scholarly work being done in the bloggernacle, and the vast availability of information on the internet, five years seems like a short enough time for the book to still be fresh in our minds, but also a long enough time for the book to be available for scrutiny, review, and analysis. With this criteria, books like Rough Stone Rolling (Bushman), By the Hand of Mormon (Givens), David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism (Wright and Prince) would all be eligible, but the Joseph Smith Papers (Volume 1), Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Walker, Turley, and Leonard), and The Persistence of Polygamy (Bringhurst and Foster) would be ineligible.
Divisions within the Hall of Fame, or the separate “Halls”
Next, I started looking at the books out there, and realized that there were many influential books spread across many different genres. Should all books be included into one great hall, or should there be different divisions for different books?
Baseball
While baseball doesn’t have different halls for different eras, or different halls for different position players, they do have halls dedicated to different subjects. There’s a records area, an area dedicated to artifacts, to stadiums, and to post-season baseball
Wrestling
This is the idea that I like the best. The Wrestling Observer Awards are broken up into 3 areas:
First, US/Canada in the Modern Era.
Second, US/Canada in the Historical Era
Third, Mexico
Fourth, Japan
So I started thinking about my own “Mormon Hall of Fame,” and here’s what I came up with:
Biography
Historical Book
Doctrine
Women’s Issue/History
International
Dissertation/Thesis
Article
Critical Text
This is an area that I’m thinking needs to be divided up, but I have been struggling with what to divide it up into. I don’t think it does justice to the “essential” books out there to have them all weighted the same. My goal would be to have a compendium of the “hall of fame” books for, say, Joseph Smith. That way, one who wanted to know the best books out there about Joseph Smith would have an area to find quickly and easily. Polygamy the same, race issues, women issues, etc. However, that seems far down the road. I think for now, the best course of action is to take divisions like above, and working within those. As always, suggestions are welcomed.
Selection Criteria
I would think that this would be one of the most important parts. I think a clearly defined set of criteria for selection makes it “fair” for all candidates, yet also allows for a high standard to decide what should be admitted.
Baseball
From a final ballot of typically 25-40 candidates, each voter may vote for up to 10 players. There have been cases of voters not voting for any candidates in a given year. Any member named on 75% or more of ballots cast is elected. A player who is named on fewer than 5% of ballots is dropped from future elections. The Veterans Committee is a committee of the U.S. Baseball Hall of Fame that provides an opportunity for Hall of Fame election to all individuals who are eligible for induction but ineligible for consideration by the Baseball Writers Association of America.
Wrestling
For a wrestler to be voted in they have to get 60% of the votes from their region, North American wrestlers have been split into two categories, modern and historical, with a 30-year cutoff date from when they finished what would be considered Hall of Fame accomplishments. Wrestlers and personalities who get between 10 and 59% of the vote remain on the ballot next year. Wrestlers who get less than 10% of the vote are removed from the ballot. They can be brought back in two years if their careers have gone forward to where they would be considered stronger candidates, or if voters ask for them to be put back on.
I like both of these criteria. I think this allows for “good” candidates to be allowed on the list, while “weaker” candidates are sifted out through a value-based process, while the best candidates are voted in. In a particularly weak year, there might only be one book voted into the Hall of Fame, whereas in other years, there might be upwards of 3-5 books. Again, it’s all based on the strength of the book, the percentage of votes it receives, and the strength of the field.
I would suggest a split between the baseball and wrestling method:
70% and higher of the votes = Selection in the Hall of Fame
10% – 69% of the votes = Stays within the pool of candidates
9% and lower of the votes = Ineligible for future voting contention
Who Gets to Vote
Baseball
National Baseball Hall of Fame Voters are listed as members of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) with 10 years of membership
Wrestling
The Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame is made up of current and former wrestlers, reporters, historians, and others intimately involved in the professional wrestling/mixed martial arts world
For my voter criteria? I’d like to have a mix of everyone. Bloggers, authors, historians, journalists, Church Office Building workers, members involved in auxiliaries, active members, less active members, apostates, you name it. However, I would put the caveat on there that wherever they lie on the Mormon spectrum, they need to look at the book objectively and determine if this is something that would be worth putting into the “Hall of Fame” of essential books.
Granted, I understand that because religion is such a personal thing, the voting may be biased. But I would think that with a big (and varied enough) votership, some sort of unity could be reached.
So that is my proposal for a “Mormon Hall of Fame” of books. What do you think? Am I completely off-base? Could this actually work? What areas could be expanded upon? What suggestions do you have?
Image via the Flicker Award Group
