Well, the first month of the 2012 WWEnd Grand Master Reading Challenge has come to an end and what a month it was! We got off to a late start but you guys brought the thunder and we could not be happier with the results. Here are the numbers for January: 65 participants, 65 books read and 20 reviews. Well done to everyone and a hearty thanks for your participation.

Of the 20 reviews submitted we picked 10 to feature on the WWEnd blog and now it's time for you to pick the best of the bunch. Check out the review links below to refresh your memory or to catch the ones you missed.

• The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey (RhondaK101)
• The Stainless Steel Rat by Harry Harrison (Carl V.)
• Hunt the Space-Witch! by Robert Silverberg (Carl V.)
• Tau Zero by Poul Anderson (valashain)
• The World of Null-A by A. E. van Vogt (CharlesDee)
• The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin (Mattastrophic)
• Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin (Emil)
• The Book of Ptath by A. E. Van Vogt (Scott Laz)
• Hothouse by Brian Aldiss (FredVP71)
• Helliconia Spring by Brian Aldiss (RhondaK101)

You can pick multiple favorites in the poll but try to limit yourselves to a top 3 even though the software will allow you to pick all 10. We'll keep the poll open for the next 10 days so you'll have time to read all the reviews and get your votes in. The winning reviewer will receive:

• GMRC T-shirt - your choice of colors so long as it's black
• GMRC button - you can never have too much flair
• Set of WWEnd Hugo Award bookmarks - I'll be honest, we over-bought these for WorldCon so we need to unload some but they're still still pretty cool and they will, in fact, hold your place in any paper book.
• Book of your choice from the WWEnd bookshelf - the winner will get a list of ~20 titles to pick from
• Everlasting Glory - So you'll have that goin' for ya. Which is nice.

Not too shabby, methinks! Good luck to all and be sure to vote.

What's that? Didn't get your review in on time? Not to worry, we're going to do this every month so you'll have plenty more opportunities to win.

I totally agree.  These are some great reviews to kick off the challenge.  I've place 2 votes and I'm still trying to decide on my third.  I keep going back and forth on 2 of the reviews.

Emil - 2012-02-09 7:33 AM There are really some good reviews. This is turning out to be a great initiative. Overall it seems reviews are flooding in by new members, not only for the GMRC! Awesome - it's becoming a very active fansite

The GMRC reviews have been top notch, that's for sure!  We're very pleased with how you guys have responded to the challenge.  We've already got a handfull for February so it looks like it will continue.

And you're right, we have been getting a ton of reviews in general too.  A bunch of our members have their own blogs where they review books.  They've been posting their archived reviews, or extracts from those reviews, here by the bushel.  It's a great way to leverage old content and get some link backs too.  New member divinenanny is a great recent example.  She signed up just a few days ago but has already posted 68 reviews from her blog.  Thanks, Sara!

In fact, we've got over 500 book reviews now so a big thank you to everyone for the effort!  We're going to have to do some sort of recognition on the site for our prolific reviewers.  Maybe a list of the top contributors with links to all their reviews?  We'll have to noodle on that.