Goodreads has launched the opening round for their yearly awards for the best books just recently. I skimmed through the categories myself, yet already saw quite mixed reviews about the suggestions for this year’s nominees.
Some categories like poetry and children books were removed (yeah, you can say that children ain’t a target audience for the Goodreads yet this platform always seemed to be well rounded).
Graphic novels is also something that was removed unfortunately. Although these ain’t my cup of tea, I’m almost sure it must be upsetting for a large group of people.
I just got back into reading over the past year or so. I made the mistake of starting with a few goodreads yearly award winners. Almost immediately killed my desire to read because I didn’t realize the demographic of the site was so strongly skewed. Nothing wrong with these people having a community, I just wish it was a bit more apparent for those who haven’t discovered it yet. Honestly I’m more interested in things rated 3.5 on goodreads, because all the 4-5 star books are generally duds for me.
I agree, and makes me feel better to hear others aren’t judging books with lower than 4 ratings harshly or it turning them off from reading. I find usually they’re doing more interesting things in terms of writing/structure/genre conventions.
I got back into reading with the 2022 best horror winner by pure chance, when I went on Goodreads to mark it read and give it 2 stars, it popped up saying it won in 2022 and I spent a good 10 minutes laughing my ass off
It would be so useful if the rating I saw for a particular book was customized to me–so Goodreads would know what books I liked a lot and would compile a rating from readers who also liked the books I liked. Then, I would trust the rating a lot more.
So true, I used to only read books 3.8 or greater and then read a a book i LOVED that was like a 3.5 and have read plenty bad books at 4.8. I have just stopped using Goodreads as a jumping off point.
It seems to be so random what gets 4+ and what gets lower ratings.
I think I will have to try this and experiment with some more of the 3.5s. I don’t know if it was more to my taste in fiction but years and years ago I thought pretty much all the books over a 4 that I read were really good, but have found that not the case so much anymore (if I was in a charity shop I would look up the books that I was drawn to and if it was over a 4 I’d get it. Now I’ll still do a check just to make sure its not got an absolitely dire rating everywhere).
Not trying to sound like a snob, I think its that since becoming ever more popular the high ratings will be often on books popular on “booktok” etc. Not looking down on people that do enjoy them.but they’re usually just not to my taste, or will be books that have paid there way to popularity. A court of thrones and roses got a 4.2 and is hugely popular but I managed some of it and its really not my thing. I’ll often now find account of people that have highly rated books I do like, seem to have similar taste, and see what else they’ve given good reviews to. A lot of the 4+ are there because of their popularity which doesn’t = good