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.
Goodreads ‘choice’ is very much a choice awards (e.g. Teen choice/viewer choice) so it doesn’t really try to be the ‘best’. I think we all know it is 100% about popularity. The problem is that it isn’t really a choice because they got rid of the write ins years ago, and keep cutting categories people want and keeping categories that are not useful. Cutting science (1-2 years ago) makes general nonfiction a mix of science and self help that feels odd. Cutting poetry this year doesn’t make sense. And since adults write, publish, and choose/buy the children’s books for children, it makes sense for adults to vote on children’s/middle grade books. (It is a genre for children that is adult-curated).
Adding romantasy feels like a recognition that romance needs more space ( they used to have a paranormal romance category), but the romance category is completely contemporary romance (with at least 2 books that are not romance shoehorned in). So no historical romance, romantic suspense, paranormal romance, or anything with mass market printing is represented).
In summary they are always awful because the readers are not really given good choices to choose from, but this year they pushed themselves to be extra bad.