The Goodreads Awards have been announced, so we can all sleep well tonight knowing that another arbitrary award has been granted to a bunch of people we already know about.
After that opening, asking “is my cynical side showing?” would be like me putting on a sequined thong and asking if my ass was accentuated.
I don’t love the Goodreads awards. For a few reasons
1. The people who know the least decide the awards
Chuck Klosterman has this cultural theory that says, in essence, the people who know the least about a subject are the ones who set the historical tone for it. His primary example is that if you asked most Americans to name an architect, they would come up with the name Frank Lloyd Wright. Most Americans probably couldn’t name a second architect, and if they could name a third, it’s because they are on a sitcom where they play an architect and they did a minor amount of studying for the role.
Frank Lloyd Wright goes down in history as a great architect, but is it because he’s really great, or is it because everyone knows him? For similar points, consider playwrights working before the 1700’s. Most of us can name one.
It’s the people who could name several nominees, people who have actual knowledge, who should be weighing in on this. But that’s not how the world works.
And so, it stands to reason that the most popular book wins. Perhaps not the best book, but the one the most people have heard of.
Let’s look at 2012’s Best Fiction category and its winner, Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling.
This was a big entry in the world of books because it was non-Potter Rowling book. So, naturally, lots of people knew about it. They knew it existed. They saw it on bookstore shelves.
But is it good?
Its overall Goodreads star rating averages out to 3.29.
That year there were 19 other finalists. All 19 of the other finalists have a higher star rating at this time.
Now, there are some factors to consider here. This is 6 years ago, meaning there have been 6 years for readers to discover and enjoy these other titles. I couldn’t say for sure what the ratings were in 2012. However, though things may have shifted, it’s significant that Casual Vacancy is the lowest-rated book of the bunch and that all 19 other titles are rated better.
We often look back at something like the Academy Awards and say, “Geez, wrong choice that year.” But rarely do we think that ALL the other nominees were better than the winner.
To make a comparison, in 1977 the Best Picture nominees were:
Rocky
All The President’s Men
Network
Taxi Driver
Bound For Glory
Some feel Rocky’s win was a mistake, but if you look at the IMDB ratings today, you get:
Rocky: 8.1
All The President’s Men: 8.0
Network: 8.1
Taxi Driver: 8.3
Bound For Glory: 7.3
The only film that outperforms Rocky is Taxi Driver, which frankly doesn’t seem like the kind of movie that wins Best Picture. I think it’s great, but I have to imagine that even then it wasn’t a typical Oscar winner.
Point being, in movies, even over a long period of time, in a year with HEAVY competition, the numbers demonstrate that the Academy wasn’t way off base. They didn’t pick the lowest-rated of the bunch.
Another factor that makes this rating discussion difficult is that Casual Vacancy has vastly more readers than the other titles nominated that year. Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore has about 148,000 ratings, which pales in comparison to Casual Vacancy’s 274,000. Mr. Penumbra’s is also the second-most-read by a fairly wide margin, and many of the nominees that year have only 40,000 or so ratings.
It’s very difficult to know whether this hurts Casual Vacancy’s overall rating. My gut says yes. The reason being, if a book has only 40,000 readers (here I am saying “only” 40,000 readers. My best work has like 11) it’s very likely those readers have come specifically to that book because it’s what they want to read. Casual Vacancy was likely read by a ton of Harry Potter fans, who may or may not have been interested in following Rowling into a different realm.
Here’s what I do know, though: Casual Vacancy was the most well-known book that year. It was most certainly the one that was talked about the most. And it won.
Is this the case in other years as well?
2009: The Help is the winner for Best Fiction. It’s been rated 1.8 million times. The runner-up, a Dan Brown thriller, comes in at 450,000. The Help is also the highest rated book of the bunch at this point.
2010: Mockingjay with 2 million ratings. The next-closest is The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest with 573,000 ratings. 11 books have higher ratings than Mockingjay, plus one book ties with it. So it’s somewhere in the middle.
2011: Divergent with 2.5 million ratings. The next-closest had 90,000. 5 books have higher ratings.
I went through all the years looking at either Best Book or Best Fiction (some years there was no Best Book category, so I went with Best Fiction, figuring it was the most-comparable category). 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2018 were the only years in which a non-winning book was rated more often than the winner. It should also be noted that when a book other than the winner was rated more often, the disparity was relatively small, whereas when the most-rated book won it was usually rated quite a bit more often, even twice as often, than even the next-closest book. 5 out of 9 times, the most-rated book was also the “best.” Which doesn’t sound like much until you make a comparison.
In 30 years, there have been only 4 times when the Best Picture winner was the top-grossing movie of the year. That means only 13% of the time Best Picture is also the top earner (which I’m equating with the most popular). 56% of the time, the best book of the year is also the most popular. What this means is that the best book of the year is far more strongly associated with the general popularity and general knowledge of the book’s existence than is the case with Best Picture.
2. The cool kids
Let’s look at the Humor category.
In how many years was the winner in the humor category known for something other than writing books?
2010: Christopher Moore
2011: Tina Fey
2012: Jenny Lawson
2013: Allie Brosch
2014: Amy Poehler
2015: Mindy Kaling
2016: Amy Schumer
2017: Lauren Graham
2018: Tiffany Haddish
The bolded names are ones that are known specifically for writing books. 3 out of a possible 9 (note: there was no humor category in 2009).
Let’s be clear, I’m not doubting that the books written by stars are good. Many of these stars are writers for TV or for their own stand-up, and they’ve won awards for their writing. However, they will be the first to admit that writing books is a different animal.
What I am asking you to consider is whether it’s likely, looking at this list, that when it comes to winning a Goodreads award, name recognition counts for a whole hell of a lot.
Let’s try a similar experiment in some other categories.
Non-Fiction
2009: Dave Cullen
2010: Rebecca Skloot
2011: Alexandra Robbins
2012: Susan Cain
2013: Temple Grandin
2014: Marina Keegan
2015: Aziz Ansari
2016: Lin-Manuel Miranda
2017: Lilly Singh
2018: Michelle McNamara
Bolded are the folks who are either known for being authors or best known. For example, Temple Grandin might consider herself more a scientist than an author, but I’m comfortable putting her in the author category as that’s probably how she’s best known to general audiences. Michelle McNamara is an interesting case. I don’t want to take anything away from her work, but I think it’d be disingenuous to ignore her famous spouse and the high-profile story behind her death as she was nearing the end of her manuscript.
More than half the time, a non-famous person won, however it’s notable that famous folks have a good 4-year streak going. In this category, it would appear you have even or better odds of winning as a non-famous person, however that doesn’t account for the strong divide that’s occurred on the timeline. Pre-2015 I would have said you have BETTER chances of winning as a non-famous person, but now I’d say your odds are much better if you’re well-known.
Memoir/Autobiography
2010: Portia de Rossi
2011: Matthew Logelin
2012: Cheryl Strayed
2013: Malala Yousafazi
2014: Esther Earl
2015: Connor Franta
2016: Paul Kalanithi
2017: Hillary Rodham Clinton
2018: Tara Westover
In this category we see less than half the winners are known for being authors. A special case here is Esther Earl, who wasn’t necessarily famous outside of her book, however I don’t think I’m stepping out of line when I say that the release of The Fault In Our Stars, which was a gigantic book and owes a lot to Earl’s work, has a lot to do with this book reaching the heights that it did.
You have better odds of winning this category if you’re famous for something other than writing. That makes all the sense in the world for this category, but it’s further proof that popularity of the writer is more important than subject matter or substance of the work.
Science & Technology
2015: John Hargrove
2016: Frans De Waal
2017: Neil deGrasse Tyson
2018: Steve Brusatte
The science category is newer, but one would expect to have no interruption of fame. You might be wondering about John Hargrove. Hargrove was involved with Sea World and Blackfish, so although he might not have been super famous, people more than likely came to his book because of his authority on a very hot topic and his appearance in a popular film.
This subject seems like it would be the most immune to popularity, and it’s really not. It’s perhaps better than some others, but still far from untouched.
Overall, popularity of the name on the cover outside the world of books seems to have a lot to do with the Goodreads awards.
3. How long are our memories?
This year a Best of the Best category was introduced. This category took the winners from all categories, 170 in total, and asked us to select the cream of the crop. I found it interesting that the overall winner was a book from 2017.
Let’s use this as an exercise to talk about the bias of memory. Unfortunately, I don’t have all the data on all 170 nominees. I wish I did, but I have to work with what I’ve got.
Books that made the finalists from:
2017: 3
2016: 2
2015: 3
2014: 3
2013: 2
2012: 2
2011: 2
2010: 0
2009: 2
11 books from 2014-2017. 6 books from 2009-2012. If you were in the first four years, your book was about half as likely to make the list. If we take the most recent and furthest back two years, you have 5 from the last two years, 2 from 2009-2010.
Let’s look at percentage of votes received by year:
2017: 13%
2016: 10%
2015: 10%
2014: 13%
2013: 7%
2012: 11%
2011: 3%
2010: 0%
2009: 13%
2014-2017 books got 46% of the votes. 2009-2012 got 27%. Take the most recent two years and we see 23% of the votes went to those years, whereas 13% went to 2009-2010. Note: these numbers don’t add up to 100. I assume this is because a very small percentage went to others that didn’t make the final list.
There’s a decent trend evident here, which is that we have a bias towards what’s fresh in our memories.
4. The tyranny of series
Series has a tremendous advantage in categories, whether it’s Jojo Moyes in fiction or [insert teen series title with girl in a dress, maybe holding a cool dagger].
Let’s look at comics, a category near and dear to me.
Comics are almost destined to be part of a series. If we look at everything that comes out in the world of comics in a given year, very little is a standalone product. You have to give a pass to an extent.
But this year’s Saga was volume 8. 8! As was Ms. Marvel. This year’s winner was a volume 3. The Wicked + The Divine was volume 6. The surface problem with this is that nobody is jumping onto a series at volume 8, but the real problem goes deeper.
When you’re 8 volumes deep into a series, is it really possible to say that this particular volume stands alone as great comics, or is a story reliant on everything that came before? And if it’s reliant on all that came before, then is it volume 8 that’s so good, or is it the series as a whole? And if it’s the series as a whole, then can we really nominate volume 8 on its own merit? Wouldn’t that be the equivalent of nominating a new Jonathan Lethem novel because you loved Fortress of Solitude so much?
Fixes
I don’t simply want to complain. I want to suggest fixes.
Which is kinda stupid. Nothing really “fixes” this stuff as there’s not really a problem (see next section). And I know none of this is going to happen because the goal of the Goodreads awards is to get people to the site and clicking. But talking about possible fixes can be a good way to further discuss the issues inherent in these and other awards.
Retire some authors
Does Stephen King really need to win in the horror category? I love the dude, don’t get me wrong. But does anyone who is even mildly interested NOT know when he has a new book out? Does him winning in the horror category introduce anyone to a new author? Does it even raise his profile, or is he already at maximum fame for an author?
Let’s say after 2 wins you go in the hall of fame. That might not sound like many, but I think this forces people to really consider which books are the best in a given year.
Retire series
A series can win once, for one volume, then it’s over. This keeps us from seeing the same series over and over, which is really like voting for the same book over and over. Alternatively, books in a series beyond volume 1 could be in their own category, Best Sequel.
Vetting
One way to address the popularity problem is to only allow readers to vote for titles they’ve marked as Read. Secondly, to only allow voters to vote in categories in which they’ve read 3+ books. Out of a possible 20, that’s not asking a lot. If I’ve read only one book in a category, I don’t think I’m really qualified to vote in that category.
Experts
I would like to see these categories voted on by groups of experts. The success of Rotten Tomatoes is no doubt due to the way they differentiate between pros and amateurs. It’s interesting to see where the pros go and where they differ from amateurs, and some of the most interesting discussions of how good or bad movies are comes from those situations where there’s a huge disparity.
More Thoughtful Category Changes
The categories on these things change A LOT. For example, they recently added a Young Adult Fantasy in addition to the regular Young Adult Fiction category, presumably because the Young Adult Fiction category was being dominated by the Fantasy genre. However, I think this dilutes the awards rather than making them better. Looking back at the trends, it’s great to see what was truly the most popular as opposed to the most popular within more granular categories. This is fairly specific to me to formats as opposed to genres. I consider Young Adult books to be closer to a format categorization than a genre, which is why I’d be in favor of collapsing it with Young Adult Fantasy. This is something that can be discussed at length, so let’s just leave it at the fact that I don’t think some of the categories and category changes are working properly.
Awards need a purpose
The problem with most awards is they don’t have a clear purpose statement. They usually have some fluffy nonsense like “Celebrating the great stuff!”
A bit back I wrote a column about Bob Dylan’s Nobel win for Literature. Admittedly, when I started out, I was not in favor. But by the end, I had to side with the committee. Reason being, he checked a lot of the boxes set out by the committee.
If you’re creating an award, make sure there’s a stated purpose. It may be to honor something that demonstrates leaps forward in terms of craft. It may be to honor works that spread an important message. It may be to elevate works that might not otherwise be seen. It may be to honor works that change the landscape within an art form or maybe more generally in the world. It may be the book that is least likely to smell like cigarettes and farts when you check it out from the library.
Whatever it is, it should be clear.
You’ve wasted your time reading this. Maybe. Kind of.
We started with Klosterman, so we’ll end with him.
One of the smartest things the guy ever said is that canon only exists to give us a basis for argument. The only real utility of canon is to give us a starting place, some foundation to argue against. Because, after all, we’re talking about super subjective shit that will probably seem very stupid in a short time and be completely irrelevant and forgotten in even just 100 years.
When someone puts out a list of the best this or that, we love to argue about it. From experience, I can tell you that putting out a list of the best anything is one of the shortest ways to find yourself on the end of comments about how you’re a stupid monster because you didn’t include Title X, because you didn’t include enough diversity, even because the order, which you probably said was not particular at the beginning, revealed a personal bias.
Well, yeah! A list of best anything is going to be completely biased unless it’s created with hard data that I’m not responsible for. And hard data is not all that exciting. We could make a list of the longest books. The ones with the most pictures. We could make lists of the best-selling books with hard data. But who gives a shit?
The point of list-making, the point of awards is to give us a groundwork to discuss.
However, I do think there’s one argument that still applies against the Goodreads awards in this case.
They’re just not that interesting.
Because they’re the aggregate of so many faceless individuals, the site having something like 75,000,000 members, they’re almost meaningless. Arguing the merits of Stephen King isn’t all that interesting anymore because, well, it’s been done. To death. Arguing about volume 8 of Saga isn’t all that interesting because you could make most of the same essential in-text arguments about volume 1.
When super-popular books win, don’t we all just shrug and say, “Eh, it’s kinda what I expected”?
This, by the way, is also the biggest problem the Academy Awards are running into. #OscarsSoWhite is definitely a thing, but I think it’s a symptom of the bigger issue: the nominees aren’t very interesting to talk about. #OscarsSoWhite gave the world a new way to talk about the boring lineup of nominees. The nominees were boring, so people found an interesting way to talk about the nomination process and trends as opposed to the individual films.
Get Out was a big deal to talk about because it’s pretty different from normal nominees. One of the ways it was different was in its black casting and direction, but we shouldn’t ignore that it’s a horror movie, and that most viewers probably wouldn’t consider it Oscar Bait.
I guess what I’m saying is that until The Baby Jesus Butt-Plug is nominated for a Goodreads Best of the Best, you can continue to call me uninterested.
The Goodreads awards are a success in one sense. They give us something to argue about. But they’re a failure in terms of the greatest sin one can commit on the internet: they’re boring.