Category Archives: Book Talk

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GoodReads Is Hiding Reviews

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Over the past couple of days it has become apparent that the folks running GoodReads are hiding some book reviews. While this initially sounds really really bad, it seems to be an effort to help their members “play nice”. It’s the classic story of a few bad apples ruining it for everyone else. I’m not going to link specifically to all the posts, forums, blogs, etc. that spawned all of this, as I don’t want to join the flame wars, but I do think it’s important that we all know what and how GoodReads is changing.

GoodReads One Star Review

The impetus for the changes in policy has to do with GoodReads allowing both authors and readers to be active on the site. Authors get blogs. Readers don’t. Readers can leave reviews. Author’s can’t (but they can have secondary “personal” accounts to do reviews with, but that’s another issue).  So what’s been happening with a few passionate (and not so mature) authors is:

1. A reader pans a book on GoodReads, gives it a one star rating and maybe adds it to their “Readers to Avoid” shelf.
2. The author stumbles upon this and blogs about the negative review on their GoodReads blog, often making observations of the reviewer’s “lack of a brain”.
3. The author’s fans see this post and flock to the reviewer’s profile spewing forth bad stuff.
4. The reviewer’s friends start reviewing the author and the author’s fans’ activities (rather than reviewing the books), and things escalate.
5. The reviewer and a couple of friends get fed up and quit using GoodReads.

So what GoodReads has started doing is letting users know that their review has been hidden, if it doesn’t meet GoodReads criteria of a book review. So now, if you bash an author for their stance on importing bananas from Brazil, your review will show on your profile page and in your shelves, but not on the curated community book page, because your ‘review’ had nothing to do with the book. Also, your GoodReads friends will be able to see it, but that’s it.

This seems to ‘kind of’ fix the problem as it removes the match strike that sets these immature authors and fans off. But there is really nothing to stop these bad apples from harassing readers. I am not sure if more changes are on the way or not. We’ll have to see how all of this evolves.

I dabble on GoodReads (if you want to say ‘hi’ please do, it’s always fun chatting with other readers). But I check in on LibraryThing every day, so come join the fun over there if you haven’t already.

Book Column, Book Talk

Most Read Books in the United States

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Yesterday, I posted about the 10 Most Read Books in the World over the last 50 years. Today, I am curious as to how that compares to the Most Read Books in the United States in 2011. While poking around Nielsen listings I found that USA Today already did all of the math back in January 2012, so that’s the source here. I also did some combining. So if Suzanne Collins’ series took up three spots, I only gave it it’s top slot and brought the #11 and #12 best-sellers into the list.)

So, here’s the may-or-may not-be-statistically valid merged and arranged 2011 list of Best Sellers in the United States:

1. The Help – Kathryn Stockett

2. The Hunger Games (Series) – Suzanne Collins

3. Heaven is for Real – Todd Burpo

4. Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen

5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever – Jeff Kinney

6. Steve Jobs: A Biography – Walter Isaacson

7. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Series) – Stieg Larsson

8. Unbroken – Laura Hillenbrand

9. Inheritance – Christopher Paolini

10. The Son of Neptune: Heroes of Olympus – Rick Riordan

The books really seem to stack up evenly when compared to the last 50 years’ global numbers. Almost the same number of fiction vs. non-fiction, subject matter, etc. What is interesting is the overall consistency of the Young Adult books, between the two lists. The books aimed at younger readers do seem to be gaining steam. I wonder what the global list will look like in 50 years. . .

Book Column, Book Talk

Most Read Books in the World

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Here is a graphic posted over on Squidoo showing the Top 10 Most Read Books in the World, based on the last 50 years of sales. I honestly never thought that Think and Grow Rich (1937) would be on the list and we haven’t had time to add up all of the  50 Shades of Grey numbers. We live on a really interesting planet. . .  I’ll leave it at that.

I also think it’s neat that Harry Potter (1997), The Da Vinci Code (2003) and Twilight (2005) all made the list even though all having been released in just the past 15 years. That’s pretty good pick up. And it’s interesting that they’re all fiction. In fact, over half of the books are fiction. I wonder what this list looked like in 1996 prior to Potter taking up his wand. . . was it more non-fiction or has fiction always had the larger slice of the pie?

 

Most Read Books in The World

Authors, Book Column, Book Talk

Wall Street Needs to Read More Fiction

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I recently read Arthur C. Clark‘s 1973 Rendezvous with Rama, thanks to a friend’s recommendation. I thought it was great. Especially if you like the Golden Age and old-school science fiction. If you don’t, then you might want to pass. It was fun. Anyway, I went out and picked up Clark’s sequel (the not-so-enigmatically titled) Rama II. I am not enjoying it as much as Clark is doing sooooo much world building that things are kind of slow (we’ll see how far I make it). But what I wanted to share was the passage, written in 1988, in which The Chaos of 2133 is explained for the downfall of planet Earth and why space exploration was halted:

“By the end of of the year in 2133, it had become obvious to some of the more experienced observers of human history that the “Raman Boom” was leading mankind toward disaster. Dire warnings of impending economic doom started being heard above the euphoric shouts of the millions who had recently vaulted into the middle and upper classes. Suggestions to balance the budgets and limit credit at all levels of the economy were ignored. Instead, creative effort was expended to come up with one way after another of putting more spending power in the hands of the populace that had forgotten how to say wait, much less no, to itself . . . The global stock market began to sputter in January 2134 . . . World leaders insisted that they had finally found the mechanisms that could truly inhibit the downturns of the capitalistic cycles. And the people believed them – until early May of 2134 . . . the global stock markets went inexorably down . . . three of the world’s largest banks announced that they were insolvent because of bad loans . . .”

Pretty crazy, isn’t it!? This sounds like it’s “ripped from the headlines” of 2010-2012, but it was written over 20 years ago. Maybe Wall Streeters need to read more fiction and science fiction. I mean other than being 120 years off (and the whole alien thing) Arthur C. Clark kind of called it didn’t he?

Rama 2 Cover