These kinds of things are always fun… check out this flowchart to the Universe of Stephen King books. I had no idea that so many elements and references threaded through his books. These kinds of easter eggs are exactly what fans like. You can go see the original post (and future updates) over on Gillian’s blog or click the image below to see the huge flowchart/info-graphic:
Here’s one I haven’t read yet (it comes out August 7th, William Morrow/Harper Collins), but I’m pretty excited about it. Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing is a collection of pieces by Neal Stephenson. Much of Stephenson’s new book is non-fiction, but I’ve heard there a couple of short stories as well. In the book Stephenson talks about his geek travels where he travels to far off places just to witness the installation of fiber optic internet connections in some remote pocket of Asia. He also tries to make a case for “modern Jedi knights”, chats metaphysics and technology/freedom vs. the Chinese. So it’s all over the place. Should be fun!
If this book is as detailed and accessible as his fiction, I know it’s one I am going to enjoy.
Anything new coming out that you’re looking forward to?
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.
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.
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. . .
