Goodreads has just announced the winners of their third annual Goodreads Choice Awards. You can find all the books, numbers, etc at the link above but the growth of the award compared with the 2010 edition is just staggering. Looking at the results, Fantasy, YA sff and UF are the leading categories in popularity among the heavy book readers that are on Goodreads, while a bit sadly though not unexpectedly adult sf is quite away from these genres as numbers go.

I talked about eligibility and process in the post about the first round HERE, the semifinal choices have been covered HERE, while the final round with predictions have been discussed HERE.

As in each category the number of votes for all the books considered has been posted, there are a few interesting things that come out, most notably how much bigger the voting turnout has been for the winner of the fantasy and YA sff than for any other category except of course the main one, overall Favorite Book, though I would note that UF got a lot of votes too with the top four over 5000, while in YA sff numbers drop dramatically faster.

The other thing that struck me was the quite high number of votes for the winners in most categories, with 8000+ votes in fantasy and 4000+ in sf say and with runners up quite close; compare for example that in the Hugo award, the winner typically gets 2-300 votes before the redistribution.

Note also that Goodreads is a place for book lovers with most members posting ratings of hundreds of books and many posting thoughts on many of them, while voting required registration, so I would say these choices are as informed as in any book award out there and I would also say that they reflect quite well the overall preferences of people who are heavy book readers.

In addition to the 4 main categories for me for which I will discuss my predictions below, my choices were:

Historical Fiction (Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran) - surprisingly respectable fourth with 2196 votes, some 1000 less than the winner.

History & Biography (In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson) - a somewhat expected second with a very good 3128 votes as the overwhelming winner has never been in doubt for me or I guess for anyone paying attention to what makes waves (the Steve Jobs biography with 5463 votes).

Middle Grade & Children's (based on my son's reading and what I glimpsed from the books myself, Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick) - came in fifth with 1990 votes and far from the Rick Riordan juggernaut that took 1/2 with ~4000 votes each; I was a little surprised that the latest Wimpy Kid installment came only #4 but very happy that Shel Silverstein who is a huge favorite in our family as we own a considerable number of his books was #3.

Here I am familiar with all the top five above, though my son is only a mild Riordan fan but a huge Wimpy Kid and Shel Silverstein fan while enjoying the wonderful Selznick offerings to date too, though I think that The Invention of Hugo Cabret is still unparalleled.

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1: Favorite Book of 2011

A YA title outvoted my choice and prediction ADWD which came in a respectable third with 7617 votes to the 10159 of the winner. As mentioned below I have no idea how the very popular YA sff field shakes out as I rarely read YA books, so I would not say the result is a surprise.

Also a UF book came second and that is another hugely popular genre I stay far away from so the result is a good indicator how genres stack up against one another.

The rush of many authors who previously wrote serious fantasy or sf to publish YA and/or UF is quite understandable given the above numbers and in a way the review requests we get here where the YA and UF outnumber the rest by a lot also prove that these two genres are still in bubble mode, though market saturation should be reached at some point.


"Voted: A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin
Second Choice: none
Prediction: I have no idea how the non-adult_sff titles stack up but I would say that the extraordinary mainstream success of the awesome HBO adaption of Game of Thrones that raised GRRM's profile from a fantasy superstar to an all American one, will propel A Dance with Dragons to victory."

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2: Best Fiction of 2011

My prediction was dead on the money with my choice 1Q84 winning with 4107 votes against the 3948 votes of the second place which however was not the book I expected based on Goodreads statistics. Happy also that my second choice, the wonderful David Levithan novel about which I talked a little here too, got a respectable fifth place with 3000 votes.

"Voted: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
Second Choice: The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan
Prediction: I have no idea how most of the titles stack up in popularity and the Goodreads number crunching indicates the Ann Patchett book is the most read one, though of course early vs late release dates make this a little unreliable as true popularity goes.
I would say that either 1Q84 wins based on the author's huge world following and reputation or State of Wonder wins for the reasons above."

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3: Best Fantasy of 2011

Actually after I did the last post, it also struck me that The Night Circus as the only non-traditional fantasy out of the ten choices, might get a lot of votes from the non-genre/non-epic reader and sneak out in front while Martin and Rothfuss battle it out, and I was quite right though Martin still won by a mere 11 votes (something like a tenth of a percent) with 8530 for against 8519 for the wonderful Erin Morgenstern debut.

I was a bit surprised that Rothfuss came a distant third with only some 5000 votes though I will note that this number is higher than what most other categories winners got and I think that ADWD's winning came to the fact that Martin still turned to be way more popular than Rothfuss and got enough votes from the epic readers to barely edge the one popular non-secondary world choice.

My second choice came 9th with a decent 1391 votes, just ahead of the surprisingly popular debut Prince of Thorns.


"Voted: A Dance with Dragons by George RR Martin
Second Choice: Naamah's Blessing by Jacqueline Carey
Prediction: Goodreads numbers and all I said above strongly favor Martin, but I think that Rothfuss will give him a tough battle; still the HBO series puts GRRM well deservedly on top."

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4: Best SF of 2011