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Announcing the Winners of the 2014 Goodreads Choice Awards!
The readers have spoken—with a record 3.3 million votes cast in the 6th annual Goodreads Choice Awards! From the moment Opening Round nominations were announced in November, it's been a nail-biting time for the authors and their fans. Now, finally, here are the winners that you have crowned the best books of the year! Congratulations to our winners! These awards reflect what people are actually reading and loving throughout the year—it is an enormous honor to win the votes of true book lovers.
View the winners & runners-up in 20 categories »
Fan favorite Rainbow Rowell won Best Fiction in a landslide with Landline, her bestselling novel about a troubled marriage. Runners-up include Big Little Lies and The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. In Best Historical Fiction, the critically acclaimed World War II epic All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr won the top honor over offerings from heavyweights like Ken Follett and Philippa Gregory.
Best Nonfiction was a much tighter race, with Marina Keegan's The Opposite of Loneliness edging out Randall Munroe's What If? by just 137 votes. Keegan, who died at age 22 in 2012, is one of two posthumous winners, both young writers who have touched countless readers with their words. The late Esther Earl has won Best Memoir & Autobiography for This Star Won't Go Out. Before her death at age 16 in 2010, Earl was the inspiration for John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, a 2012 Choice Award winner.
Best Fiction winner Rainbow Rowell shares her thanks!
In Best Mystery & Thriller, Stephen King and Robert Galbraith (a.k.a. J.K. Rowling) were neck and neck, but in the end King's Mr. Mercedes took the crown by a margin of 419 votes. Readers also rewarded long-time bestsellers in Best Romance and Best Horror, where Diana Gabaldon's Outlander novel Written in My Own Heart's Blood and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles novel Prince Lestat won the top spots.
If you're feeling interplanetary, we have two Choice winners set on Mars! Andy Weir's gritty and realistic story of a stranded astronaut, The Martian is the runaway winner in Best Science Fiction, and Pierce Brown's dystopian adventure Red Rising is the year's favorite in the Debut Goodreads Author category.
Thumbs up from Best Science Fiction winner Andy Weir.
Best Debut Goodreads Author Pierce Brown created his own slang for the dialogue in his novel.
The winners of our Young Adult and Children's categories have proven to delight readers of all ages. We Were Liars, one of our "it" books of 2014, wins in Best Young Adult Fiction, and City of Heavenly Fire wins in Best Young Adult Fantasy. Perennial favorites Rick Riordan and Mo Willems both dominated in their genres, Best Middle Grade & Children's and Best Picture Books. In fact, Riordan was the top vote-getter across all categories!
Best Young Adult Fiction winner E. Lockhart puts her heart on her hands, just like her characters.
Another big vote-getter was Deborah Harkness's The Book of Life in Best Fantasy, winning the category over runner-up Brandon Sanderson by more than 20,000 votes. In a surprise win, write-in nominee Ina Garten surged from behind to clinch the title in Best Food & Cookbooks for her latest collection of recipes, Make It Ahead. And never count out scrappy Amy Poehler, whose witty memoir Yes Please beat out Neil Patrick Harris and Lena Dunham in Best Humor>.
Best Fantasy winner Deborah Harkness, who just might have magical powers.
Other winners include The Romanov Sisters in Best History & Biography, #Girlboss in Best Business, Serenity: Leaves on the Wind in Best Graphic Novels & Comics, and Lullabies in Best Poetry.
How many of the year's best books have you read? You can check out the full vote breakdown for the top 400 nominees across 20 categories, and start building an award-winning to-read list!
Congratulations to our winners! »
Comments Showing 1-50 of 63 (63 new)
Congrats to all the winners. Keep em coming you guys!!
YES YES YES. I KNEW CITY OF HEAVENLY FIRE AND BLODD OF OLYMPUS WOULD WIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!CONGRATS CASSIE CLARE AND RICK RIORDAN
Putting fantasy and urban fantasy in the same category is a bad idea. They're totally different genres. Anyway, great books this year!
I like this Goodreads Choice Award ! It contributes to my to-read list with books I expect to be good!
Damn right city of heavenly fire had to win , awesome , nicely done , great book and a great writer , congratulations to clare . One of the best books.
So we get no breakdown on all the votes? Because I put in another book for Fantasy to vote on. I didn't vote for any of the Goodreads 'suggestions' in the very first round.
Congrats to all the winners, I am yet to read The Martian but I took it off the shelf just now :D
I really need to read The Martian. Heard a lot of good things about it. Anyway, congrats to the winners! Have a lot of books to add to my wish list :-)
THE MARTIAAAAAAN! YES!BY FAR, THE BEST BOOK I'VE READ THIS YEAR!
Did Goodreads nominate anyone of color? How is it that not one person here is a person of color? I find that shameful.
Desiree wrote: "Did Goodreads nominate anyone of color? How is it that not one person here is a person of color? I find that shameful."
Roxanne Gay, Murakami, Cristina Henriquez, Mira Jacob...
Other than the winner for historical fiction, it's a huge disappointment AFAIAC. Way too much of popularity contest. And there needs to be a LOT more time between rounds.Just don't use this for your reading list, folks.
Sparrowlicious wrote: "So we get no breakdown on all the votes? Because I put in another book for Fantasy to vote on. I didn't vote for any of the Goodreads 'suggestions' in the very first round."If you click on "Congratulations to our winners" and then click on "view results" it gives you the breakdowns.
Desiree wrote: "Did Goodreads nominate anyone of color? How is it that not one person here is a person of color? I find that shameful."
There were quite a few people of colour nominated, but you are right that none of them have won but that is of course down to the voters.
You know the comics category is more or less a joke when Saga, an original narrative, is left in the dust. Nope nope nope.
Honestly, there should be a lot more categories. High Fantasy and Urban Fantasy have completely different characteristics for what makes a good High Fantasy and Urban Fantasy novel, which was unfair to Skin Game considering it's Urban Fantasy. Same thing with YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy. What makes a good Sci-Fi novel does not make a good Fantasy novel (which can also be split up into Urban Fantasy and High Fantasy), and it's unfair to lump the two very different genres together. Adult novels have the two separated into their own categories, why not Young Adult? Pretty disappointed in this year's awards.
Maureen wrote: "You know the comics category is more or less a joke when Saga, an original narrative, is left in the dust. Nope nope nope."Yeah, that was particularly disappointing.
I've read at least one book from each of the fiction authors with a 20k-vote entry, with the exceptions of The Martian and All the Light We Cannot See.The latter has been on my list for eventually reading, while the former I gave up on due to boredom but I suppose I could pick it back up.
As for the winners I've read...mmm, I'll say that people have different tastes.
I don't understand why Goodreads doesn't divide the "Fiction" award category into at least two sections: "Popular Fiction" and "Literature". With all the subdivisions in genre literature represented in awards, it seems ridiculous not to separate popular, lightweight fiction from what is great writing.
Jackie wrote: "I don't understand why Goodreads doesn't divide the "Fiction" award category into at least two sections: "Popular Fiction" and "Literature". With all the subdivisions in genre literature represent..."I could not agree more. This year's Best Fiction winner has me very disappointed... It definitely would deserve your proposed Popular Fiction award, considering how many people (emphatically not me) loved it, buuuuut...overall Best Fiction? Man.
Congrats to all the winners and thank you for writing your books and giving so many people joy.
I have some serious concerns about the results, particularly relating to quality issues when folks apparently vote in vast numbers for books they haven't even read. A couple glaring examples were "Prince Lestat" winning Horror with just under 22,000 votes, when today, a full week after voting closed, only 2000 folks have rated it. "Serenity," with nearly 22K votes had only 344 ratings--were folks voting for the Graphic Novel because they liked the film? Chances are, since the book only came out Nov 5, most voted for it sight unseen. Even allowing for folks voting for books they hadn't yet put on their "My Books" lists, there were a lot of invalid votes out there!!! I understand that people want to support their favorite authors, but a lot of deserving books suffer when folks just follow the crowd.I am still very disappointed that Paranormal and Fantasy were collapsed into a single Fantasy category, particularly since a not very well reviewed Paranormal title won with about twice as many votes as ratings. Both categories had previously been in the top 5 voter participation groups, but were replaced by "Business" which barely topped "Poetry," putting it at second from the bottom with 90,000 votes.
Belinda (TheBookBuddies) wrote: "Honestly, there should be a lot more categories. High Fantasy and Urban Fantasy have completely different characteristics for what makes a good High Fantasy and Urban Fantasy novel, which was unfai..."Yes, I agree 100%
The categories are very general.
Tamara wrote: "Jackie wrote: "I don't understand why Goodreads doesn't divide the "Fiction" award category into at least two sections: "Popular Fiction" and "Literature". With all the subdivisions in genre liter..."I think it takes a few years for books to transition into the "literature" category. Until that point, they are serious fiction, but until books are accepted into the cannon, "literature" is more of a goal than a reality. And then "literature" is more than just fiction--it usually includes poetry, drama, literary essays, etc.
Desiree wrote: "Did Goodreads nominate anyone of color? How is it that not one person here is a person of color? I find that shameful."
Man, that comment's kind of unnecessary. It's clearly focused on English-speaking writers, maybe they just didn't find a book written by a "person of color" that stood out, I dunno. I doubt there's some kind of white supremacist conspiracy here.
Love Rainbow Rowell, but I'm shocked that she won best fiction over some of the other entries. Landline was cute, but it not the best fiction entry by any means.
Desiree wrote: "Did Goodreads nominate anyone of color? How is it that not one person here is a person of color? I find that shameful."
Read the nominee lists--there are a few, but that none of them won has nothing to do with anything in particular. A few well known black Americans had books there including Maya Angelou, Ben Carson, Daniel Beaty, and others. There were also Asians and Hispanics represented--did you bother to look at the full lists? And if you had a specific book or books to nominate you could have submitted a write in for it, and encouraged your friends to do so as well. No one was locked out of the nominations which were based on book ratings throughout the year.
I surmise a lot of people voted for books they didn't read, just picked an author they had heard of... Stephen King for best mystery? Really? Love Mr. King, but others do mysteries better. But people who don't read mysteries wouldn't know that...hence, my surmise. Plus, far more votes than ratings.People can do that if they choose to, but it kind of makes the awards meaningless, so I wish they wouldn't.
Janet wrote: "I have some serious concerns about the results, particularly relating to quality issues when folks apparently vote in vast numbers for books they haven't even read. A couple glaring examples were "..."Well said. It wouldn't be too hard to implement some changes that would make this more of a literary contest than one of popularity.
Должны были разделить премии Paranormal Fantasy и Fantasy.
Harsh wrote: "Damn right city of heavenly fire had to win , awesome , nicely done , great book and a great writer , congratulations to clare . One of the best books."Absolutely true.Hats off to you fellow shadowhunter
Belinda (TheBookBuddies) wrote: "Honestly, there should be a lot more categories. High Fantasy and Urban Fantasy have completely different characteristics for what makes a good High Fantasy and Urban Fantasy novel, which was unfai..."Yes, it blows. I and others complained quite a bit about UF and Fantasy being merged over on the Goodreads Feedback forum. They are strict on keeping their stance this year with mixing these two genres into one.
A shame for readers.
Linette wrote: "I surmise a lot of people voted for books they didn't read, just picked an author they had heard of... Stephen King for best mystery? Really? Love Mr. King, but others do mysteries better. But peop..."Yep that's what happened. I remember seeing in my feed how disappointed most of my friends were with Mr Mercedes, even the most die-hard King fans I know. People are just voting for big names without reading some of these books. That's obvious but nothing can really be done about it, I guess.
Congrats to all the winners, although I'm a bit surprised that neither Locke and Key or Saga won this year.
I disagree with pretty much every book that was chosen. I feel like all the proves is who has the most rabid fangirls/boys (it's been like this for several years now)
What a wonderful year to be a reader this has been!!Looking forward to 2015 all the wonderful news books we can expect. Thanks wonderful authors, you are amazing and make my life (and that of so many others) so much better every day...:)
congratulations to all the winners and all that but having Deborah Harkness win best fantasy is ridiculous and is far more about popularity than ability and its true the fantasy category should be split into high, urban, etc.. to more accurately reflect the modern tropes within the genre
Desiree wrote: "Did Goodreads nominate anyone of color? How is it that not one person here is a person of color? I find that shameful."
Maureen wrote: "You know the comics category is more or less a joke when Saga, an original narrative, is left in the dust. Nope nope nope."I don't know this Saga. Who wrote it?
Marie wrote: "Desiree wrote: "Did Goodreads nominate anyone of color? How is it that not one person here is a person of color? I find that shameful.""
I don't see why race should be an issue with books/authors, but actually there are authors of different races that were nominated.
Congrats E. Lockhart! I'm so glad WE WERE LIARS made it to the Best Young Adult Fiction! :)
James wrote: "Desiree wrote: "Did Goodreads nominate anyone of color? How is it that not one person here is a person of color? I find that shameful."
Roxanne Gay, Murakami, Cristina Henriquez, Mira Jacob..."
Thank you, James. I would like to point out the fact that books are not published in the hue of the author's skin.
