Southern

[close] This is a group for romance novel lovers! We’re all contemporary romance writers with a hint of Southern, a big serving of Suspense, a sprinkle of Rom-Com, and a big helping of general badass females! This group is for fans of: Ashley Hastings Emma Renshaw Fen Wilde Jiffy Kate Krista Sandor Lynne Leslie S.E. Rose S.M. West

[close] Is anyone else tired of seeing Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance novels at the top of every list? The goal of this group is to root out, with your help, the highest rated books on goodreads. Thousands of books were consolidated from many different lists; unfortunately, not every book has been included in this analysis. Thus I create this group for help rooting out books that have been missed (or that have been erroneously excluded). I'm creating this as a Group instead of a List so that I can enable discussions/polls, and so that I can (somewhat) lock-down the bookshelves. To calculate the Top Rated Books, I have borrowed IMBDs Bayesian estimate formula to calculate a weighted rating. The use of Bayesian estimates ensures that a book with only a few hundred ratings, all at 5-stars, would not rank above "the Book Thief", for example, with a 4.37 average from over 500,000 ratings. The fewer ratings/votes a book has, the closer its weighted "bayesian" rating is to the mean rating of books queried, while the more votes/ratings a book gets, the closer its weighted "bayesian" rating gets to the pure average/mean for that individual book. EXCLUDED: books with less than 3,000 ratings books with a statistically weighted average less than 4-stars. non fiction (poetry/self-help) omnibus (box sets/complete works/short stories/collector's editions) romance (ya romance) childrens graphic novel prequel/sequel [only the first book in any series has been included] NOTE: The formula for calculating the Top Rated Books gives a true Bayesian estimate: weighted rating (WR) = (v ÷ (v+m)) × R + (m ÷ (v+m)) × C Where: R = average for the book (mean) = (Rating) v = number of votes for the book = (votes) m = minimum votes required to be listed in the Top Rated (currently 3000) C = the mean vote across the whole report (currently 3.5)

[close] Whether you prefer Faulkner, O'Connor, McCullers or more recent authors of Southern Literature such as Clyde Edgerton, Tom Franklin, William Gay, or Mark Childress, this is the place for you. We will have group reads of two book per month. Group reads will be based on member nominations and polls. While this group is not for adults only, I encourage our younger members to be old enough to attend R rated movies without accompaniment by an adult. The topics for discussion here are meant for mature audiences.

[close] group read of Absalom, Absalom! September 2025