Goodreads mean score as metric for (not) reading

[Hollowman]

Just heard Luke's review of Fran Wilde--Updraft.

Suggestion to Luke:
IGNORE Awards and nominations and even SFBRP member suggestions (for reading) when Goodreads mean score is below 3.70.

[Luke]

Hollowman wrote: "Just heard Luke's review of Fran Wilde--Updraft.

Suggestion to Luke:
IGNORE Awards and nominations and even SFBRP member suggestions (for reading) when Goodreads mean score is below 3.70."

Thank you so much. I got 10% of the way through Everfair by Nisi Shawl, recently nominated for a Nebula Award. I really wasn't enjoying it. I checked the blurb and saw it was alternative history. Sigh.

I just checked the Goodreads average: 3.33 stars.

I returned it.

[Sotolf]

I'd say ignore awards as well, doesn't make much sense to me at least, as the awards usually just seem to be choosing random books without any regard to it being good or not.

[Lindsay]

I think it depends on the award, who is giving it and why. And I also think you've got to allow most award processes some misses, as well as taking into account that not everybody has similar tastes.

I read a couple of hundred books in most years and a large portion of that is new release SpecFic stuff so I tend to have read a lot of the award nominees in a given year. Certain awards skew much closer to my taste than others.

Personally, I find the Locus and Nebulas closest to my taste, usually closely followed by the Hugos. I don't typically like many of the nominees for World Fantasy and the BSFA awards. World Fantasy skews literary and towards horror most years and the BSFA awards tend to very literary and to books that I don't understand why they get nominated at all (The Glorious Angels for instance).

As with all things, tastes vary.

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

Luke wrote: "Thank you so much. I got 10% of the way through Everfair by Nisi Shawl, recently nominated for a Nebula Award. I really wasn't enjoying it. I checked the blurb and saw it was alternative history. Sigh.

I just checked the Goodreads average: 3.33 stars.

I returned it."

I didn't get far in that one - alternate history (about an area I care deeply about, no less) AND steampunk? NO no no no no no.

[Luke]

Sotolf wrote: "I'd say ignore awards as well, doesn't make much sense to me at least, as the awards usually just seem to be choosing random books without any regard to it being good or not."

I only read/started Borderline and Everfair because I noticed I'd already read four of the six books nominated for the Nebula Award this year, and thought it might be fun to complete the set.

It wasn't fun.

I have to keep reminding myself: never read a book because it is nominated or wins an award. Only read a book because it keeps popping up in enough places and being mentioned positively by people I trust. If it happens to be nominated? Great. But that's just an extra weighting for a book I otherwise am already interested in reading, not a first step!

[Jenny (Reading Envy)]

Luke wrote: "Sotolf wrote: "I'd say ignore awards as well, doesn't make much sense to me at least, as the awards usually just seem to be choosing random books without any regard to it being good or not."

I onl..."

I definitely see the pull though... I always start in on award lists and get tired... so now I just start with the titles I suspect I'll like most, and if the rest fade away, it's okay. With awards (usually literary) that have both long and short lists, it is pretty typical that I might like some of the books that didn't make the short list best.

[Outis]

Some of Greg Egan's best books are rated under 3.7 because they have either too much or not enough math. The Clockwork Rocket (avg. rating: 3.57) is the best SF I've read in a long time.
Many books with a small number of ratings have low average ratings as well.
And here are a few problematic but decent SF books with more than 500 ratings averaging under 3.7:
The Girl in The Road (which Jenny here 5-starred)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...
Learning the World

Then again, I guess there aren't many good books rated under 3.5.

[Luke]

Outis wrote: "Some of Greg Egan's best books are rated under 3.7 because they have either too much or not enough math. The Clockwork Rocket (avg. rating: 3.57) is the best SF I've read in a long t..."

Learning the World wasn't that good.

[Hollowman]

You only live so long and have so much (err...LITTLE) time ... Don't hesitate to ABANDON a book!
I created a GR category for my GR list called "abandoned".
If I start a book and it fails to hold my attention I'll dump it.
Sometimes I'll switch (paper/print; Kindle/epub; audiobook) to give it another chance ... a good audiobook narrator can really improve things.

I may not be so popular, here on SFBRP, after noting that I abandoned AR's Revelation Space and KSR's Aurora.

[Amy]

Hollowman wrote: "You only live so long and have so much (err...LITTLE) time ... Don't hesitate to ABANDON a book!
I created a GR category for my GR list called "abandoned".
If I start a book and it fails to hold my..."

I have something similar - I have a category called "gave-up" and another one called "on-hold". On-hold is for books that have sat for a long time in my Currently Reading queue but that I do think I will finish. For example, I put Dandelion Wine in On-Hold because I tried to listen to an audio version that was really bad, but I think the problem was the narration and not the book. Every so often I move books from "on-hold' to "gave-up". I will also move books straight from Currently Reading to gave-up!