[2021] Poll 16 Voting

[dalex]

An option for opposites could be two primary characters who are opposites in some way. Like in Long Bright River one sister is a police officer and the other is a drug addict. Or The Interestings, about a group of people who are friends and aspiring artists as teenagers and some of them become successful and some of them don't. Or Everything Here Is Beautiful, in which one sister is responsible and reliable and the other sister is not.

[Robin P, Orbicular Mod]

I think opposites for me will be one where I will read a book for some other reason and realize it fits there. I enjoy being surprised that way rather than planning everything up front.

[Nancy]

The Vanishing Half would also be perfect for opposites.

[Traci]

Now I kind of wish I had voted for opposites. Oh well, it wasn't a downvote at least.

[Jen K]

Pam wrote: "WRT the opposites prompt, another pair (besides good vs evil) is old vs young like the grandmother and young girl in The Summer Book by Tove Jansson or A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. Rich..."

Or The Switch where the granddaughter and grandmother switched homes and is told in both the old and young POV.

[Rachel]

annie wrote: "Rachel wrote: "My copy of A Study in Charlotte doesn't seem to have one. Do you know if it's in the front or the back of the book?"

my copy of it & my copy of The Last of August h..."

Weird. Mine doesn't, but I just checked The Last of August and that one does, so that will work! This series is on my priority list for next year anyway.

[Irene]

Hi, I'd recommend removing Gone Girl from the list of female villains because it's actually a huge spoiler!! One of my best friends just read it last week so I know there are still some people who were unaware of that huge twist.

Edit: Oops, didn't see that Nancy had already said this! Sorry for being redundant!

[Alicia]

That’s my biggest worry with this prompt and the listopia. But I still voted it.

Maybe we can put a warning re: spoilers under the listopia title for those that don’t follow the discussion?


I also have such a GREAT book for this, but I can’t tell anyone what it is. I just have to hope someone reads it and wants to discuss next year.

[Irene]

Alicia wrote: "That’s my biggest worry with this prompt and the listopia. But I still voted it.

Maybe we can put a warning re: spoilers under the listopia title for those that don’t follow the discussion? "

I think that's a good idea! Because often times the identity of the villain in a thriller/mystery is revealed at the end of the book, so just knowing it's a woman can be a big spoiler in and of itself.

Maybe the listopia should only include books where it's not a spoiler that the villain is a woman? And there could be a separate one labeled with spoilers?

And @Dalex, I love that idea of two opposite characters for that prompt! I thought that one was going to be really tough, but there are so many books that have the "opposites-attract" trope.

[Thomas]

Irene wrote: "Alicia wrote: "That’s my biggest worry with this prompt and the listopia. But I still voted it.

Maybe we can put a warning re: spoilers under the listopia title for those that don’t follow the dis..."

As the one who suggested this prompt I admit I may not have considered that issue but I agree some books it fairly clear and others where they are a criminal but necessarily the villain so the audience always knows this its not a twist for example:
A Little Princess
Marnie
The One Hundred and One Dalmatians Set - 2 Books

[Pam]

I absolutely agree that we shouldn’t have books on the listopia or on the discussion thread where it’s not known who the villain is, murder mysteries and thrillers in particular. I thought of that problem when I first saw the prompt.

[dalex]

I think we should have a listopia for the villain prompt because some people want ideas. If you don’t want spoilers don’t look at the list.

[Alicia]

dalex wrote: "I think we should have a listopia for the villain prompt because some people want ideas. If you don’t want spoilers don’t look at the list."

I agree we should have a listopia, but I don't think it's too hard to ask people to not put spoilers on there.

I think saying just don't look at it is a bit dismissive of people that rely on listopias for most of their prompts or want suggestions on finding new books they may not know about, but still don't want to be spoiled.

[Bryony]

I agree it’s nice to avoid spoilers for the female villain suggestion, (yes, honestly there are some people who haven’t read the incredibly well-known book being mentioned here! 😂). So could I suggest people post the name of any book that might be spoiled behind spoiler tags and please avoid linking to the book as that will mean the title appears on the list of books on the right of the page.

To use spoiler tags, write the following without the spaces:

< spoiler > this is the text that will be hidden < / spoiler >

Thank you!

[Bryony]

Pam wrote: "WRT the opposites prompt, another pair (besides good vs evil) is old vs young like the grandmother and young girl in The Summer Book by Tove Jansson"

I love this idea! I read The Summer Book recently and it’s one of my favourite books of the year. I’ve always loved Tove Jansson’s books for children, I can’t believe it took me so long to discover her books for adults.

[Avery]

Katie wrote: "I seem to be in the minority here, but I really like the Readers Also Enjoyed feature in Goodreads. I use that all the time. I just think the rest of the prompt is too specific for me, 5 star read ..."

I also liked this prompt and wanted to upvote it, but unfortunately I got swayed by the amount of people posting they didn’t like it on here. I decided not to waste a vote on it since I don’t think it will get through based on discussion and previous years it’s been discussed. I do really like it though and if it could be reworded maybe that would sway me to upvote it again!

[Ellie]

Readers Also Enjoyed just wants me to read more Murderbot so I would be fine with it as a prompt. The wording is a bit long winded, I'd have preferred it without the extra criteria.

[Angie]

I like the Readers Also Enjoyed prompt. I've found some great reads that way. I didn't vote for it, but I'd be happy with it.

I would have been more likely to vote for the prompt, though, if it didn't have the extra stipulations of a 5-star read in the last 3 years. I've gotten really stingy with 5-star ratings the past three or four years.

[Robin P, Orbicular Mod]

Angie wrote: "I like the Readers Also Enjoyed prompt. I've found some great reads that way. I didn't vote for it, but I'd be happy with it.

I would have been more likely to vote for the prompt, though, if it di..."

Well, if it gets in (which I doubt, as there was some discontent with it), you can choose how to interpret 5 stars, maybe as just a book you definitely recommend to others. Some years I have only given one book a 5-star rating, but there are many 4-star books where I would have been happy to find something like them.

My complaint is that the algorithm isn't smart enough to know what it is I liked about the book. For example, I am currently enjoying Dear Mrs. Bird, which is set in London during the Blitz. So I might get recommended more books on WWII. In fact, I am enjoying the book in spite of the setting, not because. It is humorous and upbeat, but I doubt I would be recommended something else in that vein and instead would be told to read The Nightingale or something else about Nazis, which is not at all what I want.

[dalex]

A book I recently rated 5 Stars was Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy. Set in the near future when almost all animals, fish, and birds have become extinct, a woman tracks the journey of a flock of Arctic terns from Greenland to Antarctica. Her adventures are interspersed with back story that reveals the tragedies and choices that led her on this pursuit.

THIS is the list of books that the Readers Also Enjoyed feature gives me:
historical fiction set during WWII
historical fiction set in the 1930s
a book about a pandemic
a young adult feminist dystopia
several other young adult books
multiple chick lit books
some romance novels
multiple fantasy books
a psychological thriller
multiple nonfiction books
a Swedish book
some literary fiction

There is only one book that I would consider even remotely related to Migrations. I find the feature completely and utterly useless.

[Wendy]

With regards to book recommendations, has anyone else checked out The Story Graph? It's a pretty new book website currently in beta, which was created for the sole purpose of giving readers a better algorithm for book recommendations because the Goodreads ones were so...not accurate. I signed up for it yesterday, and instead of (highly personal) star ratings it categorizes books based on themes, mood, pacing, character roundness, and plot-focus among other things. I imported my goodreads library into it yesterday and I'm still checking it out, but I like what I see so far.

[Hannah]

I mean, the Goodreads algorithm just gets its information from which other people have the book on their shelf and have rated it highly and what other books they've also read and rated highly, right? So it's not even really suggesting that the other books will be similar in any way, just banking on the idea that people who've read the same book like it for the same reason, which (as Robin suggested) isn't necessarily true.

I recently moved my goodreads library over to https://beta.thestorygraph.com to check out their recommendation system and I'm pretty impressed. It analyzes the books you've read, but also gives you a survey where you can select your favorite/least favorite genres and manually enter things you like (like "LGBTQIA authors" or "strong sense of place" or "multigenerational saga"). I really liked the list of recommendations it gave me: it caught on to some elements I really like, like expansive books connecting people across generations like Cloud Atlas and books about people who are really passionate about their academic field. It even recommended Arcadia, which although I haven't read I've seen performed and I LOVE. So I'm pretty excited to check out the rest of the suggestions.

[Hannah]

Wendy wrote: "With regards to book recommendations, has anyone else checked out The Story Graph? It's a pretty new book website currently in beta, which was created for the sole purpose of giving readers a bette..."

Ha, Wendy, we must have been writing our comments at exactly the same time!

[Nadine in NY]

dalex wrote: "A book I recently rated 5 Stars was Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy. Set in the near future when almost all animals, fish, and birds have become extinct, a woman ..."


Recommendations for really new releases are not the greatest, they tend to just be other new releases that may or may not have anything at all in common with the book I'm reading. Similarly, recommendations for older books that are getting towards "obscure" now are ridiculous. And recommendations for children's books, especially picture books, tend to be all over the place. But when I look at a book that's been out a few years, the recommendations can be helpful. I'm still not crazy about this as a challenge category, though, but if it gets through, I am confident I could find something good.

[Wendy]

Hannah wrote: "Ha, Wendy, we must have been writing our comments at exactly the same time!"

Haha! Great minds think alike! :)

[Pam]

I didn't even try the Readers Also Enjoyed feature until right now, after voting, assuming I wouldn't like it. (The books that GR recommends to me make no sense (usually thrillers) since I don't read thrillers.) I've never seen this function before since I mostly use the App. For 2 of the books that I entered, I got results that had a few books on my TBR plus a few that I added. For another author's books, I got some real oddballs plus a bunch of books only published in Greek and Italian. I guess this author is popular in those countries! I did add one of the English books to my TBR. I like this feature and would be ok if this prompt went through.

[[deleted user]]

Wendy wrote: "With regards to book recommendations, has anyone else checked out The Story Graph? It's a pretty new book website currently in beta, which was created for the sole purpose of giving readers a bette..."

i have been using it since the very early beta days and it's glorious! i wish they'd add shelves, groups & more social media aspects but it's great for cataloguing & recommendations.

[Ellie]

I haven't got do far as importing my data but story graph isn't giving me any useful recommendations using the filters. Does it only recommend books that someone else has imported?

[Emily, Conterminous Mod]

TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO VOTE!

[Katie]

It's so interesting to me how some weeks I know exactly what I'm going to vote for, but some weeks the discussion really sways me. I went in thinking I'd have 2 upvotes and 6 downvotes, but in the end went 4/4, and I was really close to voting for 5 up. I definitely didn't expect that. Great discussion this week, guys!

[Hannah]

Ellie wrote: "I haven't got do far as importing my data but story graph isn't giving me any useful recommendations using the filters. Does it only recommend books that someone else has imported?"

Have you filled out the reading preferences survey? I think that and your data are what its algorithm takes into account.

[Alicia]

Is anyone else not getting notifications for this topic, despite being signed up? I was wondering why everyone was so quiet!

[[deleted user]]

Alicia wrote: "Is anyone else not getting notifications for this topic, despite being signed up? I was wondering why everyone was so quiet!"

i'm just here because i saw comments in my feed but when i woke up, there were zero notifications.... which i thought was just impossible!

[Chrissy]

I've played around a little with story graph, and I like the feature where you say what you are in the mood for and it searches your TBR list. Seems useful. I'm not wild about having 2 places to record what I've finished reading, though! I wonder if it will eventually become a replacement for Goodreads - that would be nice, since I'm trying to avoid Amazon as much as possible.

[Bryony]

Alicia wrote: "Is anyone else not getting notifications for this topic, despite being signed up? I was wondering why everyone was so quiet!"

It’s not just this topic, notifications don’t seem to be working at all. There’s this message in Goodreads help which might explain it; https://help.goodreads.com/s/announce...

[Robin P, Orbicular Mod]

It's only been about a week since the last problem where no one could edit comments. Not impressive. In a way it's their loss because they want people to spend more time on the site.

[Bryony]

Robin P wrote: "It's only been about a week since the last problem where no one could edit comments. Not impressive. In a way it's their loss because they want people to spend more time on the site."

It’s really frustrating to have another problem so soon after the editing one was resolved.

There was a discussion in another group I’m in about some changes to the book pages which Goodreads are testing at the moment so I wonder if they’re doing more site development work than usual and that’s what’s causing all these glitches.

[Alicia]

Bryony wrote: "Alicia wrote: "Is anyone else not getting notifications for this topic, despite being signed up? I was wondering why everyone was so quiet!"

It’s not just this topic, notifications don’t seem to b..."

Thanks Byrony! This is definitely frustrating. I feel like the Suggestions and Voting thread are going to be weird this week because of this.

Good thing I thought to check, but I could see others being confused as well.

[Thomas]

Thanks all for the support

[Thomas]

Alicia wrote: "Bryony wrote: "Alicia wrote: "Is anyone else not getting notifications for this topic, despite being signed up? I was wondering why everyone was so quiet!"

It’s not just this topic, notifications ..."

Me too