14. A book with fewer than 5000 ratings on Goodreads

[Adam]

Reading Back to the Future, Part 2.

Just got through listening to the absurdly bad novelisation of the first part, so now on to part two. A little over 1k reviews on here, so prime material to include here.

I wonder how bad it could be?

[Anastasia]

Ghost Legion
⭐⭐
I am really not going to recommend this book. It is better than the original source material, but that is not much to recommend it either.

[Ellie]

I'm reading one of my oldest TBR books on Goodreads and has about 4,500 ratings. Mind you I was about 20 when I added this so not sure I'm going to like it. We will see....

Trouble by Non Pratt

[Shannon]

I have a TON of books on my TBR that would fit this prompt. I have narrowed it down to one of the following:

Trust by Hernan Diaz
When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas
When I'm Gone, Look for Me in the East by Quan Barry

I probably will read all four this year anyway! :)

[Joanne]

I used this prompt as an excuse to read a new book by an author I want to support that was just published in March.

In a New York Minute by Kate Spencer

It's currently up to 4,836 ratings, so I just squeezed it in in time.

[Evelyn]

I am reading A Women in Berlin which has 103 ratings.

[Jill]

What are the least rated books on your Goodreads shelves? I have so many , I couldn't list them
What will you be picking up for this week?
I read Framed in Cornwall by Janie Bolitho 558 ratings

[Marie (UK)]

I read Board Stiff

[Marie (UK)]

Jill wrote: "What are the least rated books on your Goodreads shelves? I have so many , I couldn't list them
What will you be picking up for this week?
I read Framed in Cornwall by [author:Janie..."

As i get quite a few arc's from NetGalley I also have a lot of books that have not many ratings.

[Barbara]

by Kira Cochrane.

I just think this book works better if you have the physical one. I suggest Momotaro: Peach Boy. There are only 125 ratings and it is a short story, easy to find it online!

[Tracy]

I read How to Be a Conscious Eater: Making Food Choices That Are Good for You, Others, and the Planet by Sophie Egan. I highly recommend it. If you are already looking for ways to make your food choices count like I am, this is very helpful — I found it to be anyway. Her basic setup is 1) educate about the problem to be solved (your health, and animal's health, the food worker's health (farmer/farm worker, restaurant worker, etc.), the planet's health, 2) Ways to solve/improve the problem, 3) and how to do this in our Reality, with the main message being "Do what you can - any movement in the right direction is helpful".

If this concept is new to you, then you will find this very eye opening. It wasn't new to me, but only because a few months ago I read We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer, which introduced it to me. His book was also very good, but I found Sophie Egan's book to be more helpful. She covered fish/seafood (which Foer did not) and gave more ideas about how to help with these issues.

When I finished this book (6/17/22) there were only 830 ratings on Goodreads.

Other books I considered:
1) Spirits of Sapience by Alex Hackett (only 24 ratings as of today). It is a post-World War II (in 1948) story about how "magical folk" are contending with the aftermath of the war, so I think would also fit our prompts "19. A book that involves alternate reality, alternate worlds, or alternate history", "20. A fiction or nonfiction book that is set during 1900 -1951", and possibly "34. A book with an academic setting or with a teacher that plays an important role" (it takes place at least partially in a Harry Potter-like university).

2) Small World by Jonathan Evison (1821 ratings as of today) — also a fit for prompt "11. A book from historical fiction genre"

and 3) The Best American Short Stories 2020 Edited by Curtis Sittenfeld (or really any from The Best American Short Stories seried) - this one currently has 1034 ratings. Each year the Editor is a different well known author.

Edit: typo only

[NancyJ]

I chose The Employees by Olga Ravn (3778 ratings), which I read for the Spring Readathon. It's an unusual book set far in the future, in which employees are being interviewed about their work. It's similar to a few projects I had in my career, so I found it riveting.

Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis has under 5000 ratings. I used it for 3 continents - South American. I loved it.

[Nicola]

I read as background reading for a uni assignment.

It was ok. Not a hidden gem sorry :-)

[Stacey]

This prompt can be a crap shoot and this time, I rolled a seven. I read Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck (3,201 ratings), a novel I had high hopes for that just didn't work out for me. Maybe I just don't like books featuring houses as the star of the show :(

[Udari]

Read Laundry Love: Finding Joy in a Common Chore by Patric Richardson

[Anne]

I am reading A Shine of Rainbows by Lillian Beckwith.

[chysodema]

I just finished the wonderful book The Heartbreak Bakery by AR Capetta. It was recommended for a Popsugar challenge prompt, a book with a recipe.

I posted over there: The Heartbreak Bakery was SO GOOD! I really, really enjoyed it. It was just the right amount of magic realism, the right amount of romance, the right amount of cute "story-based" recipes. All folded into a delicious batter of queer awesomeness. A perfect recipe, if you will.

The Heartbreak Bakery currently has only about 1400 ratings and 400 reviews.

[Pam]

I read Nives by Sacha Naspini. It has 700 ratings. I loved it and hope that more of his books are translated from Italian to English! This is the only one that I see. If not, I will have to learn more Italian.

[Ana]

I Read by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

[Judy]

I read Light Changes Everything by Nancy E Turner. A frontier girl from Arizona travels far to go to college It's very good.

[Guylian]

I finally finished Vernichten by Michel Houellebecq.

[Rachel]

I read:

The Other Side of Beautiful by Kim Lock a contemporary novel, set in Australia, with a road trip, a cute Dachshund called Wasabi and a struggling but brave heroine. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Here is my review

[Kylie]

Confessions of an Innocent Man and David R. Dow

[Madelynn]

I read Flyaway. Definitely weird, has a lot of prose and is in a subgenre that I saw called Australian Gothic.

[Hannah]

I read Walks Away Woman by Ki Longfellow, which currently has 1,132 ratings. I really enjoyed this book, which isn't my typical genre, but had a really unique, engaging writing style. I really wish I remembered where I had heard about this book!

I had a lot of options for this prompt, because recently I've been encountering a lot more recommendations for lesser known books through my StoryGraph and some YouTube channels I like a lot. I'm really excited about this, because I admit I do find it especially fun to find a hidden gem and then get to talk it up to people.

My hidden gems to recommend are:
I Still Dream by James Smythe, a near-future science fiction book about a young woman who designs an A.I.
Hellspark by Janet Kagan, one of my favorite books of all time, a sci fi about a survey team trying to determine if the indigenous creatures on a newly discovered planet are intelligent.
The Archive of Alternate Endings by Lindsey Drager, an experimental novella that connects the folktale of Hansel and Gretel to the AIDS crisis.
Katalin Street by Magda Szabó, a Hungarian novel about post-WWII Budapest, specifically the relationship between three families.
The Comet Seekers by Helen Sedgwick, a story about a French family who sees ghosts and an Irish astrophysicist.
To Hold Up the Sky by Cixin Liu, a collection of Chinese science fiction stories.
Ship Fever: Stories by Andrea Barrettt, a collection of mostly historical fiction stories about natural history and the wonder of science and nature.
Enthusiasm by Polly Shulman, a very cute YA romance novel about characters who are obsessed with Pride and Prejudice.
Ballad of the Whiskey Robber: A True Story of Bank Heists, Ice Hockey, Transylvanian Pelt Smuggling, Moonlighting Detectives, and Broken Hearts by Julian Rubinstein, a fun, extremely readable nonfiction book about the "Robin Hood of Eastern Europe," a Hungarian ice-hockey-player-turned-bank-robber.
Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon, an unusual sci fi story about an old woman who is tired of spending her life taking care of everyone else and being taken for granted for it, and decides to remain behind, alone, on a planet that's being abandoned by its colonists, to enjoy the rest of her life in peaceful solitude.