Goodreads Choice Awards: Women Win

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When 3.3 Million People Vote On Their Faves

Aside from reading — we have to hope — nothing seems to entertain Goodreads more than surveying its vast self, and this is good news for the rest of us because we get some interesting insight into reading habits.

The newest round of “Goodreads Choice Awards” — now in their sixth year — were voted on by 3.3 million platform members, according to Jessica Donaghy in her column announcing the results of the voting.

What you see and click into at the awards page is interestingly put together, too, in terms of how the nominees are positioned for the vote. My thanks to Goodreads’ Suzanne Skyvara for this explainer:

We analyzed statistics from the 275 million books added, rated, and reviewed on Goodreads in 2014 to nominate 15 books in each of the 20 categories.

These must have an average rating of 3.50 or higher and people then vote on these in the first round of voting. In the first round, people can also make write-in votes for books they think are the best of the year that should be included.

In the second round of voting, we add the top five write-in vote winners for each category, offering a total of 20 books per category.

Then in the third and final round, we narrow it down to the top 10 in each category.

Donaghy notes that the total pool of title/author nominees numbered 400 and spans 20 categories.

We won’t look at them all here, but let me give you some quick highlights of the results before you dive in.

In the “fiction” category, by which Goodreads refers to what many term literary fiction — or “general” fiction, if you’d rather not be beaten up on the playground — Rainbow Rowell’s Landline is the voting contingent’s favorite, and by a long lead.

With 46,154 votes, Rowell’s closest competitor for the pick here was Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies, which drew 32,853 votes.

Emily St. John Mandel’s fourth novel Station Eleven, which I’ve written about here and here — a National Book Award finalist — came in at 9th place in this category, with 11,608 votes.

In the historical fiction category, Anthony Doerr’s All The Light We Cannot See took the honors with 41,512 votes. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd was next, with 32,095 votes.

In science fiction, Andy Weir’s fine debut The Martian (being made into a film with Matt Damon for a November 2015 release) won with 30,561 votes, the next favorite being John Scalzi’s Lock In with 14,953 votes.