The Most Abandoned Books on GoodReads (2019)
gwern.net
gwern.net
Goodreads reaction to complaints by (verified) authors about this sort of abuse is to deny all responsibility. So there's zero curation going on there.
(As to the list of abandoned reads, it's not surprising that the top five by ranking are all major bestsellers: and the shrunken, posterior proportions are for books with a difficult literary style to grapple with -- in other words, they're not easy reading. Between "hard to read" and "massive bestsellers, but require a reading age >12" we basically cover the obvious bases. I'd have liked to see some analysis of abandonment rate normalized for reading complexity, but that's hard to characterize ...)
Goodreads was bought by Amazon in 2013, so the issues you are describing are not surprising considering that Amazon.com reviews have the same issues.
In terms of reading tracking I think it's quite an interesting source and while the outcomes are not surprising, I think with just some better analysis this could be a very interesting piece. Props to the author for the idea alone.
Otherwise, I use it mainly to track what I've read and what I think of it. I wrote reviews for a while, and might start getting back to that this year, but it's really good for tracking my personal star rating of a book and to see what I think of stuff. It can also be useful for getting recommendations as well, based on their recommendation algorithms as well as similar books and ones people mention in reviews.
I never quite figured out what changed -- whether it was gaming and abuse, Amazon buying and caring only about more sales, or simply no longer disproportionately early adopting geeks (inc me!). All I know is neither goodreads or imdb are the slightest use in deciding if I might enjoy something, where once they had been, and in its earliest days (when you downloaded db and client) imdb was almost frighteningly, telepathically good.
The actual star rating is not reliable, on GR or anywhere else on the internet in my experience.
Amazon has a concept of Influencer Reviewers, but they should almost immediately recognize this as bs. I've never met anyone who actually cares about a general product critic. Amazon isn't niche, so even if there is, say, some guy who reviews protein powders on Amazon, and you're really into protein powders... The odds of you finding this person are low, and since Amazon isn't designed in anyway for you to interact with this person, and find more content about protein powders, nutrition, fitness, etc -- it makes no sense for you to follow this person on Amazon.
Certainly, there are some influencer reviewers with genuine followers. But this should be an exception to the rule.
GoodReads on the other hand is a place that lends itself to an influencer. So it's much more difficult to tell who's posting real reviews and who's posting bullshit that's being liked by bots and then added to the first review most people see, and then just getting liked a lot because it's first -- not because it's any good.
Further, GoodReads is actually like the 8th biggest social network in the world and one of the most heavily trafficked websites online. These influencers can actually get a lot of eyeballs, but GoodReads provides almost no way for influencers to make money -- like YouTube, Pinterest, or even Instagram do (most Instagram influencers post ads almost exclusively now).
So GoodReads influencers have to get more creative and extortive to make any money.
Further, this problem is compounded because people don't finish books they don't like. Everyone watches plenty of TV and movies they don't like throughout the year, so they rate these on IMDB or wherever. They like reviews that are bad. This happens much less frequently on GoodReads. If you're an influencer, you learn very quickly that any negative review is unlikely to make the front page. And if you're trying to grow your following, that's all you really care about. So you need to post a ton of 5 star reviews. Well, books take a long time to read. I highly doubt these influencers have time to rate and write a review and make a video about their review for a novel every or two or three a day. Yet, they do. So the majority of these have to be fake just based on obvious time constraints.
Amazon used to have more social features a decade ago: you could follow reviewers and talk with them, and there were message boards for the book-, music- or film-lover community as a whole. However, that functionality was gradually hidden on the site or outright removed. Apparently Amazon felt supporting it was too expensive and it didn’t appreciably increase sales, and for books it was made redundant after Amazon’s purchase of Goodreads.
But there are usually specific ones, and those are useful signal. Read those, and figure out if the specifics the person is complaining about is something that actually bothers you.
Maybe one could do something like the Flesch-Kincaid reading index and variants of those and include other metrics like # of unique words. But it's be a real pain in the arse to do - you can get the books off Libgen, surely, but you'd have to choose manually and then often it'll be a PDF where the OCR or text layer is hot garbage...
The margin of error for parsing the books is going to be smaller than any margin of error forced on you by GoodReads, anyway...
...but it's still probably not worth it.
I've heard that GoodReads has become a Racket in that these "Book Influencers" reach out to authors and say they have two options: they can pay for a good review of their book, or they can get a bad review.
This seems like obvious extortion. Is this as bad as a problem as I've heard? Have you experienced this at all? Or do you know people who have?
I actually went to the effort to report this brigading to Goodreads (and had a conversation with support staffabout how their Flag function doesn't work on mobile) which they ignored.
I tried to read it. Really, really tried. For my head it's utterly unreadable. Had to give up after ~30 pages.
The writing flow and style of that book can be best described as "long-winded, over-extended, bloated and bloviating, rejected entry to Bulwer-Lytton contest".
Before giving up I'm going to try to read one of those book summaries or an analysis to try to regain my footing.
I also like writing that is clean, pure, poetic and emotionally authentic. I feel like some of those authors (I'm looking at you, Wallace) are outsiders sniping at mainstream culture with hipster snobbishness. I used to sorta be that way, but I can't relate to that anymore.
I think folks like Martin Amis did it a lot more entertainingly, though the self-aware sophistication is (sigh) a lot to bear.
Where DFW embodies the virtues you admire is his non-fiction -- Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I think are fascinating expositions into just how far down you have to dig to get at the emotionally authentic.
As for his fiction, I don't think he lived long enough to get all his sophomoric ideas out and get to material that actually mattered to him.
I didn’t find Infinite Jest nearly as difficult.
This is how I felt about his cruise ship manifesto. I get it, I get it, cruises are lowbrow, tacky and suck. But spare us all your hipster cooler than thou angst.
Whether it was worth the time invested is another question entirely. ("No", I'm afraid, is the answer. There are better books along the same lines that are also challenging but less so. I recommend 100 Years of Solitude, Midnight's Children, or Tin Drum).
Avoid Ulysses. There's such bad, lame "philosophy of math" in there it really turned me off, made it seem like the whole book is just Joyce showing off how smart he thinks he is.
That book sat on my bedside table for months, making me feel bad for being unable to finish it, and giving me absolutly zero joy while I was reading it.
The book is obviously too long and it becomes boring at places but there are certainly extraordinary passages (in style and in feeling). But as with Wagner’s operas, delight comes at a price.
For instance I abandoned Lord of the Rings. In my view it's poorly written, boring, long-winded and to difficult to follow. That hardly means that it's a bad book, it's just not for me.
Infinite Jest? Surprising? Have you actually tried reading that bloated example of The MFA Guy's Novel?
I also find myself wondering if American Gods would be #3 on the first version of this list if it had been compiled before the TV show version of that book.
https://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/in...
Wallace was pretty explicit about making readers of his books work for the privilege, though, which could get a bit annoying.
For Game of Thrones I tried the audiobooks but Roy Dotrice was a horrible narrator- too breathy, too phlegmy and every character - even the women- had the same voice. I'd rather have had a straight read with someone not trying to act the characters than someone who did the all poorly. Game of Thrones is one of /r/audible on reddit's most requested to be re-recorded books. Would love to see them unleash an awesome narrator - such as Ray Porter - on them to really make them shine.
I don't know if Gwern's data accounts for this, or can, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's at the root of it. Anyway, if you're tempted to read it, try and find the original edit.
This is a liberating perspective that I try, and fail, to maintain. If I abandon a book it’s no failing on my part, it’s a sensible reallocation of my time based on improved information. Continuing to read something you don’t want to read, just because you started it, is a terrible dunk cost fallacy.
The only exception I can think of turned out to be an exercise in extreme foolishness (and a little ignorance), that turned into bloody minded penance to finish the set come what may. Love Arthur C Clarke, loved Rendezvous with Rama, it really deserved a great continuation. Read Rama 2 and it was slow, plodding and amateurish whilst being a mostly terrible follow-on that ignored most of what was in the original. OK, even Arthur's allowed a dud, it has to get better.
Garden of Rama was far, far worse, plot so weak you cringe, bullshit characterisation and even the science was awful. Probably the worst book I have ever read, bar none. Wife assures me the only times I have had a habit of muttering or yelling at books were Rama 3 and 4, probably to "fucking get on with it", maybe to make sense. No detectable trace of Clarke in 3 whatsoever.
Fool that I am, I tried again with Rama Revealed. 400 pages of badly imagined, plotless, garbage science rambling, that's taxonomy and biology of alien spiders and essentially nothing else, followed by "oh shit, almost out of pages, better figure out a point to this drivel", so immediate pace and plot change to 50 odd of pages of a weak, cliched, poorly imagined wrap up of the "why" of all 4. Entirely predictable cliche as ending. Second worst book ever. So carrying on for 2.5 books was pointless self-torture.
Eventually found out, as it wasn't mentioned anywhere (it's tucked away on Lee's Wikipedia page, or was), that Clarke revealed he contributed only some ideas, Lee did all the atrocious writing on 2-4. Clarke on the cover is an outright con. Reread Rendezvous to cleanse my soul.
Live and learn, and oh boy did I learn. :)
I still think about finishing it one day. The thought of it won’t leave me alone and it’s been years now. To many other books to read though, and time is scarce!
That was before internet. It completely changed my reading habits. There was a (surprisingly) huge backlog of non-fiction things I wanted to know more about. Books about history, for example, were always a snooze; that changed when I was able to pick the creator, exact era, topic and dosage. Reading about places? Nah. Watching videos about them? Yes. How long will mortals enjoy such powers?
A few living authors still have the power to pull me in just by publishing. But one or two books I bought years ago are still waiting - pre-abandoned?
The negative reviews (1 or 2 star reviews) will often highlight the parts of the book that the reviewer did not like, and that is often something that determines whether or not I purchase the book or not.
It is not particularly plot driven however so I'm a bit confused by the idea of it going somewhere.
Just like someone who is into some of the best/most intellectually challenging Anime probably wouldn’t be all that impressed by The Simpsons.
My point is, you don't make something as successful as Harry Potter or the Simpsons without making some smart decisions and appealing to at least a few very intelligent people.
Its frustrating because in general these big doorstopper books are usually really bad at kid lit. Harry Potter honestly can't hold a candle to books like Dragonsinger by Anne McCaffrey, or Barbary by Vonda MacIntyre. John Christopher in particular wrote these tiny books that are just master classes in economy; The White Mountains and The Lotos Caves stuck with me for decades. William Sleator managed to do actual intelligent SF for kids, with even some horror to it...something like Interstellar Pig is really surprising even as an adult. Joan Aiken really is a wonderful author too.
Its just stuff like potter gets relentlessly pushed and snowballs a lot. There's a lot more of the hive mind instinct that we think, at times.
Current Simpsons perhaps not. Seasons 1-8 Simpsons, though, quite possibly. Much more intelligent than the current stuff. Though it does suffer from being completely episodic; there are several episodes that deftly handle some character's development, but almost none of it gets to stick around until next week. On that front it definitely isn't a good anime.
As many others have said before, I'm sure there's an argument for it being an objectively great book, but for me it just did absolutely nothing.
I learned a long time ago that there was no shame in stopping when you realize you get no enjoyment from reading a book. I have no problem writing off that sunk cost.
I know nothing about design/typography, but I find it easier to read sites that are more spaced out, use sans-serif fonts, and have colours. I think the site looks beautiful (especially the drop caps!) but I wouldn't call it minimalist.
The first 1/4th or even 1/3rd is just not good.
Once it gets to the actual aliens though, some amazing ideas. First time in awhile I've felt that the aliens were really alien, some great ideas in there.
FWIW I listened to the audio book version, the reading of it was rather nice and added to the humor.
If anyone is looking for very alien aliens, give Embassytown by China Miéville a read.
I’m quite happy to endure thin characters, wooden dialogue and clunky prose (hi Asimov and PKD) if the ideas are good. But the tone of this one was trying too hard. Just wanted it to settle down and tell a decent story.
Trying a bit too hard at times.
I honestly think another few manuscript revisions, and a pass or two from a brutal editor, and it might have ended up there.
But as it is.. parts of the book just aren't good. Which is sad because some parts are great!
How so?
I see this shockingly often in my professional life. A data scientist will spend days, weeks, or months building a "perfect" model which replicates unclean, biased, or bad data. And when they are done, it gets thrown away because it cannot solve any real world problem.