Can you pick a winner?
The official start of the autumn season begins tomorrow.
Along with the beginning of the Fall comes the annual push for Goodreads Choice Awards nominees. With over 5.6M votes cast, the winners of the 12th Annual Goodreads Choice Awards were announced last December 2020. The opening round began late October. This is the only major book awards decided by readers. Decided.
So, I must ask you: If there are three rounds of books to vote, the opening round, the semifinal round, and the final round, where do the books to vote on come from in the first place? (Not from the readers?)
No, from Goodreads.
According to their analyzation of “millions of books added, rates, and reviewed” on Goodreads, fifteen books are initially nominated in each category.
Books published between November 18, 2020 through November 17, 2021 will be eligible this year. And these books are based on an average rating of 3.5 or “higher at the time of launch.” Ouch! At the time of launch! (Must have had major buzz at launch!)
There are twenty categories, in everything from General Fiction to Picture Books. A book can be nominated in one of the specific genre categories as well as the debut novel category. If you’ve been following my blog, you know my favorite category is Mystery & Thriller. Yes, I voted if I saw a book I read and liked.
The categories in which I chose a nominee were Best Fiction, Historical, Memoir & Autobiography, and Mystery & Thriller. Of those, I had my picks hit third or better my ratings three stars to five, and I had a total of six winners.
The breakdown is as follows: (Links below to my blog review.)
In An Instant
The Pull of the Stars
Green Lights
The Sun Down Motel
The Searcher
One by One
Have you been keeping a tally of your favorite books by month or quarter? Will you vote? I have been fortunate in that I’ve gotten several of the above from NetGalley as well as the audiobooks from my local library audiobook selections and obviously I was not in agreement with many readers. How did you fare in your selection of the winners?
Are you looking for a few of your favorites to show up on this year’s list?
©2021 V Williams 
Rosepoint Publishing 