It's that time of year. Once again, I've run the Nebula Best Novel finalists (and the Norton finalists) through LibraryThing and Goodreads to see how widely they are owned by those on each system.
Nebulas first.
| Goodreads | LibraryThing | |||
| owners | av rating | owners | av rating | |
| All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders | 60284 | 3.59 | 612 | 3.64 |
| The Obelisk Gate, by N.K. Jemisin | 19913 | 4.39 | 256 | 4.18 |
| Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee | 10454 | 3.99 | 167 | 4 |
| Everfair, by Nisi Shawl | 6014 | 3.32 | 94 | 3.65 |
| Borderline, Mishell Baker | 5221 | 3.93 | 104 | 3.85 |
Impressive user rankings for The Obelisk Gate there, though All the Birds in the Sky is owned on both systems by roughly as many people as the other four combined.
And the Norton:
| Goodreads | LibraryThing | |||
| owners | av rating | owners | av rating | |
| The Lie Tree, Frances Hardinge | 36296 | 3.89 | 398 | 4.06 |
| The Star-Touched Queen, Roshani Chokshi | 59105 | 3.58 | 230 | 3.49 |
| The Girl Who Drank the Moon, Kelly Barnhill | 23164 | 4.25 | 231 | 4.23 |
| Railhead, Philip Reeve | 6734 | 4.07 | 59 | 4.07 |
| Arabella of Mars, David D. Levine | 4212 | 3.67 | 62 | 3.83 |
| Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies, Lindsay Ribar | 4443 | 3.54 | 42 | 3.4 |
| The Evil Wizard Smallbone, Delia Sherman | 1574 | 4.1 | 35 | 4.3 |
Here the standout in terms of rankings is The Girl Who Drank The Moon, though bringing up the rear, the comparatively few who have read The Evil Wizard Smallbone really liked it.
I strongly recommend The Ocean at the End of the Lane and Brick Lane, and I found Goodbye to Berlin both interesting and touching. Barbara Kingsolver is also always worth reading, although I don’t think I’ve actually read The Lacuna yet.
I didn’t really get on with A Winter Book, but that may just be my taste. Rivers of London, though, I think is just plain mediocre, and I entirely fail to understand why it’s so popular. I can understand kids liking it if they’re new to the genre and don’t know that there’s a world of better urban fantasy out there, but surely that can’t account for its entire readership? It probably didn’t help that I read it not long after London Falling, which puts it to shame.