Following on from my post on the long list, here are the Goodreads and LibraryThing ownership and ratings stats for the shortlist.
| Goodreads | LibraryThing | |||
| owners | av rating | owners | av rating | |
| American War — Omar El Akkad | 70396 | 3.83 | 632 | 3.86 |
| Borne — Jeff VanderMeer | 50713 | 3.91 | 565 | 3.9 |
| Gather the Daughters — Jennie Melamed | 16643 | 3.66 | 130 | 3.48 |
| Spaceman of Bohemia — Jaroslav Kalfař | 9580 | 3.87 | 122 | 4.1 |
| Sea of Rust — C. Robert Cargill | 8563 | 4.14 | 113 | 4.14 |
| Dreams Before the Start of Time — Anne Charnock | 816 | 3.51 | 24 | 3.3 |
The one that I really didn't see coming was Dreams Before the Start of Time, which I really liked (though I liked the other three BSFA finalists more).
Note the high reader ratings for Sea of Rust, though it's also worth saying that it's tough to maintain high average ratings as the number of readers goes up, so Borne is doing well too.
oh man. The Meat Loaf et all case is one I’m interested in because I love the music and I was mildly aware of the difficullties, but not nearly to the extent they’re chronicled there. Thanks for that link.