Welcome to Today in Books, our daily round-up of literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
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Does Intermezzo Deserve the Hype?
The hype machine has done its thing for Sally Rooney’s new novel Intermezzo, but is it actually good? Jeff O’Neal and I answer the question on a special episode of the Book Riot Podcast.
Speaking of the Publicity Machine
Nicholas Sparks has a new book out because Nicholas Sparks kind of always has a new book out, and the New York Times marked the occasion by profiling him through a tour of his “palatial riverfront home.” I have two questions: how much did this gorgeously produced package cost the Old Gray Lady, and how many favors did Sparks’s publicist have to call in to make it happen?
Depends on What You Mean by “Top”
Let’s get the quibble out of the way up top. Generally, a list of the best/top/insert-superlative-here books conveys some assessment of quality. For Goodreads, that would be users’ star ratings. So why is this list of Goodreads users’ top 60 books of the last 5 years based on basically everything but the star ratings or reviews? I’m sure there’s a reason, and I would really love to know.
Anyway, Goodreads compiled the 60 titles users most frequently listed as Want to Read, Currently Reading, and Read. The makeup of the list is about what you’d expect if you pay attention to bestsellers and the annual popularity contest of the Goodreads Choice Awards, but the order is a little different since, again, whether the users read the books and how much they liked them doesn’t matter. If you’re thinking #1 has to be Colleen Hoover, Rebecca Yarros, or Sarah J. Maas, nope. And it’s not Emily Henry, either!
Actually, I’m not done quibbling yet because in what world is expression of interest—marking a book as Want to Read—an indication that it’s a top book? I’ve been wanting to watch Chernobyl for the last 5 years, so…is it now one of my top TV picks? Surely, Goodreads, a data-rich company owned by the most data-rich company, has the computing power to do something like Average Rating x Number of Ratings + Number of Users Who Marked “Read” Without Rating. It boggles.
Find Your Next Great Read
This season is bringing more exciting new books than anyone can keep up with, so how to decide? Lit Hub‘s Emily Temple has a flowchart for that.
What are you reading? Let us know in the comments!
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