Goodreads Choice Awards Book Club discussion

There is a major problem with this award, that is, it deals only with English books. In theory, any book can participate, but the "weight" of English library is such to penalize any other language. So, books written in languages different from English have no hope to be selected. In my opinion, the award should be replicated for other languages too. English literature is dominant, even if books in other languages have the same or even better quality. A similar problem exist in the Goodreads algorithm that select what has to be shown in Goodreads site's cover page. In fact, the algorithm is based on people rating, but since English readers are really more than readers of any other language, books written in non-English language have no choice to get in evidence.

Dario wrote: "There is a major problem with this award, that is, it deals only with English books. In theory, any book can participate, but the "weight" of English library is such to penalize any other language...."

Hi Dario, you make a very valid point. However please note, this group is only for the reading of books that have won the Goodreads Choice Awards, we are not associated in any way with the running of Goodreads or the selection process of the awards.

OK, thank you for clarification. Sometime it is hard to find the right forum for the right topic. Do you have any suggestion?

Dario wrote: "OK, thank you for clarification. Sometime it is hard to find the right forum for the right topic. Do you have any suggestion?"

I suggest going to the Goodreads Feedback group - https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

I'm pretty sure there will be topics on the choice awards there, and you may even find someone has already made your point.

If that group doesn't help, you could also try the Goodreads Librarians group. They may be able to suggest a better location. They are the group that fixed issues with the write-in section of the awards. https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

Dario wrote: "There is a major problem with this award, that is, it deals only with English books. In theory, any book can participate, but the "weight" of English library is such to penalize any other language...."

Hello Dario, maybe you can make a suggestion to Goodreads that they include a category in their Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Book Written in a Foreign Language , just like there is a category for it in the Academy Awards. I think it'd be interesting to see which books are creating global buzz that we -here in the U.S. or in English speaking countries- are not aware of yet.

A few years ago I kept hearing about Alex
by Pierre Lemaitre when it was a big hit in Europe, mainly in France where it was first published and I could not get my hands on it here in the U.S. because it hadn't being published yet, I added the U.K. edition to my TBR list and it was fun to see which global hits were coming our way.

I like the idea of a separate category.
Including foreign language books in the regular awards is a nice idea, but kind of pointless. We all speak different languages, but I think the vast majority on here does speak English.
I don't know about other countries, but in Germany, we have lots of books by German authors and (with a slight delay) pretty much all books from UK/US authors (and many other countries). Here in the US, that's not the case. Very few books by German authors get translated into English.

Because of that system .. as unfair as it may be .. there is no way a non-English book would ever win an award or even get nominated. Unless it's something like "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" years after it had originally been published in Sweden ...

And even in a foreign language category not dependent on a translation into English, the books written in languages that are more common and/or have more users on goodreads would automatically dominate the others.

There's a similar community in Germany (lovelybooks) that also has choice awards for books published in Germany (also not distinguishing between languages, but there are more German books among the nominees). But, Goodreads is after all a US company.

jm2c

Carol wrote: "Dario wrote: "There is a major problem with this award, that is, it deals only with English books. In theory, any book can participate, but the "weight" of English library is such to penalize any o..."

Thank you. Good idea.

Janina wrote: "I like the idea of a separate category.
Including foreign language books in the regular awards is a nice idea, but kind of pointless. We all speak different languages, but I think the vast majority..."

Well, very few books from other languages get translated in English. As an author, I wrote to US & UK publishers if they were interested to publish my books. They replied that, no matter how good were the books, they were not interested because the massive production of works in English is so huge that they do not need to search for works in other countries unless they are real bestsellers.

«Because of that system .. as unfair as it may be .. there is no way a non-English book would ever win an award or even get nominated.»

It cannot if it has to compete with English works, and it makes no sense to have an award for "foreign" books because foreign means nothing. You should have an award for French works, German works, Italian works and so forth. And of course, rating will be based on French, German, and Italian readers respectively. I do not expect that US readers may rate an Italian book because there are very few US readers who know Italian language. However in Goodreads there are a lot of Italian readers, as well as readers of other countries. Once you are in the web, you are outside the border of any country, even if you do not want it. The web is international by definition.