If you're unfamiliar with Goodreads and its Choice Awards, let me catch you up to speed. Goodreads is a social cataloging website and every book lover's dream. The site allows you search an extensive user-populated database of books, annotations and reviews. You can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists, or create your own groups of book suggestions and discussions. Sounds pretty stellar, right? Right!
The Goodreads Choice Awards is an annual contest where Goodreads users vote on their favorite books in a variety of categories. Historically, the winners of the contest go on to be extremely successful, but who is to say whether it's causation or correlation? Here's a few of this year's nominees and their categories.
The Pearl that Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi
MYSTERY & THRILLER:
The Good Girl by Mary Kubica
HISTORIAL FICTION:
Dollbaby by Laura Lane McNeal
FANTASY:
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
ROMANCE:
Transcendence by Shay Savage
SCIENCE FICTION:
California by Edan Lepucki
HORROR:
Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix
HUMOR:
Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She's "Learned" by Lena Dunham
NONFICTION:
The Underground Girls of Kabul: In Search of a Hidden Resistance in Afghanistan by Jenny Nordberg
MEMOIR & AUTOBIOGRAPHY:
My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff
HISTORY & BIOGRAPHY:
Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II by Vicki Croke
BUSINESS BOOKS:
The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change by Adam Braun
FOOD & COOKBOOKS:
Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal by Ava Chin
GRAPHIC NOVELS & COMICS:
Tomboy: A Graphic Memoir by Liz Prince
POETRY:
Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals by Patricia Lockwood
DEBUT GOODREADS AUTHORS:
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
YOUNG ADULT FICTION:
I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
YOUNG ADULT FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION:
Hollow City by Ransom Riggs
MIDDLE GRADE & CHILDREN'S:
El Deafo by Cece Bell
PICTURE BOOKS:
What Do You Do with an Idea? by Kobi Yamada