by Sharlene

#amonthoffaves2016 – 5 Popular Books Worth the Hype

amonthoffaves

A Month of Faves is hosted by Andi, Tanya and Tamara

Today’s topic is:

 5 Popular Books Worth the Hype

What constitutes ‘popular’ in the book world? I guess one way to go about this topic is to look at how many Goodreads ratings there are. To give you an idea of what a truly POPULAR book is on Goodreads, The Hunger Games has over 4.5 MILLION ratings. But I don’t want to talk about those books, those books which pretty much everyone has read (or if you haven’t you really have no intention to anyway). Instead I will look at books that I read this year are popular enough with at least 15,000 ratings. I think I tend to read not very popular books with less than 5,000 ratings being more common among books on my ‘read’ shelf than not.

Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi  (15,148 ratings)

I’m a bit surprised that there are not more Goodreads ratings of Homegoing. Maybe it’s just that lots of people I follow on social media seem to have talked about it/read it. It is an emotional read, deserving of far more readers!

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride – Cary Elwes (29,832 ratings)

I am not much of an audiobook listener so you have to understand how rare it is when I say, LISTEN to this book! Download the audiobook! It is just such a pleasure to hear Cary Elwes’ voice and plenty of other cast and crew from The Princess Bride! And yes it made me go rewatch the movie again!

The Wrath & the Dawn (The Wrath & the Dawn, #1) – Renee Ahdieh (45,601 ratings)

YA isn’t really my thing. I mean I read one John Green and one Nicola Yoon and my teenaged self would have found it all very attractive and devoured all their books. But as a 30-something it doesn’t really appeal to me. So it was a surprise when I really liked Ahdieh’s book!

Seveneves – Neal Stephenson (43,048 ratings) 

I loved how women play a central role in this book, which is one of those ‘help! The earth is doomed” kind of reads.

We Should All Be Feminists – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (30,015 ratings)

This essay should be required reading. That is all.

16 Comments

  2. Such a good list! Seveneves was a miss for me, but need to add some of the others to mine. And I agree – EVERYONE should read We SHould All Be Feminists!

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  3. I just read We Should All Be Feminists a few weeks ago and really liked it…got me thinking for sure! And – I feel like Homegoing is “hyped” in our little bookish world, but I don’t hear many of my real life reader friends talking about it. I feel like Goodreads is more representative of the broader population than the bookish corner, so maybe that accounts for the low # of ratings?

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  7. I had such a hard time with this topic–I still haven’t written my post yet. What is hyped? I don’t know what’s hot in the streets! So anyway, I appreciate your metric is what I’m saying.

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    1. 😂 after reading your post on popular books I know what you mean. And don’t worry I scratched my head over this “popular” thing for quite a while!!

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  11. Always cosigned on the Adichie recs. I in fact think of myself as the Adichie Cosign Blogger. Dashing around the blogosphere cosigning every time anyone anywhere says positive things about anything Adichie ever writes.

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  13. I hope the audience for Homegoing keeps growing! It’s definitely worthy of all the hype and continued success for years to come.
    I’m also pleasantly surprised by how popular The Wrath and the Dawn is. Hope to finally read it in January!

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