[ADwD Spoilers] Rank the Books Now

[cteresa]

Pardon me for being blunt, but your rankings seemed very strange to me.

Only 0.07 difference between ASOS and ACOK/AGOT, who coincidentally tied at exactly 4,42. And AFFC coming in just slightly (8%) below the top voted book does not sound right to me. Something's fishy.

You can check them for yourself here

http://www.goodreads.com/series/43790-a-song-of-ice-and-fire

One small change from yesterday - a couple more hundred ratings for ADWD and its average rating decreased a bit, from 4.26 to 4.25 now.

I have no reason to think GR are messing up the stats.

What you might be considering strange, might be due to your expectations of how you think people rate.

First a few opnions of mine:

- for series, I usually expect the number of ratings will decrease with each subsequent book in a series. People try the book and quit, or delay reading it, or wait for paperbacks or library waiting lists. Everybody usually starts for the first, so this usually always has more ratings ( this not valid for loosely linked standalone series). This is verified on this data.

- I would expect a small bias of the rating of each book of a series increasing as the series goes along, if any objective quality )(hmph!) remained the same, since people who did not like a volume will not invest time or money to read the rest. This is not usually too noticeable, nor is noticeable here - though often is noticeable in a sort of pre-publication effect, books are often the highest rated just before publication or shortly after, since people who get to read it are usually fans or reviewers, or it is fanboys rating without reading. No effect is noticeable here, which means people are rating the books more or less independently.

Then there is another factor, when taking into account averages from many people, the value of these averages tends towards the center. I think most people rate highly the books they read, 5 stars, 4 stars, so often averages tend to be high. And since averages tend to be compressed into the (IMO) 3.5 to 4.5 scale, then even small differences, centesimals are significative. You can take a look and compare with other series, but I do not think those values are strange at all! Compare with other fantasy series (Rothfuss first book rated higher than ASOS. Now that hurts). But do not think too much about it, I think comparing average ratings of books across genres and authors is totally useless. Though I think these goodreads stats are pretty good when comparing books within a series.

[True Blue Mug]

It's hard to rank books 2-5, they all seem like the same book to me. A Game of Thrones is really only one that felt standalone-ish for me. Obviously big things were to come, but it felt like it could stand by itself. In terms of my own personal reading experience:

1. 
   
2. ASOS
   
3. AGOT
   
4. ACOK
   
5. AFFC
   
6. ADWD
   

[Ran]

Yes, GoodReads must be the largest sample size I've ever seen (I'm actually a bit blown away by AGoT having over 40,000 reviews). And it's a site basically visited by book aficionados -- you don't sign up for GoodReads if you're a very casual reader who only reads a couple of books a year, or if you just read one author.

[TJeff]

ASOS

AGOT

ADWD

ACOK

AFFC

[cteresa]

Yes, GoodReads must be the largest sample size I've ever seen (I'm actually a bit blown away by AGoT having over 40,000 reviews). And it's a site basically visited by book aficionados -- you don't sign up for GoodReads if you're a very casual reader who only reads a couple of books a year, or if you just read one author.

a small correction Ran, AGOT for example has 41,565 ratings (As of now. value will change since my first post) but "only" · 5,519 reviews. It´s not like amazon, people can rate without reviewing, and can review without rating and they can even have book in their "bookshelf" without rating or reviewing. Oh, and this is fun, still about AGOT,

http://www.goodreads.com/work/shelves/1466917

look, almost 17000 people have it listed as TBR, and 6000 are currently reading it - this is huge I think.

But interestingly enough

http://www.goodreads.com/work/shelves/2936175

is currently being read by 2000 people and marked as TBR by 12000.

[Werthead]

There's a certain amount of wooly nostalgia for ASoS going on here. Arya wandered around the Riverlands aimlessly through a lot of that book, and Brienne and Jaime's adventures, whilst great fun to read, could have been curtailed by quite a lot. It's a terrific book, one of the strongest epic fantasy novels ever written, but I think statements like 'every chapter pushes the story forward' and suggestions it doesn't have any filler need to be taken with a grain of salt the size of Michigan.

[cteresa]

There's a certain amount of wooly nostalgia for ASoS going on here. Arya wandered around the Riverlands aimlessly through a lot of that book, and Brienne and Jaime's adventures, whilst great fun to read, could have been curtailed by quite a lot. It's a terrific book, one of the strongest epic fantasy novels ever written, but I think statements like 'every chapter pushes the story forward' and suggestions it doesn't have any filler need to be taken with a grain of salt the size of Michigan.

I don´t know if it is nostalgia. I think a lot of people are now reading the series in one go, with no wait before books. And what i get from those people is that yeah ASOS seems to be the favorite of new readers as often as from old readers. (Not that the goodreads numbers prove much, but they are ratings from people who read the series at any given time, and I think the structure of reader is increasing exponentially with time - that is, at goodreads chances are most ratings came from people who read ASOS this year or 2 years ago, not 10 years ago. In the forums, well, we that have been arguing stuff for at least 10 years, we are just a tiny piece of the readership).

[Ran]

Thanks for the correction! I see that there's no way to see top rated books across genre. Would have been very interested in seeing such lists from GoodReads, especially for SF and F.

[cteresa]

Ran, good question. It made me go exploring. And no, not by highest rating itself - though I see their point, sorting by rating and only ratings things with few ratings might be able to achieve 5.00 and have such a ranking be meaningless (nevermind authors with a mind for ruthless selfpromotion figuring *that* one out). But they have a feature called "most popular" - I think they take into account a sort of mix of rating average and rating number.

(nevermind, I think it ends up being just how many people tagged a book with that genre)

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/fantasy

AGOT is first on the list at number 16 after all 7 HP, the 3 TLOTR, Twilight, Eragon, and 1 pulllman book (lol, maybe it is #14 and I misscounted) but keep in mind if number of ratings is a factor in the formula, then the bias is always towards the early books of the series, which always have more ratings. And it sort of figures it should, if we look at most popular as to be a helpful guideline to "so what do I read next", having earlier books ranked higher is helpful).

SF is here

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/science_fiction

and maybe there is as well to some subgenres, let me explore.

But keep in mind comparing ratings of books from different authors is always touch and go - say Twilight and AGOT are read by people who would never ever read the other book (and often women read will read both, and maybe even enjoy both. Not me, though I do think Twilight is a far more credible work at representing out what a teen girl thinks is sexy and romantic! Yes, I am a heretic, but is true, ya know)

[cteresa]

Waith, major correction, maybe the ranking for popular is just simply how many people shelved a book with that specific tag. It seems to work that way for the subgenres

Space opera for example here

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/space-opera (LOL, the bias for early works of a series, due to superior number of ratings I was talking about)

epic_fantasy is here

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/epic_fantasy but ASOIAF not obviously there. Though I think this genre categorization is some sort of algorithm running over the shelf names people use for books.

It is listed as high-fantasy http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/high-fantasy though keep in mind the number of people who shelved it like that are minuscule compared to the more generic "fantasy" shelf.

[O'san'gar's Razor]

1. A Storm of Swords

2. A Game of Thrones

3. A Clash of Kings

4. A Dance with Dragons

5. A Feast for Crows

It took me a bit of reflection to put Dance below Kings.

It's interesting to see how close ASoIaF seems to be tracking the path of the Wheel of Time, if you account for it being half as long. The first three books of ASoIaF were phenomenal, as were the first six books of WoT. After that, things kind of fell of the rails. Both remained very, very good, but a definite drop-off from the beginning of the series to the middle. It looks like WoT will finish strong, though, and there is every reason to thing the ship can be righted with ASoIaF as well.

The biggest issue with Dance is the same issue with Crows. The timeline issues interfere with the normal structure of a novel as an integrated story. (The season of the Shield late in the series that was truncated in order to allow Chiklis to film Fantastic Four had the negative effect on the final seasons.)

[Ygritte]

Waith, major correction, maybe the ranking for popular is just simply how many people shelved a book with that specific tag. It seems to work that way for the subgenres

Space opera for example here

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/space-opera (LOL, the bias for early works of a series, due to superior number of ratings I was talking about)

epic_fantasy is here

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/epic_fantasy but ASOIAF not obviously there. Though I think this genre categorization is some sort of algorithm running over the shelf names people use for books.

It is listed as high-fantasy http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/high-fantasy though keep in mind the number of people who shelved it like that are minuscule compared to the more generic "fantasy" shelf.

And a lot of people never bother creating genre shelves at all. I don't have any myself. I have the default read/to-read/etc., a DNF shelf, and then the rest of mine are humorous. I have an "oops-I-forgot-to-put-the-plot-in" shelf, for example, and a "beep-beep-goes-the-infodump-truck," and stuff like that. You have to actually create a "fantasy" shelf to shelve something as "fantasy."

[cteresa]

And a lot of people never bother creating genre shelves at all. I don't have any myself. I have the default read/to-read/etc., a DNF shelf, and then the rest of mine are humorous. I have an "oops-I-forgot-to-put-the-plot-in" shelf, for example, and a "beep-beep-goes-the-infodump-truck," and stuff like that. You have to actually create a "fantasy" shelf to shelve something as "fantasy."

I think they got some meta stuff running, which merge terms like fantasia-fantastik -etc over a few languages (due to merged editions of several works) and stuff like that - they do some "genres" thing based on it which seems complex, but interesting. But yeah, this is not too dependable since it depends on people´s classification, but OTOH, they have so much data it leads to interesting results - and enough data things, individuality gets smoothed away.

(But disclaimer again, it´s not a DEFINITE or objective ranking or rating. I just find it *very* interesting because it is such a large and diversified data pool, and was sharing it in case some people find it interesting. And now I am fascinated by the idea of how will ADWD number and average of ratings vary with time, will try to keep an eye on it!)

[Corvinus85]

1. A Storm of Swords

2. A Clash of Kings

3. A Game of Thrones

4. A Dance with Dragons

5. A Feast for Crows

3 & 4 could be reversed after a re-read.

[AnotherDeadStark]

I don't know where all the hate for Feast and Dance comes from, I think they are honestly just as good as the other books. I'd rate them all #1, I really can't rate one better than the other. Every time I try or think I have an order, I remember something in the books that make me want to rearrange the order. I just love them all. Though maybe something in the next 2/3rds of Dance will make me change my mind about it since I'm not finished yet... but I doubt it. The writing has been absolutely brilliant.

[Kaitscralt]

There's a certain amount of wooly nostalgia for ASoS going on here. Arya wandered around the Riverlands aimlessly through a lot of that book, and Brienne and Jaime's adventures, whilst great fun to read, could have been curtailed by quite a lot. It's a terrific book, one of the strongest epic fantasy novels ever written, but I think statements like 'every chapter pushes the story forward' and suggestions it doesn't have any filler need to be taken with a grain of salt the size of Michigan.

I disagree. The Arya chapters being so great are why AFFC is so disappointing. We saw the effects of the war across the countryside, and George did it in a truly amazing way -- by showing us through the black-and-white eyes of a young child who was neither saddened nor bothered by it. Her sympathy did not just shift to the reader, as most authors would do. He showed the war atrocities and you could still feel bad even though Arya did not.

This is why Brienne's chapters were so redundant, because we'd already seen the suffering of the commoners in the Riverlands.

Arya also gave us insight on Beric, which led to Lady Stoneheart, and also the Hound -- who became a fan favorite as a result.

I don't see it as filler at all.

[Other May I?]

ASoS

AGoT

ADwD

ACoK

AFfC

[Radio Changes]

1. ASoS

2. AGoT

3. ACoK

4. AFFC/ADWD

[BranS]

1. Game of Thrones

2. Storm of Swords

3[Equal]. Dance with Dragons & Clash of Kings

4. A Feast for Crows.

[Davos' Middle Finger]

I disagree. The Arya chapters being so great are why AFFC is so disappointing. We saw the effects of the war across the countryside, and George did it in a truly amazing way -- by showing us through the black-and-white eyes of a young child who was neither saddened nor bothered by it. Her sympathy did not just shift to the reader, as most authors would do. He showed the war atrocities and you could still feel bad even though Arya did not.

This is why Brienne's chapters were so redundant, because we'd already seen the suffering of the commoners in the Riverlands.

This, so much. Every single one of Brienne's POV chapters should have been cut. The "purpose" they served had already been done.

I actually liked the Iron Islands plotline, but I think that it could have been trimmed too. Eliminate " The Iron Captain" and " The Kraken's Daughter." Show the Kingsmoot through Aeron's eyes only. Have Victarion's first POV chapter be " The Reaver" and Asha's " The Wayward Bride." With some slight changes both chapters would have served as excellent POV introductions and streamlined the book.