I saw this on CriminOlly’s YouTube Channel and I wanted to see what mine were. If you don’t watch CriminOlly I would highly recommend his channel for lots of different books reviews, especially crime, pulp and horror. He seems a lovely chap too, so go watch.
Not all of my books are on GoodReads yet but I thought a yearly check would be interesting. So for all my read books, I sorted by average rating high to low and found that most of my top books were non-fiction (like CriminOlly did,) so I have decided to only count my longer fiction books. Short story collections will be included but I will not include children’s books or graphic novels on this list.
Top Fiction Reads According to GoodReads
- 1 – Les Femmes Grotesques by Victoria Dalpe
- 2 – The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron
- 3 – The Story Collector by Iris Costello
- 4 – Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- 5 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- 6 – Hogfather by Terry Pratchette
- 7 – Mort by Terry Prachette
- 8 – The Menu by David B.Bond
- 9 – The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
- 10 – Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Some book appearances surprised me, as they either haven’t been out long or aren’t as well known as I thought. The Menu definitely isn’t a top rated book for me. It was fun to read and had a few good stories but this wouldn’t be in a top ten list for me just now. The Story Collector is a newer book with only 123 reviews and 178 ratings but I see more people reading this in the future especially Weyward fans. It made me happy to see Les Femmes Grotesques by Victoria Dalpe getting some love as I believe more people should be reading this.
I loved The Shadow of the Wind when I was younger and I would have easily put this high up my list. I really need to read that again to see if I still feel that way. Books like Little Women, The Red Tent, Pride and Prejudice and To Kill a Mockingbird are of no surprise as these are all hugely popular books and great pieces of fiction. The appearance of Discworld is interesting for me to see as I loved these but last year I barely even knew they existed.
This book list didn’t take into account how many reviews a book received. This means some of these books may be highly rated but with very little reviews. To get a wider look at books popularity and high rating I completed another list below, again my top ten fiction reads but they have to have more than 1,000 reviews.
My Top Rated Fiction Reads According to GoodReads
- 1 – The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafron
- 2 – Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- 3 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- 4 – Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
- 5 – Mort by Terry Pratchett
- 6 – The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
- 7 – Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
- 8 – Persuasion by Jane Austen
- 9 – Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree
- 10 – Jane Eye by Charlotte Bronte
A very similar list to that above and I believe Jane Eyre should be higher. That would be one of my favourites, I think I would have it second in this list, personally. It is nice to see Persuasion there as this is one of my favourite Austen novels but seeing it next to Legends and Lattes is funny. The Travis Baldree book captured me but it’s so different than the others. However having a lighter read amongst all this is a good thing, reading should also be fun, relaxing and there is nothing wrong with it being light-hearted.
Overall though, the list is quite good, for me at least, I’d like to see some more darker reads and some Edgar Allan Poe should be there but my GoodReads isn’t in the best shape. As I fix this over the year will be interesting to see how much it changes.
Have you done any lists like this? Would yours be vastly different? Let’s discuss what GoodReads thinks are our top books and how much do we agree with them.