SFFWorld's Favorite/Favourite 2011 Book is...

[Rob B]

Well, it took a bit longer than I would have liked (which seems to be the norm rather than the exception) but the votes have been tallied. SFFWorld’s favorite 2010 release was…

A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin (116 points)

Right, like anybody was surprised about that. Here’s the full rundown of the top 10:

1. A Dance with Dragons by George R. R. Martin (116 total points)
2. The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie (92 total points)
3. The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (76 total points)
4. The Crippled God by Steven Erikson (66 points)
5. The White Luck Warrior by R. Scott Bakker (46 points)
6. Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (40 points)
7. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (36.5 points)
8. The Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding (32 points)
9. The Dragon’s Path by Daniel Abraham (27 points)
10. Among Others by Jo Walton (21 Points)

Some random thoughts:

Ballot Appearances:

1. A Dance with Dragons by GRRM (24)
2. The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie (20)
3. The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss (17)
4. TIE The White Luck Warrior by R. Scott Bakker (11)
5. TIE Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey (11)

Based on the voting trends for the past few years, Joe Abercrombie is the most popular author in the forums: Best Served Cold appearing as #2 last year (due to the mass market paperback’s eligibility) and #1 the year before (2009), Last Argument of Kings (in a tie with Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind)#1 in 2008, #1 in 2007 with Before They Are Hanged #5 in 2006 with The Blade Itself

Daniel Abraham appears twice, if you count his half of the James S.A. Corey name

Steven Erikson makes an appearance on the list after a year off the list.

The most popular debut last year was Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns with 20 votes in 11th place.

Among Others is the only book in the top 10 by a woman

Chris Wooding was in 8th place last year as well, with The Black Lung Captain

All told, 83 books received votes.


Any other thoughts?

For the past results follow the links below:
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2002
2001

[Hobbit]

Generalising, based on what I've seen over the past year or so, I'd say that was a fair representation of views of our members at SFFWorld, though a little disappointed that there's no SF until 5th place.

Not to mention (but not really surprised) by the one (!) woman writer on the list.

Am still being mystified by the popularity of Ready Player One: it's OK, but in my opinion, not THAT good..... but I know those who liked it, REALLY liked it... so fair enough.

Mark

[Corporal Blues]

I didn't enter a vote this year 'cause I'd only read one or two 2011 releases. (A Dance with Dragons and The Heroes.) Since then however, I've caught up a bit and have read 4 of the top 10 books.

I think I'm most impressed that The Iron Jackal did so well considering it hasn't been released here in the states.

Overall, a pretty solid list. I'll be reading the remaining six before too long as they are all on my to buy radar.

[algernoninc]

congratulations to the winners.
I think I would like at the end of this year to have separate votes for fantasy and science-fiction. I know it means more work for the moderators, but the mixing of the two genres in 2011 left a lot of good books out of the top 5.

[TooNice]

I'm surprised ADWD won tbh.....I didn't think it was really up to the usual quality of the series, even if I enjoyed it. Out of the 5 books I read on that list it was probably the weakest. Seems I may be in the minority on that though.

[End Of Disc One]

I'm surprised ADWD won tbh.....I didn't think it was really up to the usual quality of the series, even if I enjoyed it. Out of the 5 books I read on that list it was probably the weakest. Seems I may be in the minority on that though.

It's the most widely read is all.

[Loerwyn]

Contrary to TooNice, I'm absolutely not surprised whatsoever that Martin is the winner. As EODC said, it was one of the most read books on this site last year. Rothfuss' third place wasn't a surprise, either.

I'm surprised Prince of Thorns was 11th, though. Judging by the praise it had here, I'd have thought it would have done better.

Out of the top books, I've read two (both Abraham books), and it seemed about right - Leviathan Wakes was a great read, but The Dragon's Path wasn't as good. I can remember more of LW than I can TDP.

[hawkeyye]

Awesome to see Abercrombie getting the respect he deserves. Wish he had been number 1 though...

[Mark Lawrence]

I'm surprised Prince of Thorns was 11th, though. Judging by the praise it had here, I'd have thought it would have done better.

It seemed surprisingly accurate to me for a relatively small poll. The Goodreads poll (6 million members) placed Prince of Thorns 10th, close to Among Others, with GRRM & Rothfuss 1st and 3rd respectively.

http://www.goodreads.com/award/choic...6-Best-Fantasy

so SFF World seems to be in tune with the wider fantasy world.

A year ago I certainly didn't expect to be in touching distance of any of these guys & I may well never be again - so I'm just gonna enjoy it thank you

[Loerwyn]

The Goodreads poll (6 million members)

~683k votes cast across all categories, just 37k of which were in fantasy.

It's not really the same sort of thing, plus this is a dedicated fan community whereas Goodreads is a much wider thing - so people might read Martin because he's semi-not-quite historically-themed fiction and Pratchett 'cos it's the done thing, but any more than that is Just Not Done.

The Oatmeal's 5 Very Good Reasons... managed to beat Anya's Ghost in the Graphic Novel & Comics, as did some Twilight adaptation and another vampire thingy because - well - that's the way it rolls. The Oatmeal should have been just in Humour (it's not a comic as such), and vampires are the in-thing. So yes, they're skewed by tagging and member votes.

Unlike us, 'cos we're a dedicated community. The other places we should really compare our results with are ones like Tor.com, Suvudu and so forth.

[Rob B]

I'm surprised Prince of Thorns was 11th, though. Judging by the praise it had here, I'd have thought it would have done better.

It appeared on a fair number of ballots, but usually in the middle. With the top book on a voter's ballot receiving 8 votes (which often went to GRRM or Abercrombie), it shows that PoT was on a nice handful of ballots.

so SFF World seems to be in tune with the wider fantasy world.

That's good to know, I suppose.

[Mark Lawrence]

~683k votes cast across all categories, just 37k of which were in fantasy.

It's not really the same sort of thing,

All the more interesting that the 37,000 votes cast there were so closely aligned to the hundred or so cast here...

I've lost track of the point you were trying to make...

[Loerwyn]

All the more interesting that the 37,000 votes cast there were so closely aligned to the hundred or so cast here...

I've lost track of the point you were trying to make...

But they weren't. In the case of Rothfuss, yourself and Beardy Martin, sure - but the other seven positions were completely different.

The audiences are different, too. SFFWorld is genre, Goodreads is everything. You'll find more cross-genre readers there than here, so you might have people who tried Beardy Martin but nothing else, or who picked up King's book (which won the sci-fi votes).

There's not really much to compare. As I said above, you'd have to visit other genre-focus sites like Tor or Suvudu to get an idea of how we compare to fandom as a whole.

[Rob B]

The audiences are different, too. SFFWorld is genre, Goodreads is everything. You'll find more cross-genre readers there than here, so you might have people who tried Beardy Martin but nothing else, or who picked up King's book (which won the sci-fi votes).

I took Mark's meaning to be that genre readers who utilize or participate in goodreads have very similar reading habits to the folks here. Then again, a bunch of us are active on goodreads so the similarity isn't too surprising.

[suciul]

(without disrespect etc as sffworld is quite a favorite place of mine and the only forum I participate in), the participants here skew heavily towards preferring male written, male lead, traditional (European pre-technological milieu) fantasies and the results show that clearly year after year

Goodreads is on the other hand a place for book lovers of all kinds so the results there are much more representative of what heavy readers enjoy