4 ms·

Who Cares About Literary Prizes?

21 points by Vigier 7y ago

samirillian 7y ago
> to award someone a prize is no different from pissing on him. And to receive a prize is no different from allowing oneself to be pissed on, because one is being paid for it. - Thomas Bernhard, _Wittgenstein's Nephew_
stesch 7y ago
I probably haven't read anything that won a "normal" prize. At least not in the decades after school. I've read a few old books who won Science Fiction prizes like the Hugo Award. But today even these are a bit too political.
- jknoepfler 7y ago
  Then why post here?
  - stesch 7y ago
    The title of the post: Who Cares About Literary Prizes?
aasasd 7y ago
I'd care about a Rotten Tomatoes for books, if there were one. Because I can't make sense of Goodreads' ratings: it seems the entire useful range is compressed somewhere between 4.0 and 4.3, but at the same time quite a lot of books randomly have too low or too high ratings. IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes also have weird useful ranges, but they are consistent: on IMDB, 6 is very meh, 8 is hella good, 9 is genius. On RT, 70% is borderline rubbish, best to choose something above 80%. Also, it's pretty clear that ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is anywhere near 4 only due to the political theme.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  I wouldn't unless they were administered an IQ test first. Pretty sure I wouldn't like the Davinci code or Harry freaking Potter (the fundamentalists were right about this stealing the souls of those who read it). For example, from the OP link: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7.Best_Books_of_the_21st_Century https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7.Best_Books_of_the_21st... Almost 100% hot garbage. I used to subscribe to the New Criterion to read book reviews of ... actually intelligent books that were picked for something resembling literary merit. Even that kind of faded away; now finding good books is basically Samizdat.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  How useful you find the ratings on sites like that really depends on how close your taste is to that of its reviewers on average. In my own case the IMDB Top 250 list is about 50/50 hit or miss. I strongly disagree with many of the high ratings for "classic" and "great" movies on that site and many others. But apparently many other viewers love that stuff and hate many of the movies I love. So my taste is pretty different from theirs. Even when I find people with tastes close to mine there are still movies we strongly disagree on. There used to be a website called YMDB which let you enter in your top 20 favorite movies and would match you with people who had similar lists. That was a very useful site for finding new movies to watch, but even when I'd find people with lots of my favorite movies on their lists, they'd still tend to have some movies which I absolutely hated on there too. So it's very hard to find people who's tastes are absolutely identical and whose judgment in films, books, or whatever you can absolutely rely on. But if their tastes are close to yours then the likelihood of them recommending something you'd like increases compared to some random review site like IMDB, Amazon, Goodreads, Rotton Tomatoes, or whatever. This is why I really pay absoultely no attention to the Oscars, Pulitzer Prizes, and other awards. They're popularity contests among people whose tastes I don't share or trust. The winners might as well be random. I much more value of the opinion of a trusted friend whose tastes I share. Something else that's useful is subreddits on small, obscure genres of literature I like and blogs on obscure authors I like. The more obscure the better, as the usefulness of such sites tend to decrease the more popular the subject matter is and the more people contribute to them. Then the law of averages kicks in and the odds of getting poor recommendations increases.
defen 7y ago
> Room and The Road — two novels about single parents in difficult circumstances... Early contender for understatement of the year. One experiment I've been trying out for the past year or so is only reading "old" novels (first published more than 25 years ago). That comes from the recognition that I only have so much time for reading, and 0-5 years after first publication is generally not enough time to determine if a book is a true classic, or just part of a passing fad. Talking to other people about critically acclaimed contemporary novels is not really something I do, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by only reading old books.
DanBC 7y ago
The Booker is interesting because it's a big deal in the UK, and winning does seem to make a big difference to sales. But the long listed books don't sell many copies - usually fewer than 10,000. https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/10/booker-prize-2012-winners-sales-data https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/10/booker... https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-book-sales-what-counts-as-success-might-surprise-you https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-bo... On a tangent to the article I find the UK's CILIP Carnegie and Greenaway awards useful to find books for children. https://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/archive.php https://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/archive.php I start by buying the winners and the short-listed books, then you look at other books written by / illustrated by those people. There are some excellent children's books today. I mentioned this (some time ago) on HN and someone created this lovely website, in German, to help people find great children's books published in German. https://www.schoene-kinderbuecher.de/ https://www.schoene-kinderbuecher.de/
VeryHacker 7y ago
The winners themselves probably

21 points by Vigier 7y ago

> to award someone a prize is no different from pissing on him. And to receive a prize is no different from allowing oneself to be pissed on, because one is being paid for it. - Thomas Bernhard, _Wittgenstein's Nephew_

stesch 7y ago

I probably haven't read anything that won a "normal" prize. At least not in the decades after school. I've read a few old books who won Science Fiction prizes like the Hugo Award. But today even these are a bit too political.

jknoepfler 7y ago
Then why post here?
- stesch 7y ago
  The title of the post: Who Cares About Literary Prizes?

aasasd 7y ago

I'd care about a Rotten Tomatoes for books, if there were one. Because I can't make sense of Goodreads' ratings: it seems the entire useful range is compressed somewhere between 4.0 and 4.3, but at the same time quite a lot of books randomly have too low or too high ratings. IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes also have weird useful ranges, but they are consistent: on IMDB, 6 is very meh, 8 is hella good, 9 is genius. On RT, 70% is borderline rubbish, best to choose something above 80%. Also, it's pretty clear that ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is anywhere near 4 only due to the political theme.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
scottlocklin 7y ago
I wouldn't unless they were administered an IQ test first. Pretty sure I wouldn't like the Davinci code or Harry freaking Potter (the fundamentalists were right about this stealing the souls of those who read it). For example, from the OP link: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7.Best_Books_of_the_21st_Century https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/7.Best_Books_of_the_21st... Almost 100% hot garbage. I used to subscribe to the New Criterion to read book reviews of ... actually intelligent books that were picked for something resembling literary merit. Even that kind of faded away; now finding good books is basically Samizdat.
pmoriarty 7y ago
How useful you find the ratings on sites like that really depends on how close your taste is to that of its reviewers on average. In my own case the IMDB Top 250 list is about 50/50 hit or miss. I strongly disagree with many of the high ratings for "classic" and "great" movies on that site and many others. But apparently many other viewers love that stuff and hate many of the movies I love. So my taste is pretty different from theirs. Even when I find people with tastes close to mine there are still movies we strongly disagree on. There used to be a website called YMDB which let you enter in your top 20 favorite movies and would match you with people who had similar lists. That was a very useful site for finding new movies to watch, but even when I'd find people with lots of my favorite movies on their lists, they'd still tend to have some movies which I absolutely hated on there too. So it's very hard to find people who's tastes are absolutely identical and whose judgment in films, books, or whatever you can absolutely rely on. But if their tastes are close to yours then the likelihood of them recommending something you'd like increases compared to some random review site like IMDB, Amazon, Goodreads, Rotton Tomatoes, or whatever. This is why I really pay absoultely no attention to the Oscars, Pulitzer Prizes, and other awards. They're popularity contests among people whose tastes I don't share or trust. The winners might as well be random. I much more value of the opinion of a trusted friend whose tastes I share. Something else that's useful is subreddits on small, obscure genres of literature I like and blogs on obscure authors I like. The more obscure the better, as the usefulness of such sites tend to decrease the more popular the subject matter is and the more people contribute to them. Then the law of averages kicks in and the odds of getting poor recommendations increases.

defen 7y ago

> Room and The Road — two novels about single parents in difficult circumstances... Early contender for understatement of the year. One experiment I've been trying out for the past year or so is only reading "old" novels (first published more than 25 years ago). That comes from the recognition that I only have so much time for reading, and 0-5 years after first publication is generally not enough time to determine if a book is a true classic, or just part of a passing fad. Talking to other people about critically acclaimed contemporary novels is not really something I do, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by only reading old books.

DanBC 7y ago

The Booker is interesting because it's a big deal in the UK, and winning does seem to make a big difference to sales. But the long listed books don't sell many copies - usually fewer than 10,000. https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/10/booker-prize-2012-winners-sales-data https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/oct/10/booker... https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-book-sales-what-counts-as-success-might-surprise-you https://www.npr.org/2015/09/19/441459103/when-it-comes-to-bo... On a tangent to the article I find the UK's CILIP Carnegie and Greenaway awards useful to find books for children. https://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/archive.php https://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/archive.php I start by buying the winners and the short-listed books, then you look at other books written by / illustrated by those people. There are some excellent children's books today. I mentioned this (some time ago) on HN and someone created this lovely website, in German, to help people find great children's books published in German. https://www.schoene-kinderbuecher.de/ https://www.schoene-kinderbuecher.de/

VeryHacker 7y ago

The winners themselves probably