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The Hunger Games Was Just Voted the 'Best Book Ever' by Goodreads Readers
- randycupertino 8mo agoFun book sure, but best book of all time?
- JohnFen 8mo agoIt's certainly not the best of all time. Goodreads' user base appears to have a pretty narrow demographic, though, so I don't think that any general conclusions can be drawn from opinion polls of them.
- thisislife2 8mo agoYeah, it's entertaining but surely not the "best". In the Fantasy genre I enjoyed The Expanse series ( https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=the+expanse&ref=nav_sb_noss_l_11 https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=the+expanse&ref=nav_sb_no... - the TV series is a good adaptation too, but incomplete) and the The Queen's Thief series ( https://www.goodreads.com/series/43514-the-queen-s-thief https://www.goodreads.com/series/43514-the-queen-s-thief ) more.
- jfengel 8mo agoInteresting that the runners-up were much more conventional choices, Pride and Prejudice and To Kill a Mockingbird. I've never read Mockingbird; I gotta say that it doesn't sound like a fun read. I really admire Jane Austen, though I find her books a bit of a slog even now. (I really hated them when compelled to read them in high school, though with the aid of some film adaptations I have a much better understanding of what those books are about.) Hunger Games does nail a sweet spot of Young Adult fiction: compelling, easy to read, but not completely dimwitted. The first Harry Potter book might have been a good choice, but it's really a juvenile rather than YA, and that narrows the audience somewhat as a "favorite book". Later Harry Potter books are more appealing to older readers, but no single one of them quite captures the lightning of the first one.