Follow on

[coalescent]

[Poll #980885]

Note: "An award" does not mean that you are indiscriminate and will read something just because it won A. N. Award. If you occasionally read books because they win the Whitbread, but couldn't care less about the Nebula winner, tick "yes" for "I have occasionally read a book because it was nominated for or won an award." Similarly, if you've been debating about picking up a book and then an award tips you over the edge, that counts as a yes too. Use your own judgement for what counts as "occasionally" or "often".

Comments

[gummitch.livejournal.com]

I often read books that have been nominated for awards so I can judge which one I should vote for, or to determine how wrong-headed the judges are. Or because I've been invited to appear on a panel discussing a shortlist at a convention, and have undertaken to read the shortlisted books in advance of that.

(And my head still hurts from being compelled to read Gradisil at Eastercon.)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

At Eastercon? As in, during the con?

[frandowdsofa.livejournal.com]

You missed the box that says "and I have regretted it EVERY SINGLE TIME".

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Ah, but that's an entirely different poll. :)

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

This is hard because winning an award is almost never the only factor. When I was very young I read books because they had won the Hugo, the Nebula or the World Fantasy Award, but I haven't done that for about thirty years.

Nowadays, if a book wins an award, and is recommended by reviewers I respect (or condemmed by those I know have opposite taste to me) I'll read it.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That doesn't usually happen for me because by the time something wins or is nominated for an award I generally have a sense of how it's been reviewed. So the award itself is generally a tipping factor -- in fact, The Inheritance of Loss is an example. I was aware of it as being positively reviewed, it won the Boooker, I bought a copy, it was nominated for the Orange, I'm getting around to reading it.

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

I tend to watch the Booker and Orange lists to see what modern fiction is out there but I don't unthinkingly read the shortlist and winner. It very much depends on the time I have: last year I read nothing on the list however in the previous year I read two titles. The Line of Beauty, for instance, would never have been read except it won the prize. Which would have been a pity.

When I returned to serious sf/fantasy reading I used the Clarke shortlist as a reading guide but a couple of years in I'm more discriminating.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think this is an eminently sensible approach.

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Answering 'true' to all of the first three questions - does that count as insane troll logic? Or is it just a Chance thing?

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

All three are true depending on the award.

So um, insane Chance logic.

Unfortunately for tuddles I win the poll because he did not put in a "rarely" option which is the question that would really resolve what we were wrangling about.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

So is "occasionally" more or less frequent than "rarely" in your eyes?

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

occasionally is more frequent.

(Mind you, I think I win on the occassionally data too, I just figured you were going to argue about it, but if you want to declare me the winner, I am all for it.)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I think that given the concordance between the "never" and "occasionally" results (almost all those who have made choices based on award at some point have done so occasionally), "rarely" would not be significantly different.

But now I'm confused about what your position is again.

Four out of five people have on more than one occasion read a book because of an award, and one out of five people read books because of awards on a regular basis. That's about what I'd expect within a group of people who read a lot.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

That awards are generally insignificant factors in determining what people read. I still believe it.

What's occassionally? 1 in 10? 1 in 20? 1 in 50? 1 in 100? 'Fraid your poll has some work to do before it convinces me.

(There is also the issue that yes, your friends list is composed of people who read a lot. Most people do not.)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

That awards are generally insignificant factors in determining what people read. I still believe it.

I submit that one in five people often reading award-related books is not an insignificant number.

Most people do not

I have been assuming we've been talking about people who actually read all along.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

I submit that one in five people often reading award-related books is not an insignificant number.

If that 20% is of 5% of the reading population, then yes it is. (5% is a number I made up, I have no data on core readers vs. readers. Though I pretty sure it's a single digit number.)

I have been assuming we've been talking about people who actually read all along.

People who read, yes. People who read a lot, no. (see my comment where I say Hence my comment about what you mean by "people" - people would generally defined as people at large, mass culture, not a tiny slice of people.

I believe core readers to be a tiny slice of the reading population.)

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

(And since 50% of fiction published is romance, I doubt you have a huge romance following, we've probably lopped off 50% right off the top.)

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

(I mean as a sample - let's face it - your readership is largely SFF readers- that's 5% of the reading public, so 20% of 5%, that's pretty trivial.)

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

(And hard core readership of SF, I'm sure an even smaller number ...)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

As I noted to Su, I've posted the link to a couple of poll communities. So far the people not on my friendslist are voting in pretty much the same proportions as the people who are on my friendslist.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

No they aren't unless only 5 people answered the often question - see my comment below. (And then that would belie your "lots of people are voting not on my friends list")

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

You're slicing the data the wrong way. Taking the "occasionally" question, about a quarter of the votes so far are from people not on my friendslist; of those, 22% voted false. So a bit lower, but within the margin of error.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

You were the one pimping often as a significant number.

22%? so five people voted yes (three of which I would still count as usual suspects) and what 2? (that's 28%) people voted no? one? (that's 17%) (I do not see how you get to 22.) This is the "lots" you were talking about?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

No, a quarter of voters being not on my friendlist is what I was referring to as a lot. Which, given that about 100 people have voted, I'm happy to stand behind.

However, since Andrew's produced a survey from the general population, I'll go and stand behind that, instead.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

You mean he has a poll of library users, again, not the general population.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

(and if we count the people who have three or four people in common with your friends list, the random poll people plummets to 8% who have occasionally read.)

[snowking.livejournal.com]

# In June 2002, the ONS Omnibus survey included a module on reading habits commissioned by the National Reading Campaign. It found that nearly half of adults had read at least five books or more in the previous 12 months, with almost one in five claiming to have read 20 books or more.
# A quarter of adults had not read a book during the same period, including almost half of males aged between 16 and 24.

Although other surveys reckon up to 40% of people are non-readers in the UK.

Other thing I found while noodling around http://www.literacytrust.org.uk, a survey on library users in the East Midlands:

What factors usually influence your choice in library books?
Prize winners - 17.3%

Top hilarity:

However, 40% said they had lied about having read certain books, "just so they could join in with the conversation".

The top book for impressing people is Lord of the Rings.

Yay statistics!

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

hee *loffs you the best*

[ajr.livejournal.com]

There was a programme on TV a couple of weeks back called "The Human Footprint" or something like that, and was basically a roll call of statistics regarding what the average human gets up to over a lifetime.

The one that stuck in mind was "The average human reads 533 books in their life."*

This boggled me as it seemed an extraordinarily low number - I suspect I've read more books than that over my lifetime so far, and I very much hope that I outstrip it by a long way before my life is over (the thought that I could die and only having read, say, 1/7th of the books I own is terrifying).

I suspect it's all the non-readers dragging the average down.

Oh, and putting my professional hat on for a moment, as soon as a book wins the Booker Prize or the Orange Prize, reserverations for it will surge. And while not an technically an award in itself, Richard and Judy Book Club selections go like gangbusters.

*may not be that exact number they quoted, but it was certainly in the low 500s.

[snowking.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw THF. It also said a household is more likely to own two cars than two books.

Then I found the survey they'd clearly got this from and it was 200 couples and they'd found that 23% of couples had both read a book in 6 months vs 26% who owned a car each. It's a leap from that mad, flawed survey to say what the programme said, so take everythign there with a pinch of salt.

That said, it was great when they set fire to a lifetime's supply of farts.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Clearly I'm too cynical, because to me 500+ sounds higher than I would have feared. I mean, that's a book every two months for your entire life, which seems perfectly respectable. :)

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I intend to read more than I do. But you know how that turns out.

[wychwood]

If I think a book sounds interesting, and it has been nominated for any or all of: the Hugo, Nebula, Tiptree, Clarke awards, that pushes it up the list. I've also made a bit of a habit of looking up older books that won those awards. Even if the book itself doesn't overwhelm me, it's interesting as a picture of what was happening in the field that year. And I have found that I do often enjoy books that have won those awards. I tend to avoid books that win "literary" prizes like the plague, though, because (again) experience shows that I almost always hate them. I don't go around trying to read all the shortlists or anything like that, but they're definitely a factor when it comes to choices.

[veejane.livejournal.com]

Although I also do pick up books myself because of awards, my main source of "because it won an award" books is my mother's frantic Christmas buying. If it has AWARD stickered on its front, there is a reasonable likelihood I will be given it as a gift.

Which has introduced me to, e.g., Colm Toibin, whom I otherwise would never have heard of, so I can't complain overmuch. Probably her tactics are what introduced me to, e.g., actually writing down what won the Tiptree every year, and eventually tracking down a copy.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

As with albums, whether or not a book has won an award is one factor in my assessment of whether it's worth sampling, but positive reviews and word of mouth are a much bigger factor.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

I suspect that your flist is not representative of the wider reading population, given the number of people heavily involved in nominating and judging awards, let alone the sheer volume of those who vote in awards due to their involvement in fandom.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I posted the link to a couple of poll communities -- there are a lot of votes from people not on my friendslist.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

You do realize that all save one of the oftens and all save five of the occassonallies have you listed as a friend, (and of those, the one and three of the five have several of the usual suspects listed as friends) so the random poll people are overwhelmingly expressing indifference to awards?

[pwilkinson.livejournal.com]

For me, that's "often" as in if I'm voting for the BSFA or (in a year when I'm voting) the Hugo awards, I'll try to read all (or as near all as I can) of the shortlist before voting. And the occasional book that's won or been nominated for the Clarke, the Nebula or (in my non-voting years) the Hugo if it looks like something I would enjoy and have not read already.

Of course, there are also the books that move up my reading list because I think I might want to nominate them.

[white_hart]

I will generally pick up two or three books every year that were shortlisted for the Booker/Orange/Whitbread prizes, if I thought they sounded interesting when I read the coverage of the prizes, or if someone else I know has recommended them. I'm not sure this counts as reading them 'because' they've been nominated, but if they hadn't been I might well not have heard of them or bothered to buy them - the award is an extra seal of approval rather than a sole reason for buying.

[hawleygriffen.livejournal.com]

Can't say I care much about awards when it comes to picking books. I don't know if the awards people will match up to my tastes, and thus don't rate the awards that high, but lower than recs from people I do know. Don't know how that ties in with the fact I don't read that many books, who knows if there's a connection....

[blue-hours-too.livejournal.com]

I picked 'occasionally' as I've obviously read some books that must have won some awards - but I would never choose a book using this criteria. I really don't care about these things. In fact it's more likely to be mainstream blah when it comes with these kinds of recommendations or tops the bestseller list and generally, that's not something I'm interested in.