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Book prizes don't work how you think

rebeccamakkai.substack.com

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Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#61

Post by arjie »

TurdF3rguson wrote: post #43
arjie wrote: post #41

Haha, very interesting. I hadn't thought about the mechanics of it all but from the title I suspected it might be something like this. There's no objective measure after all of what a good book is. It's not bad for the process. The top few universally seem pretty good. I have noticed that the Hugo Awards appear to have declined somewhat in quality. The Murderbot series is enjoyable, yes, but it's a winner just like D…

Agreed on Murderbot, it's a fun read but there's no big new ideas there and that's what Hugo used to be about.

That's exactly how I feel, but perhaps as others point out, I have simply tinted my glasses rose.

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#65

Post by vova_hn2 »

culi wrote: post #2

Pretty interesting post. I guess I'm surprised that it's just like 5 people doing most of it and the most complex structure is still just 2 stages usually (Pulitzer: 5 judges send 3 books to a special council to pick a winner). It makes me think you probably get as much value from following a few specific critics as you would from following these prizes I wonder how the reviewers feel when authors like Ursula K. Le G…

> it's just like 5 people doing most of it

I understand that finding technical/mathematical solutions to social problems is usually pointless, but still...

What if we have, like, a lot of reviewers.

Each reviewer gets n books randomly assigned to them.

n is picked in a way that allows each reviewer to thoroughly read each of them without dropping it in the middle for bullshit reasons.

Each reviewer ranks n books assigned to them, then we use an Elo-like algorithm to produce the final ratings and pick a winner.

This would eliminate most of the randomness/unfairness described in the article.

Of course, reviewers wouldn't like it, because it would significantly reduce their power and people never give it away willingly.

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#66

Post by eviks »

Seems to work close to how I think, would be interesting to know what people actually think instead of relying on what the author thinks people think

> why on earth would I continue reading in the hopes that somehow this book will become magically brilliant, brilliant enough to make up for that paragraph and be the winner of this major award? I have 100 other books to get to. I am not a fast reader.

Because that's literally your literaly job?

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#67

Post by koliber »

eviks wrote: post #66

Seems to work close to how I think, would be interesting to know what people actually think instead of relying on what the author thinks people think > why on earth would I continue reading in the hopes that somehow this book will become magically brilliant, brilliant enough to make up for that paragraph and be the winner of this major award? I have 100 other books to get to. I am not a fast reader. Because that's li…

When you are judging something you are judging the whole thing. If the first part is bad that puts the book behind every other book. Even if the rest was decent the chance of it being the best overall is small.

Think about judging a 3 course meal. If the appetizer is bad, what is the chance that you will rate this meal as the best even if the main course and dessert were very good? If you are eating at restaurants that are supposedly great, the chance is tiny.

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#68

Post by eviks »

koliber wrote: post #67
eviks wrote: post #66

Seems to work close to how I think, would be interesting to know what people actually think instead of relying on what the author thinks people think > why on earth would I continue reading in the hopes that somehow this book will become magically brilliant, brilliant enough to make up for that paragraph and be the winner of this major award? I have 100 other books to get to. I am not a fast reader. Because that's li…

When you are judging something you are judging the whole thing. If the first part is bad that puts the book behind every other book. Even if the rest was decent the chance of it being the best overall is small. Think about judging a 3 course meal. If the appetizer is bad, what is the chance that you will rate this meal as the best even if the main course and dessert were very good? If you are eating at restaurants th…

> you are judging the whole thing

That's literally the opposite of what happens, you can't judge the whole thing if you've only read 1 paragraph!

> If the first part is bad that puts the book behind every other book.

That makes no sense, you don't know the quality of other books to make that determination! What if they have much worse paragraphs in the middle? What's so special about the first one expect being helpful to the lazy judges?

> Think about judging a 3 course meal.

Don't, you just add more irrelevance her

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#69

Post by wodenokoto »

I’m a very casual reader, nothing heavier than Murakami.

My surprises:

- it’s just 5 judges, who makes the shortlist

- it’s the _same_ 5 judges judging the short list

- there are generally no criteria

- Pulitzer Prizes favors American settings.

- edit: bonus surprise I expected judges to be mostly critics and professors of literature

While I’m not surprised it’s just a few people judging the short list I would have expected more eyes on making the shortlist (editors and publishers make a short list and critics and authors judging it)

I definitely expected different prizes to value things differently. Like a Novel prize winner I would expect to be heavy, with layers and quite frankly a bit intimidating to casual readers, like myself.

I would not expect a criteria to favor a setting. Maybe an authors background (again, I would expect Nobel to favor poor authors who somehow made)

Re: Book prizes don't work how you think

#70

Post by echoangle »

> Every year, speculation articles appear with people guessing winners (for the Pulitzer and National Book Award and Booker in particular) based on absolutely irrelevant factors like whether an entirely different jury liked this author’s last book five years ago, or whether this book was on other juries’ lists for other prizes. Any article that gets people talking about books is a great thing, but the speculation part is, I hate to say it, useless.

How is that irrelevant? I don’t think the idea is that the previous information causes the book to be chosen next, but it should be an indicator that the book is good.

Just like a student writing a good exam isn’t irrelevant when deciding the next grade, even though the good grade itself doesn’t cause another good grade. But it still influences the expectation.

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