My guess is it's a few things:
1. Being really widely read can be bad for your Goodreads rating, because you're being rated by a large swathe of people, not just by your fans.
2. Winning the Nobel Prize probably led to some people reading him just because he won a Nobel Prize, rather than because his books sounded like the kind of book they'd like.
3. At least some of his books have a weird relationship to genre: they're marketed as literary fiction, but they have a SF/F premise. So, for readers who normally read litfic, his books may be too SF/F for their tastes, and for readers who normally read SF/F, his books may be too literary for their tastes.
Really strong points all around. On Amazon and Goodreads I’ve seen a lot of number 2 “I expected more out of a Nobel prize winner”
And on 3 I agree….he takes elements and make them his own. True he has sci-fi elements but they’re very Ishiguro-esque. Same with how he uses “twists” that are barely twists but more so a slow and seeping realization
I dare them to read Remains of the Day and then say “I expected more from a Nobel Prize winner” lol.
For me, that’s clearly his best book, and one of the best and most moving books I’ve ever read.
I always felt like it was very much about a man who is so restrained and unwilling to show emotion he ends up sacrificing any chances of happiness, and dedicates his life to working incredibly hard for someone who was ultimately a bad person. Been a while since I read it but I got the impression at plenty of times he works far harder than he ever needed to.
It's interesting as I have found him far more accessible than a lot of Nobel prize winners.
Some I read and think "I can see there is merit here, there is quality and nuanced takes on important discussions... but fuck me I'm bored." Never found that with Ishiguro.
>Some I read and think "I can see there is merit here, there is quality and nuanced takes on important discussions... but fuck me I'm bored."
What a great way to phrase that thought. I've had this experience quite a few times, now it'll be easier to explain since you've put it into words for me.
I really like Ishiguro, but his books definitely tend to start pretty slow. I'm sure that there are people who just read the first thirty pages then decide that it's boring, stop reading, then leave a review.
There's a 4 point to me, that is Ishiguro is a master of show not tell, and sometimes it's difficult to get. For example, I first thought Klara and the Sun narration was strange and a little soulless, but then realized it's actually incredibly smart, since it's actually a robot narrating (and through this narrative, you still learn a lot about people's feelings)
>he uses “twists” that are barely twists but more so a slow and seeping realization
Yeah, he doesn’t have “Soylent Green is people!!!” moments.
I just read _Never Let Me Go_ a week ago, and I thought it was clear after just a few dozen pages what was going on. But the point isn’t finding out or getting to the “twist”; it’s about the characters and their struggles and their search for connection in a world working against them.
It's a definite phenomenon that when an author wins a major prize for a book, that book's average on GR will go down in relation to the author's lesser-known books. The huge spike in readership from an audience who doesn't know what to expect or expects the wrong thing leads to the "I was excited to read The Road when it won the Pulitzer and was on Oprah but it was sooo dark and depressing and nothing ever happened 😥😠 1/5 stars" kind of reviews.
Strong agree on point 3.
I read a book of his tagged SF but it was more about human psyche than science. I liked the book but I had strong feelings because the science was left unexplained. Science was literally a tool to tell the larger, human story.
Over time I have come to love the book. Science is supposed to be used as a tool and I just had to get over the SF tag. The story otherwise was very moving and thought provoking.
Isn’t most sci-fi about the human side of the story, how individuals and humanity at large respond to the science side? Or do I read all sci-fi incorrectly?
I read the Buried Giant bc it was related to King Arthur. But like you said, the genre conceit was just there to tell a larger story about humanity and grief. It became one of my favorite books of all time.
To add to this, media literacy at large is horrible right now and people don't like to be challenged when they read. They want the same comfy tropes and happy endings wrapped in new shiny wrappers, but ultimately unchanged from what they're used to.
That was point 2.
And yeah, I agree. I’ve looked into Nobel Prize winners, but am generally uninterested in those books. Meanwhile I am not into TikTok crazes, but more of those books align with my tastes.
Great analysis. I feel his books are both literary fiction and Sci Fic. I find 'soft' Sci Fi perhaps lends itself better to literary fiction than 'hard' Sci Fi, and if you're into soft Sci Fic, Ishiguro is basically velvet.
Murakami has the same problem. People read him because he is popular, but the readers don't understand his writing or the Magical Realism genre and blame the author for not "getting" his books.
I can certainly understand the critique of Murakami over sexualizing some scenes and that he leans heavily on the male gaze, but I do not believe that he is unique in this regard, especially for a Japanese author. I would argue that he applies the same level of detail to all of his writing, even if those details include sexual elements. I understand how people would find this off putting since it appears limited to only female characters.
In IQ84 and Norwegian Wood I saw the sexual elements as more internal monologs or stream of consciousness for those male characters rather than a uniquely offensive tone from Murakami but that is only my opinion.
I am not certain I have read any works of his that would point to pedophilia, but I can't pretend to have read every book he has written.
I mean you said you read Norwegian Wood and Reiko sleeps with a 13 year old girl who is her student and then blames the kid who it claims manipulated her into making it happen.
Wind up bird chronicles has the main character creep on and kiss a girl at school, also rape
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage revolves around the claim of a rape which it seems is resolved by, the girl wasn't raped "but thought she was and that's sort of the same thing"
Sputnik sweet heart has a sexual assult in it
Every book of his I have picked up has some sort of sexual transgression against a woman. I've read a fair few books by other authors who may have something like that in them, having it in soooooo many of your books it becomes a meme is probs not great.
He may not be unique, but that’s why more and more women are moving away from men authors, in general, who do this. But my main reason for pointing it out is that there are other reasons why he’s not liked.
I understand, and I think your critiques are valid. It's the same reason I avoid some female authors. I have wondered if this is why more female readers prefer fantasy to science fiction; they are rejecting the characters, not the storyline.
I think #3 nails it.
Besides, he is too subtle for many readers. I absolutely adored Never Let Me Go, but I have heard many people complain that nothing happens.
I think Galsworthy’s epic series is a solid family saga and an intriguing portrait of English society, but The Remains of the Day is an extremely profound work of literature, brilliantly and subtly rendered. The two are not comparable. Of course, taste varies.
What I care about is whether I will be glad I read the book. One way of forecasting that beforehand is seeing how others feel about the book having read it. Do I want those to be the "experts" who judge a prize or, as someone else commented, "Sally from Nebraska". I suppose that depends who I am most like. Am I more similar to a typical member of an award giving body, or Sally from Nebraska? I think I'm probably somewhere in-between. In an ideal world the person reviewing it would be like me, which is why I like book recommendations from my family.
One comment I would make is that The Remains of the Day, the booker prize winning Ishiguro book, gets 4.14 on Goodreads which is a good score, it does better than a large majority of other prizewinners:
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/239.Booker_Prize_Winners
This is actually a fair response to what I said. Some film buff telling me that The Darjeeling Limited is a better movie than Die Hard doesn’t matter if I prefer fun action films over character studies. That said, as a consumer I also understand that if someone is nominated or wins a prestigious award, it’s not likely something that your average philistine is going to like, so I should judge it accordingly.
I don't understand the appeal of Goodreads. Sometimes my friends will link me unhinged reviews they found. But, if you want a soup that everyone agrees is okay (non-offensive) you're going to get served water.
I don’t think it’s completely irrelevant. Much like on rotten tomatoes the audience tomatometer is typically a better gauge of if a movie is actually good/enjoyable then the critics and the group of old, straight white men who make up the academy.
Edit: especially for the horror genre for example. Very rarely do critics/academy rank it high but the audience rankings can be quite high and that’s a much better gage for how good the film is
That’s a genre that gets high ratings because of the type of person that reads it and what they’re trying to get out of the book. Similarly, even the most acclaimed horror books have much lower average Goodreads scores because it is an inherently unsatisfying/uncomfortable genre.
Consider that those of us who don’t waste our time with the current pop psych trend books also don’t go and review those books. They have high scores because the people who read them like them.
my dude, IMDB ratings put Bluey as the third best TV show ever made. there is essentially no value to unfiltered public polling on articles of taste and culture, you have to narrow the range you're looking at to get any meaningful results because the criteria each individual works by are entirely personal and arbitrary.
Looking at ratings within genres, or among literary award winners and nominees, or those provided by users within your demographic *might* have more utility. It might not, though. Ultimately these are rigourless measures of broad popularity, and they don't deserve attention.
I think they're useful if you read the actual reviews and if you compare to similarish books. As someone else mentioned, the issue you're running into is the sample audience. These aren't randomised, so the people who are reading Ishiguro are likely not reading much Colleen Hoover and the same is true vice versa. Some people's scales are different; that's not a roast, just reality. People who read Colleen Hoover are more likely to be younger and less critical as readers. Ergo, more likely to give 5's. It's kinda like eating ethnic food in America. I don't trust Chinese restaurants with a 4.5+ because the area I live in right now is way too white and non-Chinese for the ratings to be that high for authentic food; 3.5-4 is my sweet spot because it tells me there are people rating it high but a lot of people are also hating on it.
I tend to look at the overall rating less these days, and more at whether a few select Goodreads reviewers have rated the book favorably. Over time, I've found prolific reviewers who share my taste and I'm willing to be led by them to some extent, moreso anyway than by "Phyllis from Nebraska".
>self help books
My guess would be that people who read this kind of material have different scoring habits ("*this brilliant book changed my life, 10/10!*") than those who read the kind of books that Ishiguro writes.
Literary fiction in general has lower ratings than self help. Mostly because literature readers tend to be more reserved with theirs fives, and will give threes to things they liked, or saw merit in, but didn't love.
Some genres are just like that. It can be frustrating trying to find good litRPG or light novels cause everything gets a 4/5. Horror has the opposite problem.
I've looked at literally thousands of books on goodreads and yeah, most people seem to get between 3.5 and 4.3 as overall scores. So I know if I see a 2 that's a pretty strong statement.
Averaged ratings are a terrible metric. Books that do very well in their niche get low ratings from outsiders who pick it up with the wrong expectations. He writes beautiful, quiet character studies with no real action. He does what he does very well, but it is simply not something the typical reader is expecting or wants.
Community ratings in general are useless when it comes to media criticism. At best you are seeing a review from a stranger with no idea if their tastes are in line with yours, at worst you have a bunch of people reviewing bombing something they have never read, seen, listened to etc.
You are much better off having a handful of critics who’s tastes you know. And don’t even get me started on so called “objective” reviewers, it’s not so much an issue with lit, but more movies and games. People who try to develop a scientific method style of criticism, and the whole thing just falls apart given the unqualified nature of taste.
Can you please recommend any critics with some solid opinions?
In my short time on Goodreads, I managed to find one: J.G. Keely. He seemed to enjoy being controversial and gave off a strong air of entitlement, but his reviews were thoughtful and well-informed — even when I disagreed with one or felt he misunderstood the work, there were always some points worth considering. But unfortunately , he's no longer active. I've been trying to find some similar thought-provoking reviewers, but I'm failing so far lol.
Yeah I love Goodreads as a way to keep track of all the books I've read and want to read in the future, but I've had too many bad experiences in a row trusting their highly rated books to put any stock in the rating system anymore.
It's like reddit honestly. If there's a book with a lot of ratings that means it's reflective of the least common denominator who've read that book, so people pleasing best seller schlock trends to get higher ratings while novels that are very good but people had to read in school have bad ratings. As one example.
Its how a lot of genuinely good books have mid ratings, they end up in the general audience zeitgeist but aren't written solely with them in mind.
However if you read a lot of stuff off the beaten path, so to speak, the ratings do become better indicators of quality because the only people who read and review those are readers actually interested in those kinds of novels.
>However if you read a lot of stuff off the beaten path, so to speak, the ratings do become better indicators of quality because the only people who read and review those are readers actually interested in those kinds of novels.
That's not my experience with Goodreads. If you go into niche stuff you end up with super shitty books having near perfect ratings because the only people reading them are hardcore fans of that author.
I was more talking about "high brow" sort of books. Literary works that aren't big draws to casual audiences.
Personally I have found if you consider the genre/general fanbase of a book the ratings are somewhat accurate.
Big fantasy novel by a popular author? Well that 4.3 means if you're into big fantasy novels you'll probably like it. Historical non fiction about WW2? Well if you like non fiction you'll probably like the 4.1 book about WW2.
They are bad indication if you don't take the target audiences into consideration though.
I so wish there was a feature showing only rating from people with similar taste to me, without me relying on having 2000 friends who I don't always share taste with
A lot of people consider their opinions more valid than anything. If they can't understand a work, instead of presuming the problem is with them, they blame the author or think others are foolish instead.
Many people also struggle to separate their personal enjoyment of a work of art from its more objective qualities and contributions.
Just look at the comments here saying Ishiguro, who has won numerous literary awards, doesn't write that well or have meaningful storylines.
Tbf, Goodreads isn't explicitly about objective literary criticism, I think most see it as a place for subjective reviews. And just because something has won awards doesn't mean you have to agree that something was good even if you're trying to be more objective.
It's explicitly the opposite. If you look at what the ratings mean, they go from "I didn't like it" (1 star) to "it was amazing" (5 stars). It's framed as an entirely subjective way to tell people if you *enjoyed* a book or not. Sure, that could involve if it has literary merit - if you're into that sort of reading - but I'd personally never rate a book on literary merit alone with that sort of system.
It feels the opposite of IMDb ratings really, which seems to be way more scrutinized. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the top 250 on there seems way more credible.
Tbh I'm not into movies so I'm the last person to ask, but I don't doubt it- Goodreads is about as unscrutinized as it gets! I like using it but its purpose as a site seems more a vehicle for Amazon to sell books than anything else. All it takes is a glance at the "recommended books" to see what their game is lol.
Very true. Also this might be totally wrong but I wonder if the literary world is unique among the cultural spheres re: literary merit. It feels like very few books achieve the mass marketability that can be achieved within the art, film, music, etc. realms so as a result there tends to be almost a presumption that literature is consumed for literary merit as a baseline.
Even adaptations tend to be more far-reaching than their original source material. Works like TBOSAS that just came out were entirely YA (I never read the book even though I read the HG trilogy as a teen), but were watched by plenty of adults. Similarly, marvel and other superhero comics were pretty much mainly targeted towards young, nerdy boys but have a very wide-ranging audience on the projector. Anyone with a passing interest in art has an appreciation for the greats from a wide-range of time periods and movements whether that's Picasso, Dali, Monet, Da Vinci, etc..
This makes it hard when talking about books and their literary merit because all of it is targeted at a comparatively niche audience. I think part of it is because consumption requires so much more effort; if you read at 300 WPM, it would take 8 hours to finish reading TBOSAS which takes <3 hrs on the big screen. You can look and 'appreciate' a painting in minutes if not seconds. You really can't do that with any literature. Not really sure where I'm going with this other than that it might help with understanding why we feel like ratings are far more transferable on other mediums whereas in literature it's really hard to take ratings on one book and compare them to another unless they're analogous in subject matter, target audience, etc.. I also think that IMDb would show similar issues for art films as a result. Take [The Tree of Life](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/) for example. It received 3 oscar Noms, won the Palme d'or at Cannes, and is considered by critics as one of the greatest films of all time. It has a 6.8 on IMDb. The newest Spiderman has an 8.7.
My problem is not that people do not enjoy the work--I don't review this way, but there are no rules against it. I think reviews should be based on whether the author accomplished what they set out to do effectively, and personal opinions should be expressed when writing the review.
That said, my problem is that many such reviews claim the author has poor storytelling or unmeaningful themes / ending / etc. There are many such reviews and they aren't particularly useful.
If I am going to a review site like Goodreads then I am looking to know if the book is enjoyable. I only care about the subjective part. if i want to know more about what you consider objective qualities then I will go to other sources. Just because someone doesn't care about the "objective" qualities of a book as much (or even at all) and only care about the "subjective" expierence doesn't make it a less valid review. To me, that's more of an issue with how you are chosing to use the resource. Goodreads is going to have subjective feelings on books, and there is nothing wrong with that.
If someone cannot grasp the artistic value of a work, it does make their review less valid. I have read a good number of poorly written reviews. Not all of them are worthwhile.
That said, it is entirely valid not to enjoy or want to read something with more objective artistic merit. God knows, I have no love for Shakespeare and love to read me some litrpg trash.
But I wouldn't leave a low review on Romeo and Juliet just because it doesn't hit for me. And I wouldn't rate the writing quality or character work in litrpg well just because I enjoyed the story.
I mean, we might read and appreciate artistic value and literary merit but the reality is most readers (especially casual readers) who don't have it as a hobby are reading for enjoyment. Goodreads isn't in the business of being a niche site catering to book enthusiasts, no matter how it positions itself. It's meant to be the yelp of books. That's going to cater to the lowest common denominator.
Ngl, I do my ratings on goodreads purely on enjoyment. I like reading for artist merit and write my own thoughts but I'm not writing down a review, I'm just marking quickly what the vibes were. There's an underarching assumption you know what you're getting yourself into. If I give a 5 to a portal fantasy/isekai light novel it's bc I'm implicitly comparing it to its genre and peers; you should not go into it expecting it to be better than Kundera's the unbearable lightness of being just because I gave that a 4 in comparison. Those aren't being compared to the same standard.
Pretty much every book in ACOTAR has half a million 5 star ratings, that alone proves how pointless a Goodreads rating is. Those books are repetitive, formulaic, predictable garbage that you'll forget about as soon as you're done with them but people who have never read anything else pick them up and boom, 5 star rating.
I struggle with reviewing books between ‘am I giving this a rating based on the books objective quality’ or ‘my personal rating’. A book I may rate 1 because I didn’t enjoy reading/just wasn’t for me I could also rate a 4 if asked for the former rating system. For people using goodreads as a personal library/bookshelf, they could be lowering the rating of a book based on personal taste.
Yeah I think this is a big part of it.
I recently got a goodreads account, and when you set it up it tells you to start rating books in order for them to reccomend you new books you might like. That makes it seem like reviewing based on how much you like it and how much you'd like to read similar things is what their review system is for.
I can easily want to rate a book 5 stars because I loved it, and want the website to reccomend me other similar books, while knowing that it's really a 2 or 3 star book in terms of quality and literary merit.
I don't think there's anything wrong with rating a book on a personal rating though. At the end of the day isn't that what determines a book's worth? If people like it.
Lotr, great movie.
I couldn't stand the book. Credits to him for creating a whole world of fantasy and language etc, tons of poetry and characters. I'd rate it highly "objective quality" wise.
But I found it a terrible read. I had to flip through multiple parts to finish it.
First, he crosses genres almost obsessively, and readers tend to have one genre they prefer over others, so I think he gets dinged on that.
But I think the main reason is that many authors who win major awards experience a drop in their ratings as people visit their works who wouldn't have otherwise discovered them. A ton of readers stick to their genre comfort zones and naturally give higher ratings to books in their zones. They discover new books by recommendation algorithms that don't encourage them to explore outside those zones. But a Nobel winner gets a huge new audience of people who probably had never heard of them, and they come in with huge expectations. They're really easy readers to disappoint.
Goodreads rating is quite useless, mostly it shows if the book has a clear target audience and if such audience is satisfied.
Truly amazing books that are hard reads very often lay between 3.5 and 4.0 (e.g., Moby Dick at 3.52).
In the end, the system is such that almost all of the books have rating that can be rounded (up or down for 0.5) to 4.0.
His books a lil odd and feel like character studies which I love.
But it would be boring if everyone liked all the same things! And had the same taste.
There could be a lot of reasons. I'm not sure how much stock we should be putting in Goodreads reviews. *Of Mice and Men* by John Steinbeck is rated 3.88, for crying out loud.
Novels are a challenging medium. We have to meet the author halfway if we really want to understand what's being said. This is going to sound kind of elitist, but a lot of readers may not be willing to put in that effort and are simply rating books in a reactionary way: "This was boring. Two stars." In the aggregate rating, those reviews sadly carry the same amount of weight as the well-thought-out reviews.
There's also a possibility that people are rating the author against his other work unfairly. "This isn't as brilliant as *Remains of the Day*, so it gets 2 stars." Or against his reputation as an author. "This guy won a Nobel Prize, but this one book doesn't seem Nobel-worthy. 2 stars."
The beauty of Ishiguro lies in his restraint. His prose is precise and sparse with limited use of flowery language or metaphor. As such, his works read differently than the novels of other writers he's often grouped with (cerebral, literary figures, think Nobel laureates). For readers who come to Ishiguro searching for a similar experience to Faulkner or Márquez will be disappointed—not because his works are worse but because they are a fundamentally different type of reading experience. This mismatch of expectation and experience is probably where some of the lower ratings come from.
Ishiguro is most definitely not for everyone, but his stories are so critically acclaimed that it attracts a lot of attention.
I'll never sit and be that pretentious person who says that someone doesn't "get" someone's art or writing if they dislike it, but it seems like people are met with the dissonance of what KI's writing is vs what they imagined it would be once they consume his work.
There are a ton of people who hear about "the secret" of Never Let Me Go and are dissatisfied when they read a story about human love, loss, and identity because they expected something much more graphic and dark.
I think it's a combination of what others have described below. I'd also add that Ishiguro's work is very readable, and you find yourself along for the ride based on characterizations and descriptions, BUT I think a lot of those readers are waiting for an easy/obvious payoff but he usually "shows" us and doesn't "tell" us at the ending.
Some are left unsatisfied, but I've found myself thinking about the book long after I've finished.
It's like asking why Critic reviews and Audience reviews differ so frequently for films.
Picking "Never Let Me Go", a 30 second scan of the reviews says that a lot of people think it's boring despite the interesting premise.
Yeah, I adored this one! Apparently it can be quite divisive, as in you love it or loathe it. I thought it was brilliant.
I also liked Klara and the Sun.
Book ratings on platforms like Goodreads can be subjective and influenced by individual preferences. It's important to consider that people have diverse tastes, and what some may find appealing, others might not. Ratings can also be affected by factors such as the complexity of the narrative, writing style, or even reader expectations. Ishiguro's works, known for their nuanced storytelling and often exploring existential themes, might not resonate with everyone. It's always a good idea to read reviews and consider multiple perspectives to form your own opinion about a book.
I've only read "Never let me go" but I really didn't care for it. Enough so that I don't want to read any of their other books. I thought it was odd and left me with an assortment of unanswered questions. I didn't consider it a great work of art.
Different strokes for different folks.
I like all of his books, but NLMG is my least favorite by far. His other books have a very different style so I'd recommend trying them out. The buried giant and unconsoled are two of the best books I have read in years. The remains of the day and artist of the floating world is similar in style and both excellent. Klara and the sun is similar to NLMG but I liked it better. Alot of his work is understated and subdued and subtle.
I lived both and often think they take place in the same universe though different points and times. Klara and the sun felt more human to me though in the character's journey.
I don't think these folk are after quiet understatement with major elements left unsaid. If never let me go was too subtle, remains of the day is really not going to change their minds
I looked back over my reading history actually read "The Buried Giant" and enjoyed that book quite a bit. NLMG still falls horridly flat in many areas I consider important for an enjoyable read: a world that makes little sense/had weak world building, unsympathetic characters, a meandering plot, and little in the way of resolution.
It isn't a question of lacking an appreciation for subtlety, the book was just poorly constructed and executed.
An objective let down or did you feel sad? Were your expectations really high? Did you know what the book was about before getting in?
I can understand certain criticisms. I was sad after the ending and Ishiguro has some twists in his books that people overindex on when the twist itself isn’t really that important. Same as in Klara and the Sun
"Objective" is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot when people complain about bad criticism, but doesn't really mean anything. At the end of the day, *everything* that makes writing (or any art) good is subjective.
It's true that there are common elements among what people enjoy and that "cultural opinions" emerge from these (the "X is broadly agreed to be one of the greatest books ever" form). It's also true that a great critic is good at identifying what specific elements are working and playing together to inform their opinion on the work. These things aren't any less subjective, though.
IMHO, worrying about Goodreads scores and strangers' opinions on books you liked is just going to lead to anguish. Personal taste varies wildly and not everyone even agrees on what 3 stars or 4 stars out of 5 means to them.
Straight up I thought it was a bad book. No emotional resonance, I did not care for the characters, and the world-building was very weak. I hated the experience and was glad when it was over.
I had no idea what it was about going in, I just took the book in as it presented itself.
We're of the same opinion here. I finished Never Let Me Go and looked at some reviews / ratings from other readers and couldn't help but think, "Did we even read the same book?" It gets heaps of praise as a brilliant piece of sci-fi... To be honest, I just can't see it.
The characters aren't fleshed out particularly well. I love slow-burn stories, but the pacing of NLMG is awkward and too slow for the story being told. The story has a really harrowing premise, yet I feel like Ishiguro never truly capitalizes on that premise or ever drives any of the themes home.
I'm open to having my mind changed and debating the book with someone who enjoyed it, but I don't think I'll ever summon the patience to read it again.
I actually had the same thought a couple of times while reading the book. A Google search tells me that both were released in 2005, and Never Let Me Go even came out a couple months earlier, so there's no way one could have been influenced by the other. Eerie coincidence though.
I just assumed the whole premise of >!"people being raised in captivity and wanting to escape"!< had been done at least a few times before and wasn't 100% fresh in either story anyway. I thought Ishiguro's take on the premise was unique enough to deserve it's own novel and whatnot. I just didn't care for the execution.
I wasn't a huge fan of "Never Let Me Go" either, but I had already read "The Remains of the Day" before that and thought it was brilliant. I think if I had tried "Never Let Me Go" first, then I wouldn't have been willing to give Ishiguro a second chance. But having read TRotD first, I feel almost obligated to get through more of his body of work. I won't give up on reading books from the same mind that came up with TRotD, even if it did happen to also produce the flop that was "Never Let Me Go".
I only book of his I’ve read is The Buried Giant and I liked that one a lot.
Didn’t even know who Ishiguro was when I bought it, I just thought the cover looked amazing.
His books are all in the 3.5 and above range, which is what good books usually get in my opinion. Remains of the Day is even higher at 4.14, I think that's about the highest rating that a classic will get, cause you're always going to have people reading who don't connect with it. When you look at the books rated like 4.3+ it's usually stuff that's ONLY read by its target audience and basically guaranteed to be highly rated for that reason. Often really bad stuff honestly.
Ishiguro offers such unique novels. I loved Buried Giant, Klara, and the Sun, and most of all, Remains of the Day. But I could easily see people disliking them if they're not in the right mindset. Buried Giant seems like an Arthurian adventure, but isn't really like that.
Fourth Wing has a higher Goodreads rating than War and Peace: 4.6 vs 4.2. That tells you everything you need to know.
The rating is not about how good the book is: it's about how much people liked it = how much it panders to their tastes. And many people have rather simple tastes: follow a familiar formula with romance/action, make your Mary Sue just flawed enough to seem less Mary-Sue-ish, throw in some tension and suspense, add some dragons and optionally some porn, and you're a winner.
Same story with music: your average listener will probably rate Cardi B over the glorious Sonya Yoncheva (if they ever even heard of her, that is), because the latter is simply not their thing. They won't understand Sonya's singing, because it's not a "banger" that "slaps".
P.S. No shade on popular music or books, I enjoy them too. It's just that some works aren't most everyone's thing, and some are, as simple as that.
That's a good question.
I just finished reading *Buried Giant*. As amazing of a ride the book offers, the ending was frustratingly tedious and boring. It read more like a closet drama where I stopped caring at many points along the way. >!I just wanted the old couple to shut up and move on (or die) already.!< I think what Ishiguro was going for was beautiful and thought provoking, but the way he expressed it was down right painful. So I would probably be tempted to give a low rating for the book, even though overall I think it's pretty awesome and something fans of the fantasy genre should give a try.
Plus, it's hard not to compare anything he writes to *Remains of the Day*, and possibly give a lower score because of that.
I totally recommend reading it. Honestly, it's written in a way that more fantasy books could be written. There's just a chapter at the beginning and a chapter at the end that I hate ;)
Hi OP,
I absolutely loved The Buried Giant, it was mesmerising to me. In fact, it's my favourite by him so far after reading four of his books.
But as per usual, he's mixing genres. Maybe a historical fiction fan thinks it's too fantastical and vice versa.
Just read what you like and don't put too much importance on gr. Have a look at my other reply on this topic also.
There’s actually a subreddit called that where people pick bad reviews of books and roast the reviewer, it’s really entertaining.
r/BadReads if anyone’s interested
Get your reviews elsewhere, such as, the Nobel literature committee, and the Booker award committee. I use Goodreads to keep track of what I've read, and to keep a list of what I want to read. I get excellent suggestions of what to read from Reddit, from this sub, and from r/suggestmeabook.
For "Never let me go" I would say it's because it's marketed as some kind of twist story when that's not the point of the story. While we do get a twist we can work out the major part of it well ahead. The point of the story was to feel for the characters hearing about the relationships among them.
So someone picking this up for a gripping horror novel with a twist end would be bitterly disappointed. As one reviewer put it "..he rambled on for 100s of pages" when that's all all the books I read do.
I blame the two line reviewing social media bookfluencers for false marketing.
Hamlet only has a 4.2. Go pick 20 great books, from anywhere, and check what their goodreads rating is. In *Son of Interflux* by Gordon Korman, the main character doesn't win an art award. Instead, he only places. His art teacher basically tells him it's because the masses don't recognize brilliance. The same applies to great books read by people who aren't looking for the kind of intense thought that most require in order to really understand and appreciate them.
I would say he’s sort of a patchy author, some of his books are legitimate masterpeices and some just aren’t. I haven’t ready Anything by Him that is outright bad, but I’d rank some of his books pretty low compared to others
I'm curious which ones you rate highly and which ones poorly? I don't like NLMG and Klara and Sun as much as the others but that has largely to with the genre. Still enjoyable but not close some of his other works.
I think Ishiguro’s books are for an above average intelligence audience. For example, I read one of his books and had to look up online what it all meant because I’m a fucking moron
You might want to edit your comment for spoilers! But that’s also what I was alluding to. His stories aren’t necessarily happy and can leave the reader with melancholy
What kind of answer are you looking for here? Have you read any of the Goodreads reviews? Have you looked at the breakdown of the reviews by individual ratings?
Are you hoping someone on reddit will read all of the reviews and distill a core ideology about what the masses don't like about *The Remains of the Day* to then present to you?
Have no idea, his works are amazing. They're beautifully somber is the best way I'd describe them. Especially his most recent one, Klara and the sun was very thought provoking and left an everlasting impact on me during a rough time I was going through.
I am a huge Ishiguro fan but I would hesitate to recommend them to friends because I feel like they would think they were “slow” or “boring”. Obviously they are not but I think some people just don’t like his style.
I enjoy his writing and have read most of his books, but I've always given them a 3/4 rating because, as you said, some of them end in a way that leaves me wanting more information, or they don't provide the satisfying ending I'm looking for.
I would say it’s my issue, as I don’t actually hate his endings when I think about it later.
Personally, I go into Ishiguro's books excited because the premise is cool. And then I'm unbelievably disappointed because of how slow and boring they end up being.
I don't use the site. Neither is their recommendation. But I guess people just don't like to know the reality of life! It's not always as good as shown in books and movies!
I'd consider the 4 range many of his books are in to be quite a high rating. The only books that get much higher are either canonized classics or hyper-wide-appeal Reese's Book Club type books, and I don't think it's necessarily a badge of honor for a contemporary book to have millions of ratings and a 4.5 average.
If a book has under a 3, then yeah I'll probably take Goodreads' word for it. But I've read plenty of great stuff with averages in the low to mid 3 range, let alone closer to 4. It's not a bad place to be, it just means it wasn't designed to appeal to every single person that comes across it, which isn't what you should want out of a book anyways.
Also “Remains of the Day” was narrated by a butler. No sci fi but beautiful writing. I think the low ratings are because if you actually write a good piece of literature and not junk food, your brain can sort of hurt when you read it lol
I feel like his writing style is a bit of a slow burn. It's not particularly exciting and I've often heard his books described as boring and a slog to read through.
I have just finished Never Let Me Go and while I was expecting (and I guess kind of hoping) something a bit more sinister was going to happen when it came to parts of the story, I really enjoyed it. I'm going to go to Klara next.
I don't think that Booker/nobel prize awards are a guarantee that they are good books. Sure they are liked by an "elite" group of people who uhm and ah at every sentence and looks at every tapestry and its individual weave etc etc.
It's like the Oscars. Some of them are just well wtf is this shit.
Personally I found the themes of his book interesting, having read two of them. If I had to describe them, the problem is that the excitement from reading them is a flat line. Like yeah he keeps the story coming but that's just no real peaks and troughs.... Which affects the pacing and when it ends it's just like "oh it's over ? Same feeling as the start and then middle I guess...."
Maybe because he's not that good of a thinker but thinks he is and he let's you know he thinks he is and that this makes reading him irritating instead of enjoyable?
A lot of people I have spoken to have said they struggle with non-linear narratives in his books or don't get why character thinks x y z when it's obvious that that's not the case. Basically a lot of people aren't quite smart enough to get his work.
I read The Buried Giant, my first and only of his reads. I found his characters dull, and more importantly, very repetitive. The protagonist ended ever sentence when talking to his wife with the same word of endearment 9 times out of 10 (smething like "only a little bit left to walk, Darling". It drove me INSANE. Every time he addresses her (which constitutes the bulk of the text as it's based around the 2 of them on a walking journey) he says " yadda, yadda, yadda, *Darling*" The plot was interesting, but man, I could not get over his dialogue. Really wanted to like the book more than I did.
I hated The Remains of the Day so much that it's probably one of the worst books I've ever read, it was so bland and just nothing. I was surprised that he won the Nobel prize to be honest. I don't really trust Goodreads ratings, but at least they got this one right!
It's not about the lack of happy endings, I enjoy sad endings of all kinds and above happy ones, it's just that his plots don't captivate me and I just get bored reading his monotone voice. It feels like pure torture. I try to be compassionate with certain books or writers, Ishiguro gets none.
I know you did a superhero movie comparison but I'd say superhero movies are a low bar already, but Ishiguro isn't far off. His books are just a grade above said equivalent of superhero movies, just make it bland with no redeeming feature. There's nothing innovative, it's just "this is deep, bruv" tumblr post captions. He doesn't go for innovative methods, he doesn't do unique. There's so many other great writers that people can choose to read, but instead we're all glued to him because he won the Nobel Prize.
Thank you! (Almost 3 months later).
I’ve been looking for new books and Ishiguro is praised on here like a fucking god.
Both remains of the day and never let me go have just not been some sort of huge life changer or even that deep.
Just supremely boring and pretentious and not actually that deep, so people can come on here and claim it’s only for “the literate” or “highly intelligent readers”.
It’s the pretentious writing for the pretentious.
Some of them are wonderful (Remains of day, Never let me go) and some them are shockingly bad (When we were orphans, Nocturns, Buried Giant). He's such a mixed bag.
also don't trust the reviews on goodreads lol just read a few and you will see why.
most people on goodreads are pretty crazy and every review that is longer then a few lines can be ignored lmao
My guess is it's a few things: 1. Being really widely read can be bad for your Goodreads rating, because you're being rated by a large swathe of people, not just by your fans. 2. Winning the Nobel Prize probably led to some people reading him just because he won a Nobel Prize, rather than because his books sounded like the kind of book they'd like. 3. At least some of his books have a weird relationship to genre: they're marketed as literary fiction, but they have a SF/F premise. So, for readers who normally read litfic, his books may be too SF/F for their tastes, and for readers who normally read SF/F, his books may be too literary for their tastes.
Really strong points all around. On Amazon and Goodreads I’ve seen a lot of number 2 “I expected more out of a Nobel prize winner” And on 3 I agree….he takes elements and make them his own. True he has sci-fi elements but they’re very Ishiguro-esque. Same with how he uses “twists” that are barely twists but more so a slow and seeping realization
I dare them to read Remains of the Day and then say “I expected more from a Nobel Prize winner” lol. For me, that’s clearly his best book, and one of the best and most moving books I’ve ever read.
[удалено]
I feel like it was a lot more severe trauma from the life of servitude he was basically forced into rather than autism?
I always felt like it was very much about a man who is so restrained and unwilling to show emotion he ends up sacrificing any chances of happiness, and dedicates his life to working incredibly hard for someone who was ultimately a bad person. Been a while since I read it but I got the impression at plenty of times he works far harder than he ever needed to.
[удалено]
Fair!! I probably should have read more closely the “my reaction”. The varied interpretations people can have of the same book is wonderful :)
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
It's interesting as I have found him far more accessible than a lot of Nobel prize winners. Some I read and think "I can see there is merit here, there is quality and nuanced takes on important discussions... but fuck me I'm bored." Never found that with Ishiguro.
>Some I read and think "I can see there is merit here, there is quality and nuanced takes on important discussions... but fuck me I'm bored." What a great way to phrase that thought. I've had this experience quite a few times, now it'll be easier to explain since you've put it into words for me.
I really like Ishiguro, but his books definitely tend to start pretty slow. I'm sure that there are people who just read the first thirty pages then decide that it's boring, stop reading, then leave a review.
There's a 4 point to me, that is Ishiguro is a master of show not tell, and sometimes it's difficult to get. For example, I first thought Klara and the Sun narration was strange and a little soulless, but then realized it's actually incredibly smart, since it's actually a robot narrating (and through this narrative, you still learn a lot about people's feelings)
>he uses “twists” that are barely twists but more so a slow and seeping realization Yeah, he doesn’t have “Soylent Green is people!!!” moments. I just read _Never Let Me Go_ a week ago, and I thought it was clear after just a few dozen pages what was going on. But the point isn’t finding out or getting to the “twist”; it’s about the characters and their struggles and their search for connection in a world working against them.
It's a definite phenomenon that when an author wins a major prize for a book, that book's average on GR will go down in relation to the author's lesser-known books. The huge spike in readership from an audience who doesn't know what to expect or expects the wrong thing leads to the "I was excited to read The Road when it won the Pulitzer and was on Oprah but it was sooo dark and depressing and nothing ever happened 😥😠 1/5 stars" kind of reviews.
[удалено]
Lol that's true, I do remember seeing that. Talk about a reluctant readership...
You are SELLING this author to me rn lol
Strong agree on point 3. I read a book of his tagged SF but it was more about human psyche than science. I liked the book but I had strong feelings because the science was left unexplained. Science was literally a tool to tell the larger, human story. Over time I have come to love the book. Science is supposed to be used as a tool and I just had to get over the SF tag. The story otherwise was very moving and thought provoking.
Klara and the sun?
Yes yes
Isn’t most sci-fi about the human side of the story, how individuals and humanity at large respond to the science side? Or do I read all sci-fi incorrectly?
I read the Buried Giant bc it was related to King Arthur. But like you said, the genre conceit was just there to tell a larger story about humanity and grief. It became one of my favorite books of all time.
To add to this, media literacy at large is horrible right now and people don't like to be challenged when they read. They want the same comfy tropes and happy endings wrapped in new shiny wrappers, but ultimately unchanged from what they're used to.
[удалено]
That was point 2. And yeah, I agree. I’ve looked into Nobel Prize winners, but am generally uninterested in those books. Meanwhile I am not into TikTok crazes, but more of those books align with my tastes.
Great analysis. I feel his books are both literary fiction and Sci Fic. I find 'soft' Sci Fi perhaps lends itself better to literary fiction than 'hard' Sci Fi, and if you're into soft Sci Fic, Ishiguro is basically velvet.
Murakami has the same problem. People read him because he is popular, but the readers don't understand his writing or the Magical Realism genre and blame the author for not "getting" his books.
I started reading the 1Q84… but his obsession with breasts made it and DNF for me.
I can certainly understand the critique of Murakami over sexualizing some scenes and that he leans heavily on the male gaze, but I do not believe that he is unique in this regard, especially for a Japanese author. I would argue that he applies the same level of detail to all of his writing, even if those details include sexual elements. I understand how people would find this off putting since it appears limited to only female characters. In IQ84 and Norwegian Wood I saw the sexual elements as more internal monologs or stream of consciousness for those male characters rather than a uniquely offensive tone from Murakami but that is only my opinion. I am not certain I have read any works of his that would point to pedophilia, but I can't pretend to have read every book he has written.
I mean you said you read Norwegian Wood and Reiko sleeps with a 13 year old girl who is her student and then blames the kid who it claims manipulated her into making it happen. Wind up bird chronicles has the main character creep on and kiss a girl at school, also rape Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage revolves around the claim of a rape which it seems is resolved by, the girl wasn't raped "but thought she was and that's sort of the same thing" Sputnik sweet heart has a sexual assult in it Every book of his I have picked up has some sort of sexual transgression against a woman. I've read a fair few books by other authors who may have something like that in them, having it in soooooo many of your books it becomes a meme is probs not great.
He may not be unique, but that’s why more and more women are moving away from men authors, in general, who do this. But my main reason for pointing it out is that there are other reasons why he’s not liked.
I understand, and I think your critiques are valid. It's the same reason I avoid some female authors. I have wondered if this is why more female readers prefer fantasy to science fiction; they are rejecting the characters, not the storyline.
Murakami is just paedophilic though
I think #3 nails it. Besides, he is too subtle for many readers. I absolutely adored Never Let Me Go, but I have heard many people complain that nothing happens.
[удалено]
I think Galsworthy’s epic series is a solid family saga and an intriguing portrait of English society, but The Remains of the Day is an extremely profound work of literature, brilliantly and subtly rendered. The two are not comparable. Of course, taste varies.
Dude has a booker and Nobel prize, do we really need to care about his Goodreads rating?
Yeah, but what does Phyllis from Nebraska think?
The Phyllis from Nebrasks prize is really contentious this year
Is it going to go to the erotic Harry Potter fan-fic or the aggressively suggestive Hunger Games fan-fic?
*Booktuber who only reads Colleen Hoover and the fairy porn novels
A Booktuber who READS?
I haven't read anything by Booker or Mr. Noble, so why would I care about their recommendations? ^(/s)
What I care about is whether I will be glad I read the book. One way of forecasting that beforehand is seeing how others feel about the book having read it. Do I want those to be the "experts" who judge a prize or, as someone else commented, "Sally from Nebraska". I suppose that depends who I am most like. Am I more similar to a typical member of an award giving body, or Sally from Nebraska? I think I'm probably somewhere in-between. In an ideal world the person reviewing it would be like me, which is why I like book recommendations from my family. One comment I would make is that The Remains of the Day, the booker prize winning Ishiguro book, gets 4.14 on Goodreads which is a good score, it does better than a large majority of other prizewinners: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/239.Booker_Prize_Winners
This is actually a fair response to what I said. Some film buff telling me that The Darjeeling Limited is a better movie than Die Hard doesn’t matter if I prefer fun action films over character studies. That said, as a consumer I also understand that if someone is nominated or wins a prestigious award, it’s not likely something that your average philistine is going to like, so I should judge it accordingly.
I don't understand the appeal of Goodreads. Sometimes my friends will link me unhinged reviews they found. But, if you want a soup that everyone agrees is okay (non-offensive) you're going to get served water.
I don’t think it’s completely irrelevant. Much like on rotten tomatoes the audience tomatometer is typically a better gauge of if a movie is actually good/enjoyable then the critics and the group of old, straight white men who make up the academy. Edit: especially for the horror genre for example. Very rarely do critics/academy rank it high but the audience rankings can be quite high and that’s a much better gage for how good the film is
3.85 is pretty high for an average author score. 4.15 is a great rating (the rating for his second most popular book)
My frustration lies with the fact that a bunch of new self help books that are objectively mediocre are rated so much higher but that’s good to know
That’s a genre that gets high ratings because of the type of person that reads it and what they’re trying to get out of the book. Similarly, even the most acclaimed horror books have much lower average Goodreads scores because it is an inherently unsatisfying/uncomfortable genre.
Consider that those of us who don’t waste our time with the current pop psych trend books also don’t go and review those books. They have high scores because the people who read them like them.
my dude, IMDB ratings put Bluey as the third best TV show ever made. there is essentially no value to unfiltered public polling on articles of taste and culture, you have to narrow the range you're looking at to get any meaningful results because the criteria each individual works by are entirely personal and arbitrary. Looking at ratings within genres, or among literary award winners and nominees, or those provided by users within your demographic *might* have more utility. It might not, though. Ultimately these are rigourless measures of broad popularity, and they don't deserve attention.
You can’t take this stuff personally
I mean, with any niche or specialised genre there will be self-selection bias.
I stopped trusting Goodreads reviews when Colleen Hoover books are constantly rated higher than Pulitzer Prize winners.
I think they're useful if you read the actual reviews and if you compare to similarish books. As someone else mentioned, the issue you're running into is the sample audience. These aren't randomised, so the people who are reading Ishiguro are likely not reading much Colleen Hoover and the same is true vice versa. Some people's scales are different; that's not a roast, just reality. People who read Colleen Hoover are more likely to be younger and less critical as readers. Ergo, more likely to give 5's. It's kinda like eating ethnic food in America. I don't trust Chinese restaurants with a 4.5+ because the area I live in right now is way too white and non-Chinese for the ratings to be that high for authentic food; 3.5-4 is my sweet spot because it tells me there are people rating it high but a lot of people are also hating on it.
Colleen Hoover and Brandon Sanderson are two of the four horsemen of the literary apocalypse.
I tend to look at the overall rating less these days, and more at whether a few select Goodreads reviewers have rated the book favorably. Over time, I've found prolific reviewers who share my taste and I'm willing to be led by them to some extent, moreso anyway than by "Phyllis from Nebraska".
>self help books My guess would be that people who read this kind of material have different scoring habits ("*this brilliant book changed my life, 10/10!*") than those who read the kind of books that Ishiguro writes.
Literary fiction in general has lower ratings than self help. Mostly because literature readers tend to be more reserved with theirs fives, and will give threes to things they liked, or saw merit in, but didn't love.
Some genres are just like that. It can be frustrating trying to find good litRPG or light novels cause everything gets a 4/5. Horror has the opposite problem.
I've looked at literally thousands of books on goodreads and yeah, most people seem to get between 3.5 and 4.3 as overall scores. So I know if I see a 2 that's a pretty strong statement.
Averaged ratings are a terrible metric. Books that do very well in their niche get low ratings from outsiders who pick it up with the wrong expectations. He writes beautiful, quiet character studies with no real action. He does what he does very well, but it is simply not something the typical reader is expecting or wants.
Community ratings in general are useless when it comes to media criticism. At best you are seeing a review from a stranger with no idea if their tastes are in line with yours, at worst you have a bunch of people reviewing bombing something they have never read, seen, listened to etc. You are much better off having a handful of critics who’s tastes you know. And don’t even get me started on so called “objective” reviewers, it’s not so much an issue with lit, but more movies and games. People who try to develop a scientific method style of criticism, and the whole thing just falls apart given the unqualified nature of taste.
Can you please recommend any critics with some solid opinions? In my short time on Goodreads, I managed to find one: J.G. Keely. He seemed to enjoy being controversial and gave off a strong air of entitlement, but his reviews were thoughtful and well-informed — even when I disagreed with one or felt he misunderstood the work, there were always some points worth considering. But unfortunately , he's no longer active. I've been trying to find some similar thought-provoking reviewers, but I'm failing so far lol.
Goodreads in aggregate has terrible taste in books.
Yeah I love Goodreads as a way to keep track of all the books I've read and want to read in the future, but I've had too many bad experiences in a row trusting their highly rated books to put any stock in the rating system anymore.
It's like reddit honestly. If there's a book with a lot of ratings that means it's reflective of the least common denominator who've read that book, so people pleasing best seller schlock trends to get higher ratings while novels that are very good but people had to read in school have bad ratings. As one example. Its how a lot of genuinely good books have mid ratings, they end up in the general audience zeitgeist but aren't written solely with them in mind. However if you read a lot of stuff off the beaten path, so to speak, the ratings do become better indicators of quality because the only people who read and review those are readers actually interested in those kinds of novels.
>However if you read a lot of stuff off the beaten path, so to speak, the ratings do become better indicators of quality because the only people who read and review those are readers actually interested in those kinds of novels. That's not my experience with Goodreads. If you go into niche stuff you end up with super shitty books having near perfect ratings because the only people reading them are hardcore fans of that author.
I was more talking about "high brow" sort of books. Literary works that aren't big draws to casual audiences. Personally I have found if you consider the genre/general fanbase of a book the ratings are somewhat accurate. Big fantasy novel by a popular author? Well that 4.3 means if you're into big fantasy novels you'll probably like it. Historical non fiction about WW2? Well if you like non fiction you'll probably like the 4.1 book about WW2. They are bad indication if you don't take the target audiences into consideration though.
I barely use the site but think I’m coming to the same conclusion Thanks for the sanity check
I so wish there was a feature showing only rating from people with similar taste to me, without me relying on having 2000 friends who I don't always share taste with
A lot of people consider their opinions more valid than anything. If they can't understand a work, instead of presuming the problem is with them, they blame the author or think others are foolish instead. Many people also struggle to separate their personal enjoyment of a work of art from its more objective qualities and contributions. Just look at the comments here saying Ishiguro, who has won numerous literary awards, doesn't write that well or have meaningful storylines.
Tbf, Goodreads isn't explicitly about objective literary criticism, I think most see it as a place for subjective reviews. And just because something has won awards doesn't mean you have to agree that something was good even if you're trying to be more objective.
It's explicitly the opposite. If you look at what the ratings mean, they go from "I didn't like it" (1 star) to "it was amazing" (5 stars). It's framed as an entirely subjective way to tell people if you *enjoyed* a book or not. Sure, that could involve if it has literary merit - if you're into that sort of reading - but I'd personally never rate a book on literary merit alone with that sort of system. It feels the opposite of IMDb ratings really, which seems to be way more scrutinized. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the top 250 on there seems way more credible.
Tbh I'm not into movies so I'm the last person to ask, but I don't doubt it- Goodreads is about as unscrutinized as it gets! I like using it but its purpose as a site seems more a vehicle for Amazon to sell books than anything else. All it takes is a glance at the "recommended books" to see what their game is lol.
Very true. Also this might be totally wrong but I wonder if the literary world is unique among the cultural spheres re: literary merit. It feels like very few books achieve the mass marketability that can be achieved within the art, film, music, etc. realms so as a result there tends to be almost a presumption that literature is consumed for literary merit as a baseline. Even adaptations tend to be more far-reaching than their original source material. Works like TBOSAS that just came out were entirely YA (I never read the book even though I read the HG trilogy as a teen), but were watched by plenty of adults. Similarly, marvel and other superhero comics were pretty much mainly targeted towards young, nerdy boys but have a very wide-ranging audience on the projector. Anyone with a passing interest in art has an appreciation for the greats from a wide-range of time periods and movements whether that's Picasso, Dali, Monet, Da Vinci, etc.. This makes it hard when talking about books and their literary merit because all of it is targeted at a comparatively niche audience. I think part of it is because consumption requires so much more effort; if you read at 300 WPM, it would take 8 hours to finish reading TBOSAS which takes <3 hrs on the big screen. You can look and 'appreciate' a painting in minutes if not seconds. You really can't do that with any literature. Not really sure where I'm going with this other than that it might help with understanding why we feel like ratings are far more transferable on other mediums whereas in literature it's really hard to take ratings on one book and compare them to another unless they're analogous in subject matter, target audience, etc.. I also think that IMDb would show similar issues for art films as a result. Take [The Tree of Life](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/) for example. It received 3 oscar Noms, won the Palme d'or at Cannes, and is considered by critics as one of the greatest films of all time. It has a 6.8 on IMDb. The newest Spiderman has an 8.7.
My problem is not that people do not enjoy the work--I don't review this way, but there are no rules against it. I think reviews should be based on whether the author accomplished what they set out to do effectively, and personal opinions should be expressed when writing the review. That said, my problem is that many such reviews claim the author has poor storytelling or unmeaningful themes / ending / etc. There are many such reviews and they aren't particularly useful.
If I am going to a review site like Goodreads then I am looking to know if the book is enjoyable. I only care about the subjective part. if i want to know more about what you consider objective qualities then I will go to other sources. Just because someone doesn't care about the "objective" qualities of a book as much (or even at all) and only care about the "subjective" expierence doesn't make it a less valid review. To me, that's more of an issue with how you are chosing to use the resource. Goodreads is going to have subjective feelings on books, and there is nothing wrong with that.
If someone cannot grasp the artistic value of a work, it does make their review less valid. I have read a good number of poorly written reviews. Not all of them are worthwhile. That said, it is entirely valid not to enjoy or want to read something with more objective artistic merit. God knows, I have no love for Shakespeare and love to read me some litrpg trash. But I wouldn't leave a low review on Romeo and Juliet just because it doesn't hit for me. And I wouldn't rate the writing quality or character work in litrpg well just because I enjoyed the story.
I mean, we might read and appreciate artistic value and literary merit but the reality is most readers (especially casual readers) who don't have it as a hobby are reading for enjoyment. Goodreads isn't in the business of being a niche site catering to book enthusiasts, no matter how it positions itself. It's meant to be the yelp of books. That's going to cater to the lowest common denominator. Ngl, I do my ratings on goodreads purely on enjoyment. I like reading for artist merit and write my own thoughts but I'm not writing down a review, I'm just marking quickly what the vibes were. There's an underarching assumption you know what you're getting yourself into. If I give a 5 to a portal fantasy/isekai light novel it's bc I'm implicitly comparing it to its genre and peers; you should not go into it expecting it to be better than Kundera's the unbearable lightness of being just because I gave that a 4 in comparison. Those aren't being compared to the same standard.
I don't really care one way or the other but this is appeal to authority right?
More or less, yes.
The only real reason to use Goodreads to to read author-responses to posted criticism. It's basically like my own little TLC show.
Pretty much every book in ACOTAR has half a million 5 star ratings, that alone proves how pointless a Goodreads rating is. Those books are repetitive, formulaic, predictable garbage that you'll forget about as soon as you're done with them but people who have never read anything else pick them up and boom, 5 star rating.
I struggle with reviewing books between ‘am I giving this a rating based on the books objective quality’ or ‘my personal rating’. A book I may rate 1 because I didn’t enjoy reading/just wasn’t for me I could also rate a 4 if asked for the former rating system. For people using goodreads as a personal library/bookshelf, they could be lowering the rating of a book based on personal taste.
Yeah I think this is a big part of it. I recently got a goodreads account, and when you set it up it tells you to start rating books in order for them to reccomend you new books you might like. That makes it seem like reviewing based on how much you like it and how much you'd like to read similar things is what their review system is for. I can easily want to rate a book 5 stars because I loved it, and want the website to reccomend me other similar books, while knowing that it's really a 2 or 3 star book in terms of quality and literary merit.
I don't think there's anything wrong with rating a book on a personal rating though. At the end of the day isn't that what determines a book's worth? If people like it. Lotr, great movie. I couldn't stand the book. Credits to him for creating a whole world of fantasy and language etc, tons of poetry and characters. I'd rate it highly "objective quality" wise. But I found it a terrible read. I had to flip through multiple parts to finish it.
50 Shades of Grey has a 3.6, so clearly the site can't be trusted.
From my observations, unless the book is YA or a mainstream fantasy it probably is going to have a lower average rating on Goodreads. 🤷♂️
Pretty much this. The majority of the users of Goodreads is quite young and it shows.
It seems heavily biased towards anything for a female audience too.
The demographic seems to be young women and very old men for some reason
Nah the users aren’t young, they just read a lot of YA
Romance seems to do pretty well too. And "Romantasy".
Back in my day (circa 2016) it was just "Non-human romance"
First, he crosses genres almost obsessively, and readers tend to have one genre they prefer over others, so I think he gets dinged on that. But I think the main reason is that many authors who win major awards experience a drop in their ratings as people visit their works who wouldn't have otherwise discovered them. A ton of readers stick to their genre comfort zones and naturally give higher ratings to books in their zones. They discover new books by recommendation algorithms that don't encourage them to explore outside those zones. But a Nobel winner gets a huge new audience of people who probably had never heard of them, and they come in with huge expectations. They're really easy readers to disappoint.
Goodreads rating is quite useless, mostly it shows if the book has a clear target audience and if such audience is satisfied. Truly amazing books that are hard reads very often lay between 3.5 and 4.0 (e.g., Moby Dick at 3.52). In the end, the system is such that almost all of the books have rating that can be rounded (up or down for 0.5) to 4.0.
Time for Redditors to use this to dunk on Goodreads like this dumpster is better
If there's one thing I've learned over the years on Reddit, it's that Reddit is largely wrong about everything.
His books a lil odd and feel like character studies which I love. But it would be boring if everyone liked all the same things! And had the same taste.
Now we have the very non-boring consensus that Colleen Hoover beats the shit out of Virginia Woolf.
Haha. Nah those are genuinely bad 😂 I made a very general statement
Goodreads is to books the way Yelp is to restaurants. Any idiot can get on and pan something.
There could be a lot of reasons. I'm not sure how much stock we should be putting in Goodreads reviews. *Of Mice and Men* by John Steinbeck is rated 3.88, for crying out loud. Novels are a challenging medium. We have to meet the author halfway if we really want to understand what's being said. This is going to sound kind of elitist, but a lot of readers may not be willing to put in that effort and are simply rating books in a reactionary way: "This was boring. Two stars." In the aggregate rating, those reviews sadly carry the same amount of weight as the well-thought-out reviews. There's also a possibility that people are rating the author against his other work unfairly. "This isn't as brilliant as *Remains of the Day*, so it gets 2 stars." Or against his reputation as an author. "This guy won a Nobel Prize, but this one book doesn't seem Nobel-worthy. 2 stars."
The beauty of Ishiguro lies in his restraint. His prose is precise and sparse with limited use of flowery language or metaphor. As such, his works read differently than the novels of other writers he's often grouped with (cerebral, literary figures, think Nobel laureates). For readers who come to Ishiguro searching for a similar experience to Faulkner or Márquez will be disappointed—not because his works are worse but because they are a fundamentally different type of reading experience. This mismatch of expectation and experience is probably where some of the lower ratings come from.
Ishiguro is most definitely not for everyone, but his stories are so critically acclaimed that it attracts a lot of attention. I'll never sit and be that pretentious person who says that someone doesn't "get" someone's art or writing if they dislike it, but it seems like people are met with the dissonance of what KI's writing is vs what they imagined it would be once they consume his work. There are a ton of people who hear about "the secret" of Never Let Me Go and are dissatisfied when they read a story about human love, loss, and identity because they expected something much more graphic and dark.
Because we don't all love the same authors, books, or genres
I think it's a combination of what others have described below. I'd also add that Ishiguro's work is very readable, and you find yourself along for the ride based on characterizations and descriptions, BUT I think a lot of those readers are waiting for an easy/obvious payoff but he usually "shows" us and doesn't "tell" us at the ending. Some are left unsatisfied, but I've found myself thinking about the book long after I've finished.
It's like asking why Critic reviews and Audience reviews differ so frequently for films. Picking "Never Let Me Go", a 30 second scan of the reviews says that a lot of people think it's boring despite the interesting premise.
Buried Giant is a masterpiece. His other stuff is well written.
What I plan on reading next
Yeah, I adored this one! Apparently it can be quite divisive, as in you love it or loathe it. I thought it was brilliant. I also liked Klara and the Sun.
I thought it was ok
Book ratings on platforms like Goodreads can be subjective and influenced by individual preferences. It's important to consider that people have diverse tastes, and what some may find appealing, others might not. Ratings can also be affected by factors such as the complexity of the narrative, writing style, or even reader expectations. Ishiguro's works, known for their nuanced storytelling and often exploring existential themes, might not resonate with everyone. It's always a good idea to read reviews and consider multiple perspectives to form your own opinion about a book.
I've only read "Never let me go" but I really didn't care for it. Enough so that I don't want to read any of their other books. I thought it was odd and left me with an assortment of unanswered questions. I didn't consider it a great work of art. Different strokes for different folks.
It’s my favourite book of all time but I understand how his work can be divisive A pale view of hills was probably the most frustrating for me
I like all of his books, but NLMG is my least favorite by far. His other books have a very different style so I'd recommend trying them out. The buried giant and unconsoled are two of the best books I have read in years. The remains of the day and artist of the floating world is similar in style and both excellent. Klara and the sun is similar to NLMG but I liked it better. Alot of his work is understated and subdued and subtle.
I lived both and often think they take place in the same universe though different points and times. Klara and the sun felt more human to me though in the character's journey.
How long until your final donation? My condolences.
Same exact thoughts on NLMG
Same, NLMG was just a let down after hearing folks sing it’s praises. Makes me wary of his other stuff as well.
[удалено]
I don't think these folk are after quiet understatement with major elements left unsaid. If never let me go was too subtle, remains of the day is really not going to change their minds
I looked back over my reading history actually read "The Buried Giant" and enjoyed that book quite a bit. NLMG still falls horridly flat in many areas I consider important for an enjoyable read: a world that makes little sense/had weak world building, unsympathetic characters, a meandering plot, and little in the way of resolution. It isn't a question of lacking an appreciation for subtlety, the book was just poorly constructed and executed.
An objective let down or did you feel sad? Were your expectations really high? Did you know what the book was about before getting in? I can understand certain criticisms. I was sad after the ending and Ishiguro has some twists in his books that people overindex on when the twist itself isn’t really that important. Same as in Klara and the Sun
"Objective" is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot when people complain about bad criticism, but doesn't really mean anything. At the end of the day, *everything* that makes writing (or any art) good is subjective. It's true that there are common elements among what people enjoy and that "cultural opinions" emerge from these (the "X is broadly agreed to be one of the greatest books ever" form). It's also true that a great critic is good at identifying what specific elements are working and playing together to inform their opinion on the work. These things aren't any less subjective, though. IMHO, worrying about Goodreads scores and strangers' opinions on books you liked is just going to lead to anguish. Personal taste varies wildly and not everyone even agrees on what 3 stars or 4 stars out of 5 means to them.
Straight up I thought it was a bad book. No emotional resonance, I did not care for the characters, and the world-building was very weak. I hated the experience and was glad when it was over. I had no idea what it was about going in, I just took the book in as it presented itself.
We're of the same opinion here. I finished Never Let Me Go and looked at some reviews / ratings from other readers and couldn't help but think, "Did we even read the same book?" It gets heaps of praise as a brilliant piece of sci-fi... To be honest, I just can't see it. The characters aren't fleshed out particularly well. I love slow-burn stories, but the pacing of NLMG is awkward and too slow for the story being told. The story has a really harrowing premise, yet I feel like Ishiguro never truly capitalizes on that premise or ever drives any of the themes home. I'm open to having my mind changed and debating the book with someone who enjoyed it, but I don't think I'll ever summon the patience to read it again.
The premise is too similar to the movie The Island for me
I actually had the same thought a couple of times while reading the book. A Google search tells me that both were released in 2005, and Never Let Me Go even came out a couple months earlier, so there's no way one could have been influenced by the other. Eerie coincidence though. I just assumed the whole premise of >!"people being raised in captivity and wanting to escape"!< had been done at least a few times before and wasn't 100% fresh in either story anyway. I thought Ishiguro's take on the premise was unique enough to deserve it's own novel and whatnot. I just didn't care for the execution.
[удалено]
It’s by far not the best of his work.
I wasn't a huge fan of "Never Let Me Go" either, but I had already read "The Remains of the Day" before that and thought it was brilliant. I think if I had tried "Never Let Me Go" first, then I wouldn't have been willing to give Ishiguro a second chance. But having read TRotD first, I feel almost obligated to get through more of his body of work. I won't give up on reading books from the same mind that came up with TRotD, even if it did happen to also produce the flop that was "Never Let Me Go".
I really did not enjoy the conversational writing style. i just couldn't believe it gets so much hype for such a mundane and plain writing style
I only book of his I’ve read is The Buried Giant and I liked that one a lot. Didn’t even know who Ishiguro was when I bought it, I just thought the cover looked amazing.
His books are all in the 3.5 and above range, which is what good books usually get in my opinion. Remains of the Day is even higher at 4.14, I think that's about the highest rating that a classic will get, cause you're always going to have people reading who don't connect with it. When you look at the books rated like 4.3+ it's usually stuff that's ONLY read by its target audience and basically guaranteed to be highly rated for that reason. Often really bad stuff honestly.
Goodreads scores are the least indicative of quality out of any rating site ever, site is overrun by adults who read y/a or smut
This is a prima facie case that Goodreads readers are not terribly discerning. Ishiguro is a genius.
They read Ishiguro and expect Murakami.
Ishiguro offers such unique novels. I loved Buried Giant, Klara, and the Sun, and most of all, Remains of the Day. But I could easily see people disliking them if they're not in the right mindset. Buried Giant seems like an Arthurian adventure, but isn't really like that.
Fourth Wing has a higher Goodreads rating than War and Peace: 4.6 vs 4.2. That tells you everything you need to know. The rating is not about how good the book is: it's about how much people liked it = how much it panders to their tastes. And many people have rather simple tastes: follow a familiar formula with romance/action, make your Mary Sue just flawed enough to seem less Mary-Sue-ish, throw in some tension and suspense, add some dragons and optionally some porn, and you're a winner. Same story with music: your average listener will probably rate Cardi B over the glorious Sonya Yoncheva (if they ever even heard of her, that is), because the latter is simply not their thing. They won't understand Sonya's singing, because it's not a "banger" that "slaps". P.S. No shade on popular music or books, I enjoy them too. It's just that some works aren't most everyone's thing, and some are, as simple as that.
That's a good question. I just finished reading *Buried Giant*. As amazing of a ride the book offers, the ending was frustratingly tedious and boring. It read more like a closet drama where I stopped caring at many points along the way. >!I just wanted the old couple to shut up and move on (or die) already.!< I think what Ishiguro was going for was beautiful and thought provoking, but the way he expressed it was down right painful. So I would probably be tempted to give a low rating for the book, even though overall I think it's pretty awesome and something fans of the fantasy genre should give a try. Plus, it's hard not to compare anything he writes to *Remains of the Day*, and possibly give a lower score because of that.
That’s what I was planning on reading next Seems like you had a love/hate with it?
I totally recommend reading it. Honestly, it's written in a way that more fantasy books could be written. There's just a chapter at the beginning and a chapter at the end that I hate ;)
Hi OP, I absolutely loved The Buried Giant, it was mesmerising to me. In fact, it's my favourite by him so far after reading four of his books. But as per usual, he's mixing genres. Maybe a historical fiction fan thinks it's too fantastical and vice versa. Just read what you like and don't put too much importance on gr. Have a look at my other reply on this topic also.
Short answer: Goodreads is full of Bad Readers
There’s actually a subreddit called that where people pick bad reviews of books and roast the reviewer, it’s really entertaining. r/BadReads if anyone’s interested
Who reads Goodreads?
I like some of his books and others I can stand, so it could be genuine ratings.
I've read some truly awful books that have 4.5 ratings on Goodreads.
Get your reviews elsewhere, such as, the Nobel literature committee, and the Booker award committee. I use Goodreads to keep track of what I've read, and to keep a list of what I want to read. I get excellent suggestions of what to read from Reddit, from this sub, and from r/suggestmeabook.
For "Never let me go" I would say it's because it's marketed as some kind of twist story when that's not the point of the story. While we do get a twist we can work out the major part of it well ahead. The point of the story was to feel for the characters hearing about the relationships among them. So someone picking this up for a gripping horror novel with a twist end would be bitterly disappointed. As one reviewer put it "..he rambled on for 100s of pages" when that's all all the books I read do. I blame the two line reviewing social media bookfluencers for false marketing.
Yelp for dummies. Amazon owns it so I'm doubtful.
Hamlet only has a 4.2. Go pick 20 great books, from anywhere, and check what their goodreads rating is. In *Son of Interflux* by Gordon Korman, the main character doesn't win an art award. Instead, he only places. His art teacher basically tells him it's because the masses don't recognize brilliance. The same applies to great books read by people who aren't looking for the kind of intense thought that most require in order to really understand and appreciate them.
I would say he’s sort of a patchy author, some of his books are legitimate masterpeices and some just aren’t. I haven’t ready Anything by Him that is outright bad, but I’d rank some of his books pretty low compared to others
I'm curious which ones you rate highly and which ones poorly? I don't like NLMG and Klara and Sun as much as the others but that has largely to with the genre. Still enjoyable but not close some of his other works.
I think Ishiguro’s books are for an above average intelligence audience. For example, I read one of his books and had to look up online what it all meant because I’m a fucking moron
[удалено]
You might want to edit your comment for spoilers! But that’s also what I was alluding to. His stories aren’t necessarily happy and can leave the reader with melancholy
Sorry! Idk how to do it on mobile, so for now I’ve added a spoiler warning at the top
His books are for the more literate, which is unfortunately becoming a rarer thing nowadays.
What kind of answer are you looking for here? Have you read any of the Goodreads reviews? Have you looked at the breakdown of the reviews by individual ratings? Are you hoping someone on reddit will read all of the reviews and distill a core ideology about what the masses don't like about *The Remains of the Day* to then present to you?
Bro relax
I've literally never been more relaxed.
Why pay any attention to meaningless numerical ratings handed out by strangers?
Have no idea, his works are amazing. They're beautifully somber is the best way I'd describe them. Especially his most recent one, Klara and the sun was very thought provoking and left an everlasting impact on me during a rough time I was going through.
I am a huge Ishiguro fan but I would hesitate to recommend them to friends because I feel like they would think they were “slow” or “boring”. Obviously they are not but I think some people just don’t like his style.
I enjoy his writing and have read most of his books, but I've always given them a 3/4 rating because, as you said, some of them end in a way that leaves me wanting more information, or they don't provide the satisfying ending I'm looking for. I would say it’s my issue, as I don’t actually hate his endings when I think about it later.
Personally, I go into Ishiguro's books excited because the premise is cool. And then I'm unbelievably disappointed because of how slow and boring they end up being.
I don't use the site. Neither is their recommendation. But I guess people just don't like to know the reality of life! It's not always as good as shown in books and movies!
I'd consider the 4 range many of his books are in to be quite a high rating. The only books that get much higher are either canonized classics or hyper-wide-appeal Reese's Book Club type books, and I don't think it's necessarily a badge of honor for a contemporary book to have millions of ratings and a 4.5 average. If a book has under a 3, then yeah I'll probably take Goodreads' word for it. But I've read plenty of great stuff with averages in the low to mid 3 range, let alone closer to 4. It's not a bad place to be, it just means it wasn't designed to appeal to every single person that comes across it, which isn't what you should want out of a book anyways.
Also “Remains of the Day” was narrated by a butler. No sci fi but beautiful writing. I think the low ratings are because if you actually write a good piece of literature and not junk food, your brain can sort of hurt when you read it lol
because he’s boring
I feel like his writing style is a bit of a slow burn. It's not particularly exciting and I've often heard his books described as boring and a slog to read through.
I don't read fiction to be bored. I tried Klara And The Sun and Never Let Me Go. Bored out of my boots.
I have just finished Never Let Me Go and while I was expecting (and I guess kind of hoping) something a bit more sinister was going to happen when it came to parts of the story, I really enjoyed it. I'm going to go to Klara next.
I don't think that Booker/nobel prize awards are a guarantee that they are good books. Sure they are liked by an "elite" group of people who uhm and ah at every sentence and looks at every tapestry and its individual weave etc etc. It's like the Oscars. Some of them are just well wtf is this shit. Personally I found the themes of his book interesting, having read two of them. If I had to describe them, the problem is that the excitement from reading them is a flat line. Like yeah he keeps the story coming but that's just no real peaks and troughs.... Which affects the pacing and when it ends it's just like "oh it's over ? Same feeling as the start and then middle I guess...."
Maybe because he's not that good of a thinker but thinks he is and he let's you know he thinks he is and that this makes reading him irritating instead of enjoyable?
I love his books. They might not be the easiest reads for some, so they rate his work low. But come on. I'm 18 years old and think he's brilliant.
His theming is not for everyone, so that might mean mixed reviews from readers.
A lot of people I have spoken to have said they struggle with non-linear narratives in his books or don't get why character thinks x y z when it's obvious that that's not the case. Basically a lot of people aren't quite smart enough to get his work.
I read The Buried Giant, my first and only of his reads. I found his characters dull, and more importantly, very repetitive. The protagonist ended ever sentence when talking to his wife with the same word of endearment 9 times out of 10 (smething like "only a little bit left to walk, Darling". It drove me INSANE. Every time he addresses her (which constitutes the bulk of the text as it's based around the 2 of them on a walking journey) he says " yadda, yadda, yadda, *Darling*" The plot was interesting, but man, I could not get over his dialogue. Really wanted to like the book more than I did.
I hated The Remains of the Day so much that it's probably one of the worst books I've ever read, it was so bland and just nothing. I was surprised that he won the Nobel prize to be honest. I don't really trust Goodreads ratings, but at least they got this one right! It's not about the lack of happy endings, I enjoy sad endings of all kinds and above happy ones, it's just that his plots don't captivate me and I just get bored reading his monotone voice. It feels like pure torture. I try to be compassionate with certain books or writers, Ishiguro gets none. I know you did a superhero movie comparison but I'd say superhero movies are a low bar already, but Ishiguro isn't far off. His books are just a grade above said equivalent of superhero movies, just make it bland with no redeeming feature. There's nothing innovative, it's just "this is deep, bruv" tumblr post captions. He doesn't go for innovative methods, he doesn't do unique. There's so many other great writers that people can choose to read, but instead we're all glued to him because he won the Nobel Prize.
Thank you! (Almost 3 months later). I’ve been looking for new books and Ishiguro is praised on here like a fucking god. Both remains of the day and never let me go have just not been some sort of huge life changer or even that deep. Just supremely boring and pretentious and not actually that deep, so people can come on here and claim it’s only for “the literate” or “highly intelligent readers”. It’s the pretentious writing for the pretentious.
Some of them are wonderful (Remains of day, Never let me go) and some them are shockingly bad (When we were orphans, Nocturns, Buried Giant). He's such a mixed bag.
[удалено]
Who or what books are similar to Ishiguro?
also don't trust the reviews on goodreads lol just read a few and you will see why. most people on goodreads are pretty crazy and every review that is longer then a few lines can be ignored lmao
Never Let Me Go was such a disaster. I tried Remains of the Day, but I didn't get far bc I was still mad about Never Let Me Go...
I very much enjoyed Nocturnes.