For their celebration of YA Week, Goodreads once again created a few lists specific to YA. Last year I analyzed these lists and compared them to my own reading, and I thought that was a really interesting exercise. Thought I’d do the same again this year.
CLICK ON THE CATEGORY HEADINGS TO SEE THE LISTS ON GOODREADS.
100 Top YA Books:
This is an all-time list that Goodreads came up with using books that are most often on shelves and their ratings (it was updated for 2019).
- I’ve read 54. (Which happens to be the exact same number I’d read from last year’s list, though the books have changed slightly.)
- I have 17 of them on my Goodreads TBR (down from 19 last year). 11 of these I own but haven’t read yet (up from 10 last year).
- 17 books aren’t technically on my TBR, but I probably plan to read them at some point. (This is up from 9 last year. I’m not sure if I want to read more books now or if the newer books on the list are the ones that met this criteria for me.)
- There are 12 books I either haven’t heard of or have no real desire to read. (Down from 18 last year.)
Just a few of of the books from this list I own but haven’t read yet:
Rising Stars in YA:
For this list, Goodreads looked at first-time novelists from the last three years and measured popularity by the number of ratings. There are 44 total authors on this list.
- I’ve read 16 of these authors. (I’ve read two or more books by 4 of them—not too bad since many of them haven’t published more than one book yet.)
- I have 15 of them on my Goodreads TBR. (7 of which I own but haven’t read yet.)
- 3 books weren’t technically on my TBR, but I probably plan to read them at some point. (In fact, I added them to my TBR now.)
- There are 10 books I either haven’t heard of or have no real desire to read.
A few of my favorites:
The Most Anticipated YA Books for the Rest of the Year:
For this list, Goodreads looked at the number of times a book has been put on shelves. They split the list into categories (Fantasy, Mystery, Science Fiction, Historical Fiction, and Contemporary), so I’m not sure if that affected which books made it onto the list. There were 24 total books listed.
- I’ve read 0.
- I have 4 of them on my Goodreads TBR. (I don’t own any.)
- 6 books aren’t technically on my TBR, but I probably plan to read them at some point (they’re sequels in series I’m not caught up on—I only put the next book in a series on my TBR).
- There are 14 books I either haven’t heard of or have no real desire to read. But, let’s face it, this will probably change as soon as reviews start rolling in.
A few of the ones I’m anticipating:
The Best YA Books of 2019 (So Far):
For this list, Goodreads looked at the number of reviews and the rating. There were 20 total books on the list.
- I’ve read 2.
- I have 5 of them on my Goodreads TBR. (3 of which I own but haven’t read yet.)
- 6 books aren’t technically on my TBR, but I probably plan to read them at some point.
- There are 7 books I either haven’t heard of or have no real desire to read.
The two I’ve read:
Goodreads also has two other features for YA week you might want to check out: Can You be ‘Too Old’ for YA? Our Expert Opinion: No and Name Your Bestselling YA Novel. (My novel is apparently going to be called The Kingdom of Wild Neighbors—not quite sure what that one’s about, but it’s definitely … intriguing?)
I haven’t looked at these lists yet, but I plan to. I don’t read as much YA as you do, but I’ve probably read pretty many of them. You should read Gentleman’s Guide and A Monster Calls ASAP. I loved them.
I definitely plan to read both of those sooner than later (hopefully very soon!).
I second reading Gentleman’s Guide. Love that book. I own A Monster Calls and Strange the Dreamer and need to read those. I’ll have to look at the lists, but I probably haven’t read that many in the top 100; I don’t always read the more popular books. haha
-Lauren
http://www.shootingstarsmag.net
I’ve heard fantastic things about all of those. If only I had more hours in the day to just read!!
I haven’t looked at the lists, but I’m going to now. Based off the books you’ve shared . . . Six of Crows is fantastic 🙂 I haven’t read Children of Blood & Bone, but I’ve heard great things about it. The Toll is on my TBR (just need to read book 2 first)!
I still need to read Thunderhead too. Shusterman is one of my favorite authors, so I’m ashamed to be behind on his books!
This is a really cool post with all the statistics and all that.
What’s your own most anticipated read for this year? 🙂
Five Dark Fates, without a doubt. I’m SUPER dedicated to that series!! 🙂
i read a lot of ya. gonna have to check this list
Hope you do!
It’s interesting to see what books are trending, and where I stand in the trend. I always feel the lists are fantasy heavy, and that’s not my go-to. I actually read one of the anticipated and it was OK for me. I am right there with you waiting to see how TDC ends. Stuff got real in that last book
I hadn’t really thought about the skewing towards fantasies in these types of lists. Fantasy must be specifically popular with Goodreads readers.
Ooh, interesting. I was just on GR this morning and saw that it was YA week. I agree with Sam that GR YA lists are often very skewed toward fantasy, which isn’t my favorite genre to read either.
I hadn’t really noticed that (since I’m a fantasy fan myself), but you’re completely right! I guess since they just use the number of times books have been added to people’s shelves, fantasies must be popular with Goodreads users. At least they split the Most Anticipated list into categories.
I really enjoyed Six of Crows! THUG is one I’ve been dying to read. I saw the movie and bawled my eyes out watching it.
I loved the movie too—I think they did a fantastic job with it!
I haven’t looked at the lists yet, but it would definitely be interesting to see how many of them I’ve read! I read a lot of YA, but I’m quite slow getting to the latest books, so I’m not sure how many I’ll have read.
Lately I haven’t been reading as many of the new releases either—especially since I’ve been focusing more on MG since that’s what I’m writing.
I loved when you did this last year. It’s neat to see where your stats changed. I’m going to head over there and check them out. I’m most intrigued by the most highest rated books so far this year. I wonder how many I’ve read?! hahah ❤️
Yes, I was curious to see how things had shifted from last year.
That is an interesting way to look at these lists. I read 46 from the 100 best. And of the last category I’ve read 3. Same as the ones you have haha.
I thought it was fun to take a look at the lists and see how many of the favorites I’ve read. Seems like we’re pretty similar in our numbers. 🙂
[…] released several YA book lists in celebration of YA week. Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction analyzed these lists and compared them to her own reading. This looked like a fun exercise (and […]
This is so interesting!! I love looking at stats, so this post is absolutely fantastic ? I apparently read 34 out of the top 100 YA books on Goodreads, which is more than I thought I did. And I’ve only read 4 of the highest-rated YA books of 2019 so far, but I do have most of them on my TBR.
It’s fun to look at these sort of lists and compare, right?
That’s pretty cool that a lot of your numbers were really close to the same from last year for the first one. And 54 is a lot to have in common with the list! That’s interesting that they’ve done all these lists based on different things. I’ve only read somewhere between 7 and 9 from that top 100 list, not sure about two because I might’ve read them as an actual teen. There are a few on my tbr though!
I read a LOT of YA, so I wasn’t surprised that my numbers were relatively high. I definitely have more that I plan to read too!