The Goodreads Choice Awards have a fundamental problem. As purely a popularity contest, where the vast majority of the people voting haven’t read all of the books in a category, it tends to spotlight only the most bland titles. These are generally bestsellers that had huge marketing budgets and frankly don’t need any help getting attention. Still, over the years I’ve kept an eye on the Goodreads Choice Awards as a way to see what the biggest books of the moment are. This year, though, the long list hit a new low.

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