Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

What books have you read with the lowest ratings count?
Why do you think so few people have read them?
What caused you to read such obscure books?

Sorting Instructions
1. Go to "My Books" in the upper left part of the screen.
2. Click "Settings" in the choices to the upper right of the screen.
3. Check the box for "num ratings" and then "close" to close the window.
4. Click on the "num ratings" column header to sort by the number of ratings.

I'll go.
What books have you read with the lowest ratings count?
Narrative of the Captivity of William Biggs Among the Kickapoo Indians 0 ratings (Even though I gave it ***?)
Wizard Crystal 7 ratings

Why do you think so few people have read them?
William Biggs- because even in the obscure genre of captive narratives, this is not one of the better-regarded entries.
Wizard Crystal- because Pinkwater is a cult author at best, and this was published when he was still unknown.

What caused you to read such obscure books?
William Biggs- I was in an 1800s nonfiction phase and randomly picked it off Gutenberg.
Wizard Crystal- I am a Daniel Pinkwater fan beyond all normal limits.

You?

Oh at first I thought you meant the lowest GR rating, of which I have a few favourites that nobody else seems to love. I'll go check my shelves and see which books have the fewest ratings and report back....

Well, I've got dozens of self-published books and short stories/novellas on my shelves with only a couple ratings. And a handful of ARCs that haven't been published yet. Those all seem self-explanatory, so I'll rule those out and go with full-length, non-self-published books...

It looks like the most obscure one I've read since I joined Goodreads was Whiskey and Wild Women: An Amusing Account of the Saloons and Bawds of the Old West.

A whole 4 ratings. I doubt it was a blockbuster even when it was published forty years ago, and it's been out of print since then. Generally speaking, outside of a handful of mainstream books, most non-fiction doesn't have a ton of ratings/reviews, so it's not too surprising that this one is so obscure.

A couple of years ago when I was in Denver, my shuttle driver and I were talking about the city's history and for about half of the ride, he entertained me with this really funny but implausible tale about how a madame named Mattie Silks got into a gun duel with her lover's mistress in which they both came out unscathed, but the lover ended up with a pair of bullet wounds in him.

I decided I just HAD to know more about this woman, so when I got home, I read a couple non-fiction books about prostitutes in the Old West and a fictionalized account of Mattie Silks' life. Sadly, the incident didn't happen the way the driver relayed it to me. It was still an entertaining story though.


The most obscure novel I've read (non-self-published, non-ARC) is Walkabout Woman. I'd hazard to guess it doesn't have many ratings since it's been out of print in paper editions for nearly 30 years, and its current e-book editions are self published (and LOOK self-published). I read it because it was nominated for the Mythopoeic award, and I frequently browse that award's nominees in search of good books to read.



Phil wrote: 0 ratings (Even though I gave it ***?):..."

There's a bug that's been going on for the last couple of months... I tried combining it with other editions and refreshing the book stats, but if that doesn't work in the next couple of hours, it'll have to be reported to the Feedback group to be fixed manually.

(I went ahead and posted it in the relevant feedback thread, since refreshing didn't help, but with it being a long holiday weekend for most people, it'll probably be days before it gets looked at.)

I have a few books with 0 ratings, but they're textbooks that I read for study, which explains why nobody else has reviewed them. I think they need an actual review, not just a rating to get counted.

I'll mention some books I've enjoyed with under 50 ratings-

On Not Winning the Nobel Prize by Doris Lessing 12 ratings. As an acceptance speech it probably doesn't get read much, but it's worth it.

Frida Kahlo by Frida Kahlo 25 ratings. It's a great art collection and biography, overlooked because it's a big expensive book released for a gallery exhibit, but worth finding at the library.

Mothers of the Novel by Dale Spender 33 ratings. This is a fantastic resource for female authors before Austen. It's a brilliant witty read and it introduced me to more early female authors than I'll ever be able to read. I have no idea why it isn't more widely read, it probably needs republishing to gain a new audience.

I thought the same Pink!
Well, it looks like the more obscure books I have on my shelves are all volumes I had to read for classes at university. They are quite technical books, and I think a lot of people in my field read them, but just a few rated them.
Beside this kind of books, I have a collection of ancient Greek poetry. Do I need to say more?!

Tintinnabula wrote: "Beside this kind of books, I have a collection of ancient Greek poetry. Do I need to say more?! ..."

Depends on the poet! Sappho, for instance, has thousands of ratings just for the one particular translation I read - though I'm sure some of her other translations/collections are a great deal more obscure.

I have 13 books on the list Just One Rating

All obscure because of their age and the fact that most really weren't all that good :) .

I read them simply because of my reading list which has many, many obscure works on it.
Such as my current read, The People of the Pole . A french pulp from 1907, never before translated into english, which will be my 14th entry on 'just one rating' unless someone beats me to it :) .

Edit: Oh never mind, this book already has like 5 ratings, its that stupid bug again that has the book listed at 0 ratings.

I think I have many with only a few ratings, sometimes I have been the first. They are not really that obscure, just new/old(ish), but not that many people read books in Finnish. Even many of our biggest classics only have few reviews.

I'd love to hear some ancient Greek poetry recommendations, Tintinnabula!

I have three that I love that are relatively low:
1. The Laura Ashley Book Of Home Decorating (probably just because it is old) 29 ratings
2. On a Voiceless Shore (it's about Byron's travels in Greece--maybe because it is so specific) 24 ratings
3. My absolute favorite children's book ever, The Wish-Tree (I think because it was out of print until recently) 7 ratings

I love hearing about obscure books, except they can be hard to find ... :-(

This thread is everything I had hoped for. The Whiskey & Wild Women book looks awesome.

I was going over my list and noticed that Irene Iddesleigh only has 52 ratings. What? That book is a legend! Does no one else like to smell the mystery food in the back of the fridge?

Butterfly Winter by W P Kinsella only has 25 reviews and 92 ratings. Perhaps because it was his first book in 13 years that few people were aware of it and because the setting is the Dominican Republic, not Iowa. A shame because he is such a gifted writer.

Great idea Phil!

Funny that one of the lowest-rated books on my shelves is a memoir of a Russian sea captain about his time in Japanese captivity =)

I agree with Tytti that, once you include non-English-language literature, it's easy to find well-known and important books which are hardly rated on Goodreads.
But quite a few of my books have also shown up the bug mentioned - you can see a dozen ratings and a couple reviews on the book page, but 0 in stats. Tried refreshing, let's see if it works.

the two books in my read list with smallest no. ratings (11) are The Strange Boarders Of Palace Crescent by E. Phillips Oppenheim and The Dark Eidolon by Clark Ashton Smith, neither of which I would've thought could be described as "obscure", both of which are pretty good, and both of which are freely available on t'interweb - so go figure!

A favorite of mine is A Cry of Angels, published in 1974 it has 94 rating and 24 reviews. I have always been curious about why this book has not done better. The reason I first read it was simply because it was available. I was temporarily stationed out of the country and it was one of the books there to read.

Bob wrote: "I was temporarily stationed out of the country and it was one of the books there to read."

That reminds me of Cosmic Banditos. Legend has it that it flopped upon publication, so the author mailed all the unsold copies to troops stationed overseas in the first Gulf War. It got passed around because there was nothing else to read over there and became a cult classic by the end of the war. It currently stands at 1,306 ratings, which is bestseller status by the standards of this thread!

Here's a novella that I read last year that I put into goodreads.

Fudge Day: A Novella

I'm still the only one who has read it. The author is a regular guest at my hotel and he gave me a copy of it.

Squire wrote: "Here's a novella that I read last year that I put into goodreads.

Fudge Day: A Novella

I'm still the only one who has read it. The author is a regular guest at my hotel and he gav..."

I think that makes you the King of Obscurity! It doesn't get much more obscure than that. However, I recently TBR'd Bertha of the Big Foot (Berte as grans piés): A Thirteenth-Century Epic by Adenet le Roi, which has zero ratings. How can I be the only person interested in the folklore of a big-footed French queen?

I've been the first reviewer of a couple books I got for free in exchange for a review.

Phil wrote: "Squire wrote: "Here's a novella that I read last year that I put into goodreads.

Fudge Day: A Novella

I'm still the only one who has read it. The author is a regular guest at my h..."

The title sounds interesting.

I have a load of books with only one rating – mine. But they are all in Danish. Only two exceptions:

Bernhard Nordahl: Framgutterne : tre aar gjennem skrugar og nat : beretning om nordpolsfærden. It can be read as a stand alone, but it makes a lot more sense after Fram over polhavet. There seems to be a German translation, but as far as I know no English.

Second exception is Stefan Rozental: Niels Bohr : memoirs of a working relationship

We'll Meet Again in Heaven: Germans in the Soviet Union Write Their Dakota Relatives 1925-1937

Has four ratings and one review (mine).
I read it because it relates to my family background.

Few people have read it because it's a non-fiction / obscure topic / small publisher and (i think) it's out of print. Plus, it's not a happy read. I was surprised to find a copy in one of my city's university libraries.

Skipping the Portuguese books, which have low ratings because, well, they're in Portuguese... the book with the lowest number of rating is The Mad Millennium: A Play, probably because to have read it one had to be obsessed with the Horrible Histories series (*ahem*)... I haven't read it since middle school, despite a memory of really enjoying it, so I have no idea how well it aged.

Of the Portuguese books my favorite is O Príncipe com Orelhas de Burro by Jose Regio. It's a beautiful retelling of the prince with donkey ears fairytale, with some philosophical reflections woven in.

Phil wrote: "What books have you read with the lowest ratings count?"

What an interesting question! I don't know how to find this out, though. Is there a way to display number of ratings on my "read" shelf?

Ha! I figured it out :)

So, I have five books on my list that only have 1 rating! Three of them are fiction which I read for fun:

Bro. Brother's Journal (2012) - a hilarious compendium of entries from the diary of the fictitious Freemason Bro. Hiram Brother. Somehow Mark Twain, Buffalo Bill, Teddy Roosevelt, and even Sherlock Holmes all manage to find their way to his "sleepy little lodge" in Kansas City. I read it because I know the author and because I love diary/epistolary books.

The Pallid Giant (1917) - a very early post-apocalypse novel. I read this because I love post-apocalypse as a genre, and because the author belonged to the Noyes family that started the Oneida Community in central New York.

Jill's Victory (1952) - a heartwarming horse story about a city girl who learns to get along with her country cousins. I read this because horses! and because I love 1950s teen novels (before the label "YA" was invented). Surprised this one isn't more widely read.

The other two are non-fiction:

The Management of Oral History Sound Archives. - read this one for work (my day job as an archivist)

Discovering Freemasonry in Context: The Laboratory of Moral Science - read this one for work (my freelance job as an editor/proofreader/indexer)

What books have you read with the lowest ratings count?
Michael Turner's Fathom: Dawn of War Beginnings Ave rating 3.18


Why do you think so few people have read them?
It's a graphic novel, and my guess is that the audience for this subject and genre is limited

What caused you to read such obscure books?
Per my review, "Sorry, but I only got this because I needed a graphic novel for a Goodreads challenge. It was also free on Amazon, thank goodness! I'm much more of a classics, historical fiction, history type. One star is all I could muster for the graphic art. Story line? Can we give minus stars? "

Michele wrote: "Phil wrote: "What books have you read with the lowest ratings count?"

What an interesting question! I don't know how to find this out, though. Is there a way to display number of ratings on my "re..."

I had the same question. I don't know how to find this out. I can't seem to figure it out on my own.

I found a few obscure books on my shelves:

Remember Me - I picked this up on vacation and enjoyed the story of Charles Blessing. (1 rating and it's mine)

The Coat in the Woods - I picked this up from a book sale, not previously read I'm sure, because I had never heard of the title. It was a decent read. (2 ratings)

In the Company of Animals - I enjoyed the stories in this book. Very heartwarming. (8 ratings)

Michele & Cindy, on your "My Books" page, go to "Settings" at the top. From the list, choose "num ratings" and close the window. This will bring a ratings column onto your page.

Petra wrote: "Michele & Cindy, on your "My Books" page, go to "Settings" at the top. From the list, choose "num ratings" and close the window. This will bring a ratings column onto your page."

I didn't know this. Thanks. Just added date published.

I love the stories on this thread.

I am a big proponent of using lists, award winners, and algorithms to choose a book, but it loses some of the humanity of reading.

For many of you, reading an obscure book involves a personal acquaintance, a unique location, or the old-fashioned skill of sifting through the stacks at a garage sale. Your memory of that book, even if it's not a five star read, is connected to that small part of your life. And I think that's really cool.

I also love reading about these little forgotten books that some author put work into and then were nearly lost to oblivion. Some of the books on this thread are versions of more mainstream types, and some of them are really quirky and special.

Keep telling the stories! I'm digging this.

For me reading unknown/obscure books has another side: You really do not know what will happen. For something to become mainstream/a classic/read by many people there are some “rules”. The story must follow some sort of logic, or be in a genre. There are a lot of exceptions, but still the author has some sort of contract with the reader: You give me your time, and in return this will at some point make sense. Reading obscure books you cannot even know if the author comply with that.

I have two books sitting on a shelf for 20+ years that I bought because they looked obscure. The Third Ghost Book (called "Sælsomme fortællinger" (strange stories) in Danish, just a ghost book is not that interesting) and Black Tickets: Stories.

Sometimes I listen to obscure music for the same reason. Back a few years ago when last.fm was a thing, there was a channel called “Less than 2000 listeners”. It could be anything. Home made demos, music that would break through in a few months, African, Polish, Turkish, strange experimental stuff.... in one delicious jumble.

J_BlueFlower wrote: "For me reading unknown/obscure books has another side: You really do not know what will happen."

Yes! This!! A lot of pop culture today (books, music, movies) is so predictable, especially (it seems) in America. I love to be surprised :)

I'd found a few obscure books when I frequented LibriVox for its audiobooks, and some readers were so good that I'd listened to pretty much everything they recorded.
Got to some juvenilia of P.G. Wodehouse this way, and do you know, I found it enjoyable! He's the only author who can make me like reading a story which is all about cricket when I don't know a half-volley from a mid-on.

Thanks for the help in finding the numbers ratings. I have a funny story on one of my Goodreads books with a 1 rating. The Figure Eight, or, The Mystery of Meredith Place. A friend recommended this book, said it was a naughty book. It was written in the 1800's, I didn't think it would be naughty so I previewed it. I read 2 chapters and kept reading and looking for the naughty parts of the book. It was a really good, clean mystery. Why it only has a 1 rating is sad. Maybe the author is not well known.

Tuvalu: A History - only 4 other people have rated it. It is a really good book if you are doing a round the world challenge.

It has really puzzled me that there are no other ratings for Stefan Rozental: Niels Bohr : memoirs of a working relationship than mine. The book is in English and Stefan Rozental was no random dude. He was Niels Bohr's personal assistant for almost fifteen years.

To me this looks like his name must be misspelled and he should be combined with the real Stefan Rozental on Goodreads. I just cannot find him. Maybe this book is just very rarely read.

Ok, maybe people just don't like physics. Niels Bohr's most read books has 69 ratings.

Cindy wrote: "Thanks for the help in finding the numbers ratings. I have a funny story on one of my Goodreads books with a 1 rating. The Figure Eight, or, The Mystery of Meredith Place. A friend ..."

I've just read The Dead Letter by the same author. It's got 31 reviews and is a bit better known, probably because it is regarded as one of the oldest mysteries ever written. She seems to be one of those authors who was well-known at the time, but has since faded into obscurity. I enjoyed the book and will try The Figure Eight.

I've now started on Shadowed by Three which has no ratings at all. It is also an old mystery from the 1870's and part of my female authors challenge.

Cindy wrote: "Thanks for the help in finding the numbers ratings. I have a funny story on one of my Goodreads books with a 1 rating. The Figure Eight, or, The Mystery of Meredith Place. A friend ..."

Ooh, that looks good!!! I recently ran across another British author that I'm surprised isn't better known: No Fear Or Favour by Henry Cecil. Only 14 ratings!

I was given Knud Rasmussen: Den Store Slæderejse for Christmas. Only 16 ratings. He is famous in Denmark. Has his own museum and a statue. .... but apparently nobody reads his books.