Goodreads Choice Awards 2013 Final Round

This is it, the last chance to cast your votes in the 2013 Goodreads Choice Awards. We are down to 10 finalists in each category and the ultimate winners will be announced after this last round of voting ends on Monday, November 25th.

There is no surprise that Khaled Hosseini's And the Mountains Echoed has made it into the final round in the Fiction category. Joining him is Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being. And it looks like I will now be using my vote to support Hosseini as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah did not make it into the finals. Neither did Anthony Marra's A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, nor Lauren Grahams Someday, Someday, Maybe.

Even now that I have finished reading Marisha Pessl's Night Film, I think I will stick with my initial vote for Stephen King's Joyland, as both books made it into the finals for Mystery & Thriller. And joining them is Robert Galbraith's The Cuckoo's Calling. It will be really interesting to see who ends up the winner for this category, and I suspect it will be a fairly close race.

Both Cathy Marie Buchanan's The Painted Girls and Hannah Kent's Burial Rites made it into the finals in the Historical Fiction category. Despite what is sure to be stiff competition coming from Amy Tan's The Valley of Amazement and Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries, I am hoping Kent's Burial Rites pulls through, though I am thinking it is a bit of an underdog.

And it looks like I once again have no one to vote for in the Science Fiction category as write-in nominee The Long War by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter did not make it into the finals. I am still glad to know there were people who liked it enough to write it in and get it included for the semi-final round. Maybe the third book in the series will do better.

Naoki Higashida's The Reason I Jump is still going strong in the Memoir & Autobiography category. But so is Malala Youfsafzai's I am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. So this another category to watch and may end up being a very close race as well.

And as for my favorite category, all three of my picks, Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl, Sarah Dessen's The Moon and More, and Ruta Sepetys' Out of the Easy, made it into the finals. Also, it is interesting to note that Rowell actually has another book that was nominated and has made it into the finals along with Fangirl, and it's Eleanor & Park, her other book that was published earlier this year. So if Rowell does end up taking the prize, for which book will it be? I am voting for Fangirl, but I also haven't read Eleanor & Park yet. Honestly, I will be glad to see any of the books I mentioned for this category take the prize, but I can only vote for one.

So that is my take on the final round of the 2013 Goodreads Choice Awards. Cast your votes, make your predictions, and stick around for the results. It has already proved to be an interesting race and the results will surely not disappoint.