u/kern3three

Hey all I hope this is okay! My wife and I are big readers (me mostly sci-fi fantasy), we always have a yearly challenge, and we enjoy talking about our books, which was our favorite, what did we read that year, etc…

So in my spare time I built us a simple app that lets you import your reading history/library and then does these quick fire head-to-head matchups of your past reads. It then uses those preferences to build you a comprehensive ranking of your books (for the fellow nerds it’s Elo scores, like in Chess). I figured it would be a helpful reading challenge motivator.

I’ve been surprised though at how much me and my wife share and talk about our matchups — she’ll often send me a “Dune vs The Return of the King!?!” Screenshot and we’ll agonize over the choice together. Or we’ll compare rankings (“Speaker for the Dead is your number 1!?”), see how a new book we both read stacks up, etc. it’s been surprisingly fun and a way to revisit all the amazing books we’ve read and great content for debate/discussion amongst each other and friends! It even shows you your favorite authors in the end, which has helped me hone in on who to further explore.

Anyways, we’ve had so much that I put some more energy into making it usable by others and wanted to share, see what people think, and make it better. It’s completely free of course, just a side project by a lover of books and scifi nerd. Would love for this community to give it a try - I could see the matchups being fun booktok content (“help me pick 😬 Circe vs Fourth Wing”)

Anyways hope you enjoy and let me know what you think, thanks for checking it out!

https://www.booksorted.app/

And for those interested, my current rankings: https://www.booksorted.app/?snap=3df3373eee (you can share yours too! Might be good content for your booktok accounts too??)

Hey all I hope this is okay! My wife and I are big readers (me mostly sci-fi fantasy), we always have a yearly challenge, and we enjoy talking about our books, which was our favorite, what did we read that year, etc…

So in my spare time I built us a simple app that lets you import your reading history/library and then does these quick fire head-to-head matchups of your past reads. It then uses those preferences to build you a comprehensive ranking of your books (for the fellow nerds it’s Elo scores, like in Chess). I figured it would be a helpful reading challenge motivator.

I’ve been surprised though at how much me and my wife share and talk about our matchups — she’ll often send me a “Dune vs The Return of the King!?!” Screenshot and we’ll agonize over the choice together. Or we’ll compare rankings (“Speaker for the Dead is your number 1!?”), see how a new book we both read stacks up, etc. it’s been surprisingly fun and a way to revisit all the amazing books we’ve read and great content for debate/discussion amongst each other and friends! It even shows you your favorite authors in the end, which has helped me hone in on who to further explore.

Anyways, we’ve had so much that I put some more energy into making it usable by others and wanted to share, see what people think, and make it better. It’s completely free of course, just a side project by a lover of books and scifi nerd. Would love for this community to give it a try - I could see the matchups being fun bookstagram content (“help me pick 😬 Circe vs Fourth Wing”)

Anyways hope you enjoy and let me know what you think, thanks for checking it out!

https://www.booksorted.app/

And for those interested, my current rankings: https://www.booksorted.app/?snap=3df3373eee (you can share yours too! Might be good content for your bookstagram accounts too??)

I see tier lists on here all the time and I love them... So I did what any reasonable person would do and built a whole app to rank books lol

It's basically just head-to-head matchups — "which did you like better?" over and over — and it generates an Elo ranking (like in Chess). My wife and I have gotten a real kick out of it, not just the rankings but actually sending screenshots of touch matchups with each other, pulling our hair out choosing between The Blade Itself and Assassin’s Apprentice (!?). I think we enjoy revisiting our old books and thinking about them again, been surprisingly fun.

Here’s my top 50 after 4,000 matchups: https://www.booksorted.app/?snap=3df3373eee

You can probably tell I lean way heavier sci-fi than fantasy. So love any recs based on what I clearly already like. If Senlin Ascends and Tigana are in my top 25, what am I missing? What fantasy should I be adding to my library and running matchups on?

Some of my fantasy standouts/surprises:

- Senlin Ascends at #12, above Dune at #14 — I will die on this hill. Bancroft is criminally underrated. I’ve even enjoyed his Hexologist series so far a good bit
- Tigana at #23 — Kay's prose is unreal and this might be the best standalone fantasy novel out there
- The Blade Itself at #39 and Assassin's Apprentice at #46 — in case you were wondering how these shakes out, love both series, First Law prob a bit more

And of course I’ve got Fellowship (LOTR) and some Harry Potter peppered in my top (I grew up with HP).

I built the app because I genuinely wanted this for myself — you can import your own Goodreads or StoryGraph CSV and run matchups on your own library. Would love to see some of your rankings if anyone tries it! And see what you think of it compared to sharing a tiers (I sorta need a good image not just a link I’m guessing that you can share?? Let me know what you’d like).

and if you do, do share your top here, I’d love to know! And especially if you also have Senlin way higher than it has any right to be 😂

So I read way too much SFF and at some point I got obsessed with figuring out how I'd actually rank everything against each other. Built a little tool that just asks you "which book did you like better?" over and over and spits out an Elo ranking of your library (it’s what Chess does). Ran every book I’ve ever read through it.. 4000+ matchups, (this is what happens while waiting for Red God), and here's where each RR book landed for me:

🥇 Golden Son — #13 all time
🥈 Morning Star — #18
🥉 Light Bringer — #24
4. Red Rising — #40
5. Dark Age — #75
6. Iron Gold 

Three of the six sitting in my top 25 books of all time of course, bloodydamn right.

Red Rising at 40 is probably getting some credit for starting it all.. I'm not sure it's genuinely my 4th favorite in the series but it earned its spot for starting it all. Dark Age sits around 75 and Iron Gold is my lowest... I think the multi-POV shift threw me off. Need to reread but honestly I don't think it is as fun/exciting as LB or hits as hard as DA. 

My full ranked list if you're curious what that looks like: https://www.booksorted.app/?snap=3df3373eee

So where do you howlers land? I fee like it’s gotta be a debate between Golden Son and morning Star but excited to hear what ya think

Hey all I hope this is okay! My wife and I are big readers (me mostly scifi), we always have a yearly challenge (36 this year for me! 100 for her 😳), and we enjoy talking about our books, which was our favorite, what did we read that year, etc…

So in my spare time I built us a little app that lets you load your reading history/library and then does these quick fire head-to-head matchups of your past reads. It then uses those preferences to build you a comprehensive ranking of your books (for the fellow nerds it’s Elo scores, like in Chess). I figured it would be a helpful reading challenge motivator.

I’ve been surprised though at how much me and my wife talk about our matchups — she’ll often send me a “Dune vs The Hobbit!?!” Screenshot and we’ll agonize over the choice together. Or we’ll compare rankings (“Speaker for the Dead is your number 1!?”), see how a new book we both read stacks up, etc. it’s been surprisingly fun and a way to revisit all the amazing books we’ve read.

Anyways, we’ve had so much that I put some more energy into making it usable by others and wanted to share, see what people think, (see what breaks! Hopefully not much), and make it better. It’s completely free of course, just a side project by a lover of books and scifi nerd.

Anyways hope you enjoy and let me know what you think, thanks for checking it out!

https://www.booksorted.app/

And for those interested, my current rankings: https://www.booksorted.app/?snap=c97d3fe34a(you can share yours too!)