I know John Green is popular, but this is ridiculous.
The author of such beloved Young Adult novels as The Fault in our Stars, Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns, must be such a great author that he gets amazing reviews for books he hasn't even written yet. Case and point: There's already a page for a novel Green is reportedly working on posted on the social network for book lovers, Goodreads. The novel doesn't have a title, doesn't have a description and doesn't even exist in the world. And yet, it has a rating of 4.19 stars. Good for him.
Green pointed out the absurdity of the situation in a Tumblr post a couple of weeks ago. He wrote:
"Untitled: No Further Details about the Book Are Available is currently my 3rd best rated novel. TFIOS has an average of 4.41; Looking for Alaska is at 4.18, just squeaking past Untitled: No Further Details about the Book Are Available.
Neither Paper Towns (4.05) or An Abundance of Katherines (3.75) are as well-liked as the book I have not yet written."
At least he has a good sense of humor about the whole situation. Of course, that's got to light a fire under him a little to finally finish up this book and live up to his fans' expectations, too. Green previously wrote on his Tumblr that he is writing something, but it doesn't have a title yet and won't be coming out next year. So this incomplete Goodreads profile page is all we've got for now.
As you were probably able to guess, the ratings for this unreleased book are probably just the result of fans wanting to support Green, even if they haven't read the work that they're rating. Any book with a Goodreads profile, even those that haven't been released yet, can have average ratings and audience reviews, according to The Daily Dot, who also points out that the highly anticipated yet still unpublished upcoming novel from Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling's pseudonym), as well as the new Girl with the Dragon Tattoo book and the next Discworld novel, all already have ratings on Goodreads, too.
Obviously, this sort of thing is the problem with relying on user-generated information on the Internet, but this is the age we live in. Here's hoping we can escape it via Green's new novel soon.
