Maybe because he’s not that good of a thinker but thinks he is and he let’s you know he thinks he is and that this makes reading him irritating instead of enjoyable?

His books a lil odd and feel like character studies which I love.

But it would be boring if everyone liked all the same things! And had the same taste.

I would say he’s sort of a patchy author, some of his books are legitimate masterpeices and some just aren’t. I haven’t ready Anything by Him that is outright bad, but I’d rank some of his books pretty low compared to others

This is a prima facie case that Goodreads readers are not terribly discerning. Ishiguro is a genius.

His books are all in the 3.5 and above range, which is what good books usually get in my opinion. Remains of the Day is even higher at 4.14, I think that’s about the highest rating that a classic will get, cause you’re always going to have people reading who don’t connect with it. When you look at the books rated like 4.3+ it’s usually stuff that’s ONLY read by its target audience and basically guaranteed to be highly rated for that reason. Often really bad stuff honestly.

They mostly aren’t. Any quality book normally comes out with a rating in the 3.5 to 4.2 bracket. It’s only pulp for a particular fan group that gets higher ratings because normal people don’t read it and therefore rate it.

Anyway why would you care what goodreads thinks when the man has a Nobel Prize for Literature?

I’ve read some truly awful books that have 4.5 ratings on Goodreads.

Where the joining is of the Venn Diagram that includes “Most Readers” and “Social Media” is not a place where Ishiguro lives.

I read The Buried Giant, my first and only of his reads. I found his characters dull, and more importantly, very repetitive. The protagonist ended ever sentence when talking to his wife with the same word of endearment 9 times out of 10 (smething like “only a little bit left to walk, Darling”. It drove me INSANE. Every time he addresses her (which constitutes the bulk of the text as it’s based around the 2 of them on a walking journey) he says " yadda, yadda, yadda, Darling" The plot was interesting, but man, I could not get over his dialogue. Really wanted to like the book more than I did.

I’ve read Never Let Me Go and genuinely love it, but it has a very meandering and anti-climactic style (and is often very incorrectly as a horror sci-fi), and I imagine it’s not for everyone.

I hated The Remains of the Day so much that it’s probably one of the worst books I’ve ever read, it was so bland and just nothing. I was surprised that he won the Nobel prize to be honest. I don’t really trust Goodreads ratings, but at least they got this one right!

It’s not about the lack of happy endings, I enjoy sad endings of all kinds and above happy ones, it’s just that his plots don’t captivate me and I just get bored reading his monotone voice. It feels like pure torture. I try to be compassionate with certain books or writers, Ishiguro gets none.

I know you did a superhero movie comparison but I’d say superhero movies are a low bar already, but Ishiguro isn’t far off. His books are just a grade above said equivalent of superhero movies, just make it bland with no redeeming feature. There’s nothing innovative, it’s just “this is deep, bruv” tumblr post captions. He doesn’t go for innovative methods, he doesn’t do unique. There’s so many other great writers that people can choose to read, but instead we’re all glued to him because he won the Nobel Prize.

Some of them are wonderful (Remains of day, Never let me go) and some them are shockingly bad (When we were orphans, Nocturns, Buried Giant). He’s such a mixed bag.

Goodreads scores are the least indicative of quality out of any rating site ever, site is overrun by adults who read y/a or smut

There are a few serial 1star azzhats on the platform.

I wouldn’t take the rating system on Goodreads too seriously. I’ve seen people rate books that the author hasn’t even finished writing yet.