I don't just rate books out of whole numbers, they get halves as well. I award them an additional 0.5 when my feeling about the book is actually a combination of two star ratings.
Anyway, you probably don't need me to explain this to you.
The reason I am going into this is because I finally got around to rating every single book review I have ever done (now a total of 60) with this system. Because I only started using the star rating system relatively recently, a lot of my reviews missed out. Not anymore.
And here is what I have noticed. I am a very big on rating people in the mid-range. 15 books have 6 / 8 stars, and 12 books have 5 stars.
Then 6 books have 6.5 / 8 stars and 7 books have 7 stars. Very dense in the mid - high range.
I award full stars very rarely - in fact only 2 books of the 60 have got 8 stars. Similarly, I seem to rarely read a terrible book, with only 2 of the 60 books receiving 2 stars. None have received 1 star.
This is probably most interesting to me because it is my reading and my book reviews, but it has made me wonder... maybe I am not being discerning enough? Is it normal for all these books to be receiving such similar rating or should they be more spread out than they are? I suppose in the end it doesn't matter. I am going to rate them what I think they deserve, but it is interesting to think about.
7 comments:
I've found the same problem when I rate. I think it comes down to a feeling that few books really deserve you're full rating, where decent books deserve good ratings, but not perfect. I could have something to do with what you're reading, as well. If you're picking things you've heard good things about and are looking forward to you're ratings will probably be more consistent.
I feel like I give too many books ratings in the 4 star range (I rate out of 5). I thought about doing away with ratings but I am going to leave it as is for now.
My rating scale is only 1-5, and I find most books end up getting 3s and 4s (good, or very good). It has to be a really fantastic book to get a five, and I just don't come across them so often. And books that are so poor to get a 1, I usually give up on and don't even finish.
The vast majority of my reviews end up being rated at around 4-4.5 out of 5. The book has to be very special to get 5 out of 5. I don't give that grade out very often either.
As for the lower end, I like to think that the reason that I have so few bad grades is not so much that I am not discerning enough, but rather that I have a good feel for what I will or more precisely will not like and so I avoid those books that will not work for me most of the time.
i think one reason you rarely give the lower end is because any book that has got to you has got past a lot of other filters first.
any book that is published has been okayed by half a dozen people, edited, etc. there's a limit to how bad a book can be after all that.
and it's also managed to capture you're attention somehow. you're a lot less likely to read a book that has nothing that appeals to you than one that does.
so the lack of 1/2/3 star ratings could simply be you're doing a good job at a) spotting the inherent competence in most published books and b) picking out things that have a good chance of being liked by you.
I think that's about right. Most books are pretty good or decent. I've found the same distribution with my reviews on Goodreads (I don't have a rating system on Caroline Bookbinder.) If you've not had any one-stars, count your blessings! Too bad about only 2 8-stars though. But if all books were 8-stars, we wouldn't appreciate them as much, would we?
i have never been happy with the standard 5 star system.
sometimes i rate based on merit, sometimes pure enjoyment, sometimes technical prowess of the author..
i have been meaning to incorporate some tiered system myself to standardize, but laziness is a powerful thing :)
Post a Comment
I love getting comments, so please don't hesitate to leave me one!