I know ratings books is a topic that has been discussed many times, but it's been on my mind lately.
After two years of blogging about books I haven't gotten tired of reviewing or discussing what I'm reading. On the contrary, I've found so many great recommendations and such great support from all of you. However, I have gotten tired of rating books. I have a hard time giving a book a 1-5 star scale rating sometimes for so many reasons.
1) Books are so different. I might love a new release and hate a classic one week and then have the opposite experience the next week. But how do you compare For Whom the Bell Tolls and Bridget Jones Diary (I liked Bridget better) or David Copperfield and The Corrections (that time it was David all the way). Just because a book didn't work for me doesn't mean it has no literary merit.
2) Books, even from the same genre, can be good for such different reasons. I can read Moby Dick and struggle through huge chunks of it and get bored or frustrated, but then love a line and come away from the whole experience feeling like I was challenged and grew as a reader. So the book gets a high rating. But I can also read a hilarious book, that's short and easy, but it makes me happy and laugh and it gets the same rating. Are these books the same, hell no! Yet some how they both end up with 4.5 stars.
3) There are so many other factors that I can't control about my reading situation at that moment. What mood am I in? Am I particularly busy that week? Did I listen to it on audio and if so was the narrator amazing/awful? Did I just finish a giant book or a great book? All of these things could potentially affect how I view the book.
I guess it boils down to this. I rate books because when I read other peoples' review, I want the bottom line. There's good and bad in every book, but did they like it in the end, that's what I want to know.
I rate books based on how they affected me, not on their merit in the universe as a whole. Take my ratings with a big grain of salt and rely heavily on your taste and what you know you'll like. Usually if a book gets a 1 or 2 from me, it's probably not going to be good no matter who you are. But if it varies between a 3 and a 5, so much of that is just personal.
Photo from here.
