I’ve recently been thinking a lot about giving books star
ratings and how this works on Goodreads. I know a lot of reviewers really
dislike the star system and so choose to just not rate books at all. While I do
think that rating books can be a little problematic, I personally like doing it
because it gives people a really quick overview of what I thought of the book.
For instance, I categorize my book reviews by star rating so that people can
quickly see what I like and what I’m not such a fan of.
But ratings can mean different things to different
people. On Goodreads, giving something three stars means that you liked it. For
me, three stars normally means it was so-so, while books that I like get four
stars. So, just so that you people know, I’m going to clarify what each of my
ratings means.
1 Star- Disliked; Stay Far Away!
These are books I extremely disliked. Normally I only
rate a book one star when I disliked it so much that I actually stopped reading
(this has only happened to one book so far.) Normally this means both that the
book is boring me and that it has a lot of content that I’m not comfortable
with.
2 Stars: Not Worth the Time
These are books that I just really didn’t care for. For
instance, Twilight would go in this category.
They’re poorly writen, somewhat boring, and just really didn’t resonate with me
at all. I will definitely not be buying these books, re-reading them, reading
the sequels, or recommending these to anyone.
3 Stars: Not Bad, Give it a Try
These are books that I’m on the fence about. They had
some good elements but also a lot of flaws. I probably wouldn’t read any
sequels, or more from the same author, but I might recommend them to a friend
who likes the genre. Still, I definitely wouldn’t buy these or re-read them.
4 Stars: Pretty Good, I Enjoyed It
A lot of books tend to fall into this category. These are
mainly books that I was excited about reading and had heard a lot of good
things about, but then just fell a bit short for me. Maybe some of the
characters felt flat, or the writing was just okay, or it dragged, or there was
a lot of questionable content. Whatever the reason was, these books were good
but not absolutely phenomenal. I’ll read the sequels, try to win the books or
get them as presents, and recommend them to book-loving friends, but I won’t
re-read them over and over.
5 Stars: Highly Recommended
I loved these books! These books are nearly perfect; they
might have some minor flaws, but overall everything is great. I’ll definitely
be re-reading these books, talking about them to all my friends, and any sequel
will automatically be shoved to the top of my TBR pile.
I hope that clarifies any questions you might have about
my ratings. Now, over to you. If you run a book blog, or rate stories on
Goodreads and Amazon, what criteria do you use for each star?