Monday, 9 July 2012

Am I being too harsh with my ratings? Some thoughts on Goodreads

I have to ask myself time and time again, am I being too harsh with my ratings on Goodreads?

I browse through many other bloggers, book tubers and friends ratings on there and they happily give 5 stars to a book they liked. Most books I really enjoy I only give 4 stars to. My reasoning behind this is because I believe that a 5 star book is something that changes your life. That makes you smarter or creates elicits an extreme emotional response. Books I really enjoy don't necessarily do that.


I can thoroughly enjoy a book that is decently written with good characters, but I cannot love something like that. There has to be something more about the book, something special that makes you feel like everyone needs to read that book, or that if you could only ever read one story again it would be that one, over and over until you die.

That is what a 5 star rating is to me, which is why perhaps I don't rate things that way on my blog. I don't like defining things by a number. Numbers mean different tings to me that they do to you. 4 stars might not be worth your time but to me I think they're great.

So how do you rate your books on Goodreads and do reviews on Goodreads matter more than ratings? Leave me your links to your Goodreads, I am always looking for more people to interact with on there.

-Iona
Posted by at 11:08
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4 comments:

  1. Beverley9 July 2012 at 15:29

    I think it's good to be stricter on ratings but it just depends on how each person define '5 star' That's why I always look on the person's blog (if they have one) to see if they've written a 'break-down' of their ratings since everyone has different views. And in my opinion, reviews matter more to me than ratings because I can see what the person really thought of the book!

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    1. Iona English9 July 2012 at 20:50

      I think that's a really good way to look at things, might try and see things like that more often :)

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  2. The HoneyNerds15 July 2012 at 08:23

    I completely agree with you actually! I usually am more sparing with 5 star ratings on Goodreads, because I feel like books that embody everything I'm looking for in a story deserve that. And that is a really subjective way of judging a book. So I don't do a rating on my blog either. I feel like a review is a better way for potential readers to see if they should read a book than just rating it highly or not. I hope authors know that 4 star ratings are really good too!

    Charlene
    http://bookishwhimsy.blogspot.com/

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    1. Iona English15 July 2012 at 18:20

      I checked out your blog and it's really great :)

      And I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I don't want authors to think I didn't love their book just because I gave it 4 stars. It just didn't change my life.

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