Quote:
Originally Posted by caleb72
I never used to rate 5 stars, but I changed my mind more recently. One reason was because there are no .5 ratings on places like Amazon and Goodreads so I feel like I need to go up or down.
Also because I tried to realign my thinking somewhat to how other people were rating. I noticed that 5 star was a very common rating and my history of no 5 star ratings made me feel a little stingey. So I compromised a little and rounded some marking up.
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This is true for me, too.
My feeling is that most books will be three stars. Four is for excellent and five is for blown away and/or for love (and love tolerates some faults), but lately I've been bumping up some 4½-star efforts. Two is for worthwhile but seriously faulty, one is for total failure in execution or an overwhelming flaw.
A few factors that will skew my ratings up include that I'm adding in memorable books I've read in the past and those tend to be four stars or better and that I can usually tell if something's going to be terrible (by my standards) and don't bother. One star is when I've been blindsided. Thus I give a book one star if/when I abandon it. I saw someone on Goodreads had a category called too-crappy-to-finish and I borrowed it. I'll give a reason for the one star, but I think it's legit to rate an unfinished book in that circumstance. I'm not going to waste my time finishing something dreadful just to justify a ranking and in general, I find poor reviews more helpful than good ones. Too many people too easy to please out there.
Despite the pressure upwards, my overall ranking at Goodreads is about 3.6 or 3.7, I think, which seems reasonable.