Salman Rushdie gave To Kill a Mockingbird 3 stars on Goodreads

[Barty]

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/8/8370227/...dreads-ratings

Turns out he did not know the ratings were public. He thought they were only a way to get recommendation for books he likes. In other words, he was being truly honest!

Harper Lee probably gives his books 2 stars, so it's all good

[eschwartz]

Absolutely despicable.

Whatever happened to snobbish literary author solidarity???

[Froide]

Originally Posted by Barty

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/8/8370227/...dreads-ratings

Turns out he did not know the ratings were public. He thought they were only a way to get recommendation for books he likes. In other words, he was being truly honest!

Harper Lee probably gives his books 2 stars, so it's all good

LOL.

On Goodreads, people share what they are currently reading and give books they've finished a star rating. They also have the option of writing a brief review. Both can be viewed by anyone who follows a given user. That was what Rushdie didn't quite understand when he started giving brutally low ratings to some of literature's most beloved works.

Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize–winning To Kill a Mockingbird got only three stars. Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis's award winning first novel, which Time declared one of the 100 best novels published since the magazine's inception, received a single measly star. Only a few novels, including F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, were deemed worthy of a perfect five-star rating.

Almost immediately, Rushdie's followers on Goodreads questioned his judgment.

Several takeaways, off the cuff. Other (and better) ones will doubtless occur to me after I press "Submit Reply":

• RTFM, especially if you're a public persona
• Despite what TFM, the terms of service, and the privacy rules state at any given time, never trust social media - or any other online venue - with any information you wouldn't air publicly
• It's prudent to use an alias on public media because of #2, especially if you're a public persona
• With regard to tastes in books (or anything else), diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks
• Despite the popularity of phrases such as "the wisdom of crowds", sometimes crowds can be dumb, especially on social media (except of course, most MobileReaders)

[Barty]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Absolutely despicable.

Whatever happened to snobbish literary author solidarity???

Some of the most entertaining things you can read are famous writers completely trashing other famous writers.

Friedrich Nietzsche on Dante Alighieri

“A hyena that wrote poetry on tombs.”

Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound

“A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.”

Faulkner on Hemingway

“He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”

Hemingway on William Faulkner

“Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”

Gore Vidal on Truman Capote

“He’s a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.”

Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope

“There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.”

[eschwartz]

Oh, does the literary elite still know how to do that? I thought they had devolved into a special club that bashes Amazon...

Yes, I know several of those quotes.

[gmw]

I like Salman's response: "Well, I don’t like the work of Kingsley Amis, there it is. I don’t have to explain or justify. It’s allowed."

That, to me, is exactly the point.

I must admit that I find it interesting when my favourite authors reveal what they like to read, and sometimes I'll try a few out (if I haven't already). Sometimes I agree with them, and sometimes I don't. It doesn't matter, it doesn't change what I think of their work.

It's worth remembering, too, that many of us read famous books because they're famous, not because they are what we might normally pick up. If it turns out to be a disappointment, it may simply be because it doesn't match our tastes - quite likely we guessed that at the start, but we read it anyway to see what all the fuss was about.

The article claims "But the ratings, if Rushdie really did think they were private, might be some of his most honest expressions of opinion about literature." That's a bit of a leap. Other possible interpretations include: he thought it was private he could just muck around with the ratings to see what happened; he thought it was private so filled in a lot very quickly without much consideration. My guess, from what Salman is quoted as saying, is that it was probably a mixture of all that.

[RHWright]

I also gave TKaM a 3-star rating. So what?

Though GR gives a suggestion as to what a star rating means, there has been extensive discussion over there about how everyone uses them individually/differently/idiosyncratically anyway.

Maybe he's only rating books he likes and wants recommendations for and *his* 1-star is a basic "liked it," 3-star is "a really excellent book," and 5-star is reserved for ">SQUEE!< OMG this book is the Mary Poppins of books--practically perfect in every way; not a word or piece of punctuation out of place or dispensable. It changed my own life in nearly inexpressible transportive ways!!!"

Why this is newsworthy, other than it is the celebrity version of the stupidity that has gone on over ratings at Goodreads (and ratings inflation, sockpuppetting, bullying, counter-bullying, harrassment, etc) for some time, is beyond me.

[WillAdams]

It's worth reading Pedram Moallemian's answer to this question on Quora: http://www.quora.com/What-do-Iranian...Salman-Rushdie just to have the full story on why / how he Salman Rushdie became a news figure.

[Ryvyan]

Literature preferences vary and I don't fault anyone for not liking what I like or liking what I despise. Sure, if we are friends, I may pretend to give them so much side-eye for general bad taste. But what anyone likes is so personal that it doesn't actually matter.

Unless they don't read. Then I judge them pretty badly.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I'm not sure why people think 3 is a bad rating. if you follow what Goodreads prescribes to the ratings:

1 - didn't like it
2 - it was okay
3 - I liked it
4 - really liked it
5 - it was amazing

Anything 3-5 is a worthy read, even 2 depending on the audience. For me, my rating can vary for a book depending on the day and a lot of the times a book just wasn't the right one for me at the time meaning what might have been a four becomes a three.

In the end its a personal opinion and aesthetics aren't really arguable. Like others, I fail to understand how this is news.

[eschwartz]

@HomeInMyShoes,

Ordinarily I would agree. But there is a more important issue, as I stated above. -- surely this demands he rate it

Originally Posted by RHWright

>SQUEE!< OMG this book is the Mary Poppins of books--practically perfect in every way; not a word or piece of punctuation out of place or dispensable. It changed my own life in nearly inexpressible transportive ways!!!

[Catlady]

He's entitled to like what he likes. But I'm entitled to think his judgment is seriously flawed.

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

I'm not sure why people think 3 is a bad rating. if you follow what Goodreads prescribes to the ratings:

1 - didn't like it
2 - it was okay
3 - I liked it
4 - really liked it
5 - it was amazing

Anything 3-5 is a worthy read, even 2 depending on the audience. For me, my rating can vary for a book depending on the day and a lot of the times a book just wasn't the right one for me at the time meaning what might have been a four becomes a three.

In the end its a personal opinion and aesthetics aren't really arguable. Like others, I fail to understand how this is news.

Good point. Rare is the book that receives 5 stars from me. I give a rating of three stars all the time, and in the universe of books woud consider two stars the most frequent.

[issybird]

I've seen people express the desire that Goodreads ratings were more granular, I.e., allowing for half stars. I think the current system is better, but I acknowledge that for me, a three-star rating covers a lot of ground. It ranges from adequate without major flaws, that is, pretty lukewarmish, to really quite good, but not achieving the level of excellence that four stars requires.

As for Rushdie, I think one factor might be that the book doesn't resonate quite so strongly with non-Americans. The themes are universal, but the setting is quite particular. But in any case, it makes no nevermind to me.

[KenMagee]

Originally Posted by issybird

As for Rushdie, I think one factor might be that the book doesn't resonate quite so strongly with non-Americans. The themes are universal, but the setting is quite particular. But in any case, it makes no nevermind to me.

I love the expression 'it makes no nevermind to me', although I first heard it as 'it don't make no nevermind'. Either way, it neatly sums up my feeling about the Salman Rushdie review.