Over the years, since I joined the bookish community back in 2016, I have developed a system for how I rate books. For me as a reader, it is important to have a set way of rating books so I can know which books I liked, which I didn't and this helps me with which books I should keep. In today's post I will be explaining my book rating system, why I no longer use Goodreads (sort of) anymore and how my system has developed over the years.
My Book Rating System
My book rating system is fairly self-explanatory. Like Goodreads, I use 1-5 stars. I very rarely use half stars anymore, which is something I'll explain later in this post. I'll give you a quick run down of what each star means:
- 1 star- I absolutely hated this book, there were no redeeming qualities
- 2 stars- I disliked this book, but there were elements I could see why people liked
- 3 stars- this book was okay, I liked bits of it but there were more things I didn't like overall
- 4 stars- I really liked this books, but there were a few things that I didn't like but the good outweighs the bad
- 5 stars- I adored this book, it was perfection, I would die for this book and it is consuming my life in an unhealthy way
In all honesty, my book rating system is fairly simple. I've been using this specific system since late 2018 and I've found that I have a consistent rating system. The reason my system has changed a lot is because since I've started studying creative writing at university, I've spotted that I am much more critical of other writers work. I do miss just reading for fun, but now when I love a book, I really love it.
I mentioned earlier that I have stopped (mostly) giving half stars since using this system and that is because I think it is easier to see which category a book fits into. However, there are a couple of books that sometimes fit in between certain categories. This category falls in the middle of 3 and 4 stars. Sometimes a book is good, but it isn't good enough to be a 4 star book. An example of a recent book that falls into this category is Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed. On my goodreads account, I've rated this book 4 stars, however in my reading log it is a 3.5 stars. This is because, while I enjoyed it a lot, I found it predictable. It was a fun, fluffy contemporary and there is nothing wrong with it. It just didn't wow me.
My Reading Stats
Yes, I am a total nerd and spent way too long working out my bookish statistics. As of publishing this post, I have read 336 books on Goodreads. 48 of those books I read for either school, college or university.
I then had a super nerdy moment and I made a pie chart with my star ratings, for anyone else that's super nerdy about this sort of thing here are the stats for that pie chart:
8 books have no rating (2.4%)
2 books have 1 star (0.6%)
21 books have 2 stars (6.25%)
88 books have 3 stars (26.2%)
126 books have 4 stars (37.5%)
90 books have 5 stars (26.6%)
48 books read for uni/school (14.3%)
The following stats are my average ratings according to Goodreads for the last four reading challenges I took part in:
2019- 3.7
2018- 4.0
2017- 3.9
2016- 4.0
Why I No Longer Use Goodreads
Like many readers, I have moved away from Goodreads to some extent. From 2018 all through 2019, I posted reviews on every single book I read on Goodreads as a way of tracking what I had read and my thoughts on it. I have since stopped doing that because I found it a bit too much and because I wanted to keep my thoughts to myself. Often, at the time of finishing a book I will have a lot of thoughts on it, but looking back at some of the books I've read over the years, I doubt I would feel the same way about them now. I keep a track of my thoughts and ratings in my creative journal now, and I've found this method works for me.
How I've Developed My System
The main reason I've developed this system is because as a reader, I've matured a lot. I no longer give 5 stars to every book like I used to in 2016. It takes a lot to give a book five stars. So far in 2020, I have read 19 books and I've only given two of them 5 stars. I've developed this system to be a more consistent book rater.
To me, this system means I can make sure there is a clear indication of my feelings towards it. As I've already mentioned, my thoughts will change over times, but these ratings are meant to indicate how I felt at the time of reading it. I wanted to make it harder for a book to get a five star rating for me as it felt that I used give out a lot of five stars. Now, when I give a book five stars, it does genuinely mean that I loved it and it has become one of my all time favourite books.
So, that concludes my post on how I rate books and how I developed this system. How do you rate books? Do you have a criteria for giving a book a certain rating?
Carenza :) x
