Taking and Leaving Information
I love Goodreads when it helps me make reading decisions. A book with a 4.1 average rating and tons of good reviews? It’s a quick decision to move ahead with the book if it’s already on my massive TBR. A book with 3.2 rating? Maybe I should hold off and read something else first.
The issue is that everyone has their own star system. We don’t give four stars for the same reasons. Knowing that, I generally glance at the stars but read the first few reviews. Are people saying the same thing?
The issue, of course, is that I often enter Goodreads excited to read a book only to find that other people have said negative things about the story. It clouds my experience of the book, generally making me feel lukewarm about it before I’ve begun the first page. How can a book recover from that when you’ve already been told that it’s boring?
It happened with a book recently—I wanted to read it because the description sounded great. But then the reviews were all over the place, so I kept delaying taking the book when it came up on my holds list. And now the e-book is gone from the library system. E-books, unlike paper books, are purchased with a certain number of downloads or time on the license.
It’s a hard line to walk: Using reviews to use my reading time wisely but not having reviews move me away from things I may have enjoyed if I didn’t know how anyone else felt.
6 comments
I rank everything on Goodreads against my expectations of it going in. So I will give a perfectly adequate book that I’m not expecting too much of a five star rating when others might rank it a three.
Also authors look there and I don’t want them to feel bad since they worked hard on their books. I do wish they had more stars though. I would like the ability to be a little more precise.
I don’t rely totally on the star ratings — they help, but if it’s an author or a subject I’m interested in, or if the plot (of a novel) sounds interesting, that’s a big determining factor in whether I’m going to pick it up. I also look to see specifically what my friends thought of the book (if they’ve read it) — realizing that not everyone is going to like the same things or for the same reasons. I’ve rated a few books 5 stars, only to find friends have rated it 3. Sometimes I realize the book did have its flaws, but I enjoyed it so much I gave it 5 stars anyway. For me, 5 stars generally means I absolutely loved it (even if it has flaws), that it really spoke to me in some way, or that it knocked my socks off, so to speak, especially if I wasn’t it expecting it to do so. Four means it was a really, really good read that I enjoyed a lot. Three means it was a good read, perhaps some flaws or things I didn’t like but overall, I’m not sorry I read it. Two stars = meh. There were perhaps some things I could appreciate, but overall the book just didn’t do it for me. I looked at my Goodreads stats — I’ve read & reviewed not quite 30o books there over the years. I tend to give out four stars most (more than half) of the time. I’ve given out 5 stars and 3 stars an almost equal number of times. I’ve only ever given out 2 stars three times, and I’ve never given out any fewer than that.
I agree with Jen that I wish I could be more precise sometimes, i.e., give out half-star ratings. That would help.
I don’t take the ratings that seriously – I will read some reviews sometimes, if I’m already on the fence about whether I want to read it. I know that fans will go and give a fan-biased rating rather than an objective one. I know there are cranky people who don’t like anything. I usually read about the book in question elsewhere, though, so I’ve sort of made my decision before I ever get to Goodreads.
I also use the Goodreads star ratings and reviews to help me decide what to read next (and sometimes whether to read a book at all). However, you’re right: not everyone uses the star ratings in the same way. I have also recently discovered (through painful firsthand experience) that I sometimes STRONGLY disagree with others’ opinions of what makes a 4-star or 5-star book.
Goodreads provides the following definitions for its star ratings:
1 star – didn’t like it
2 stars – it was OK
3 stars – liked it
4 stars – really liked it
5 stars – it was amazing
My book club teases that I am stingy with my stars, and by some folks’ standards, this might be true: I don’t give a book 5 stars unless it was very well-written, made a lasting impression on me, and is something that I would wholeheartedly recommend to almost anyone. I give 4-star ratings more frequently, and I used to give a fair number of 3-star ratings until a couple of author friends shared that they consider these ratings “bad.” (To me, the fact that I just *liked* a book isn’t a bad thing, but OK.)
Now, more often than not, if I’m inclined to give a 3-star rating, I will either (1) leave no rating at all, or (2) round up to 4 stars if it’s an author whose other works I have read and enjoyed. If a book is a less-than-3-star read for me, I generally won’t rate it at all unless I really disliked it.
More and more I am only relying on recommendations from fellow book-loving friends who I trust vs. Goodreads users generally.
Oh, and sometimes I am on the fence about how to rate a book, and so I simply leave no rating. I usually mean to go back in a few days when I’ve had time to process but often don’t get around to doing it.
I don’t take any notice of the overall star ratings on Goodreads AT ALL. I only take notice of the star ratings left by people who were in my bookclub (and so I know their tastes and whether or not they coincide with mine) or by people who I know have similar tastes to me. A book might have hundreds of five star ratings, but it might be in a genre I don’t enjoy, or by an author I don’t like, so those five-star ratings mean nothing to me. Likewise, my five-star ratings would not mean anything to anyone unless they knew what I like. Why let other people’s negative reviews spoil your enjoyment of a book?
Also, I follow the Goodreads ratings (as noted by Loribeth above) to the letter. I’ve rated 100s of books with that rating, and if I changed now it would confuse me too much! Three star books for me are still books I enjoyed and would recommend, and would buy the next by the same author. I don’t understand why three-star are not considered good ratings. They’re more than positive.
I don’t write reviews – unless for either a positive or negative reason I feel a compulsion to do so.