Saturday, January 10, 2009

lack of ratings

If you've noticed the lack of rating on both books this year, please note that I'm re-thinking my rating system for books again.
My quandary is based on the fact that emotions will often determine how a book is rated. I may read a book that is very good, but if I'm not in the mood for that type of book the rating might suffer. Alternately, if I happen to read a book which fits my mood perfectly, it may be rated higher than another book that may be worth the same rating but suffers a lower rating simply because it's not the perfect book for me at that time.
Until I make some decision I'm going to leave the rating off the reviews. Since I'm no longer part of the book group that required a rating on the books read, I'm comfortable taking my time and will gladly listen to any discussions on ratings, pro and con, in comments or via email.

6 comments:

1morechapter said...

I'm one who likes to see book ratings, though I struggle with giving them myself sometimes.

One of the reasons I like them is that I don't like to read reviews of books I haven't read because of possible spoilers, but I always look at the book rating. If I see 4-5's from most bloggers on a particular book, I know it should go on my tbr list.

Lori L said...

This is a good point, Michelle. Perhaps I need to assess how big a point spread might be present based on my mood? With a 0-5 rating system even the difference between a 4 and a 3.5 might seem larger than it really is, all things considered.

just me said...

Maybe instead of a number rating, you could do a word rating that would perhaps be more descriptive than possibly misleading numbers.

Lori L said...

Hmmm... interesting idea, Just Me. Perhaps keep my descriptions of the rating but just drop the numbers? Or would you get more descriptive than that?

Memories of yesterday said...

I like the creative ratings. Like, noon, 9pm, 12, 3am - for how long you kept reading it because you couldn't put it down. LOL But then I am silly.

Lori L said...

Oh, Stacey, I hadn't even thought of being clever with my rating system... That could put a whole new spin on things.