Countless Stars: Why I Don’t Rate Books

Sorry, stars.

These days, it’s easy to review and find reviews about pretty much anything. Need to find a local Thai restaurant? Don’t worry–there are three in your area and one of them has been rated four-and-a-half stars. It’s a helpful way to find coffee shops/shoes/apps/etc. that you’ll most likely enjoy.

That goes for books as well. At sites like Goodreads, you can rate and review pretty much any book you’ve ever read. For example, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone has currently been rated 4.35 stars by 1,840,709 people. If you’ve been living under a rock for the last fifteen years or so and have no idea what this novel’s about, it can be helpful to see that so many people rated it highly. “Hmm,” you say, “maybe I should check this out!” Conversely, if you find a book that has a really bad rating, you might be more inclined to skip it. I know I’m at least a little swayed by star ratings.

But.

I don’t like to rate books.

When I first joined Goodreads, I jumped on the star rating train. Four stars over here! Five stars over there! But sometimes I’d run into the problem of wanting to give a half-star and Goodreads isn’t really structured that way. I’d round up, wanting to be nice, but that felt disingenuous when compared to all the other full star reviews. Also, sometimes I’d finish a book and, coming off that good post-read vibe, rate it really highly. But then a few weeks would go by and I’d wonder if the book really deserved a five-star rating. Should I go back and change it? Or rate based on that initial reaction? And what did these stars even mean, anyway? Were five stars for books that I had all around positive feelings about, or should they be reserved for my all-time favorites? How bad does a book have to be for it to get one star?

For me, it’s hard to quantify the reading experience. When I try to rank books by stars, I end up feeling like J. Evans Pritchard in Understanding Poetry*:

A few things I find problematic. First, books aren’t necessarily like a dinner out or a futon–they stay with you and change you, and they have the potential to keep changing you over time. When I was in fourth grade, the American Girl books would have been at the top of my list. (Samantha’s in particular–Victorian era for the win.) If I were to give them a star rating now, should I take into account how I loved them in fourth grade and how they developed my interest in early 1900s history? Giving Samantha Learns a Lesson a two-star rating feels cold, even if I’m not necessarily picking up the book these days.

Second, it’s hard to compare books based on numbers. Maybe you loved one aspect of a book but found others less compelling, while another book was just kind of solid. Does that mean they both deserve three-star reviews? Ideally you could explain these reasons in a review, but that review doesn’t go into a book’s quantifiable average star rating. Can you give a literary classic like Ulysses a five-star rating and give the exact same rating to a hilarious and touching picture book like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day? They’re very different but both beloved and praised in their own way. But how can a rating system differentiate between the two?

Third, even though ratings are ostensibly to make reviews clearer, they can vary dramatically from person to person. One reader might give three stars to books they enjoyed and save five stars for their very favorites. Another might see three stars as a rating for books that had some major flaws (you are missing two whole stars, after all) and give four or five stars to books they enjoyed. So if the system isn’t standardized, what’s the point?

I couldn’t get over these issues so, a few months ago, I removed all my ratings. Granted, I didn’t have more than a hundred or so books rated anyway, but it gave me a sense of relief. Now I use Goodreads more as a tool to keep track of what books I’ve read (especially helpful for Friday Fifteen reviews).

I know that rating can be a hugely helpful tool and I don’t think anyone should stop rating books if they find it helpful. But for me it doesn’t work, and I feel better now that I’ve stopped trying to make it work.

*Anything for a Dead Poets Society reference, right?

(image: Clarissa de Wet)

13 thoughts on “Countless Stars: Why I Don’t Rate Books

  1. Wanderer says:

    Dead Poet’s Society reference ALWAYS wins.

    I actually wrote my first ever review for a book on Amazon…mainly because the book bothered me THAT much. I’m definitely going to be more aware of the actual reviews than the stars if I look at reviews for further books…and perhaps I will only write them if I LOVED it or HATED it. One star or five—no in-between.

    Thanks for the thought-provoking post on ratings!

  2. Lynne Matson (@LSMatson) says:

    Annie, I LOVE this post. I agree with you 100%! I use GR the way you do: to keep track of books I’ve read, and keep tabs on those I want to read. I don’t rate books either, for the very reasons you cited.

    But I have another reason I don’t rate my books–a reason which ties into the ones you named. I’m a freaky fast reader, and if I rated every book I read, I’d feel the overwhelming need to EXPLAIN my rating in excruciating detail and I’d never get anything written of my own.)

    Great post Annie!

  3. cindylrodriguez says:

    I usually rate but do not review, mostly because to do it well takes a lot of time and effort and I have a limited supply of both :.) I will not ever rate something with 1 or 2 stars. I don’t feel the need to do that to any author or piece of work. I only rate books I genuinely like.

  4. scottrudolph says:

    Annie, some days you say what I’m thinking, or what I am about to be thinking after I read your blog. Rating I’m discovering doesn’t work. I recently read a book, and when I went to review it on Amazon it had all 5 star ratings. I felt like a creep giving it a 3, but in my mind I was thinking….ummm…its not Oliver Twist or The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall, how do I give it a five. This post made me feel better about perhaps stepping away from ratings altogether…Thanks for sharing!

  5. Charleen says:

    I don’t pay too much attention to average ratings because, as you say, the ratings mean different things to different people (not to mention varying tastes). But when I rate a book, I’m rating it for myself as much as for others, and I find having a general guideline, imperfect though it may be, is more useful than having nothing at all. But to each her own.

  6. colleenmhughes says:

    Annie! I’m not sure I’ve ever read your blog?? I think for some reason I thought you were only on tumblr. But I’m playing on Twitter today, and you learn something new every time I guess. I do rate on Goodreads, but it also drives me crazy that I can’t give half-stars. And I feel weird giving, for example, The Baby-Sitters Club graphic novel #1 the same number of stars as Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Even if I felt both succeeded at what they are. And I HATE Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene and gave it one star, but I feel bad because I rated Jodie Sweetin’s memior with two, and that just feels… wrong. I tend to make my “reviews” little tiny one-liners because I don’t have that many friends on Goodreads.

    • Annie Cardi says:

      Haha, you basically found out that I am obsessed with all forms of social media. (Well, except Pinterest.) I think your point about different books “succeed[ing] at what they are” is so well said. How can you even start to compare things?

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