I'm supposed to post part two of the Aus vs. US cover battle but this has been bugging me lately so I have to ask for you guys opinions and advice. For the book bloggers who have different rating scales for each part of the books: plot, character, writing, ending, even cover, it might be a little bit easier...but for those who only have a sole scale, how could you manage to rate a book precisely? I mean, if you find a story somehow between a 3 star and a 3.5 star, which section will you put it into? Or suddenly a book you come across appears to be better than all of the 5 star ones, what will you do? Will you rerate everything you've reviewed? It sounds pretty ridiculous to me but I still want to give the readers the exact ideas of the books. I'm kinda clueless now :(So what do you think? Have you experienced the same thing? Which actions did/will you take? Please share your thoughts!
2 comments:
I have one 5 "bite" rating system with half bites in the middle. My standards for 5 bites are pretty high so anything that gets 5 bites is considered "read nao" in my book. I don't have definite definitions of each level of rating. I just mention very general, "one bite and under means don't waste your gas to go to the library, three bites is ok and five bites is read nao, you fill in the blanks."
People need to get an idea of what type of reviewer you are in order to better understand your rating system since each system caters to its creator. I have read a book, (ahem, Breaking Dawn) that rendered negative bites but considering I don't think you can get better than 5, I'm not going to come across anything that goes beyond that. Most books that I love get either 4 or 4 and a half for ratings. If it's a five them it that mean's it's something really special since it's not an honor I dole out too often.
I think people have a tendency of screwing themselves because they're too liberal with higher ratings. If you rate everything as a four or five and you come across a book that completely blows your mind, you've thrown your own curve. And I actually just had a book where I didn't know if I wanted to give it a half rating or rounded up. I ended up rounding up.
As you might have noticed, I give writings for writing, characters, and plot (and a separate one for cover), but sometimes the ratings just don't add up to my big one, the Overall Rating. I go on my gut. Ratings and reviews are subjective anyway, and vary even for one person. Some days I might feel in a more lenient, more gracious mood, and will give a higher rating. Just because a new favorite book gets a 5 rating doesn't mean that you should go back and change your ratings. Your previous 5-ratings were 5-ratings at the moment in time; and they should stay that way. Of course your own opinions about a book will change over time, but a blog is like a diary in a sense: once things are written down, they're there to stay, even if you can tweak the little stuff. So give those 5s away! :)
Post a Comment