Today I’d like to talk about ratings. I know this is a topic that has been widely discussed. However, I’ve never talked about it on Erin Reads, so I figured, why not?
A few days ago I was talking with a friend about rating books on Goodreads. We were bemoaning the lack of half-stars in the three- to five-star range. I have a pretty good feel by now of what constitutes a whole-numbered star for me, but I miss the half-stars offered by LibraryThing for the occasional book that falls in between.
As you have most likely noticed, I don’t rate books according to any set system on Erin Reads. For me, ratings are a way to remember my own personal sense of a book. My experiences as a reader, a blogger, and a bookseller have shown me again and again that one (wo)man’s literary trash is another (wo)man’s treasure, so I don’t feel comfortable assigning an overall rating to books I talk about here. I’d rather visitors read my thoughts on a particular book to get the whole story, as it were, of my own experience with the book and infer based on that than glance at a rating and feel they’ve gotten a sense of the book. I don’t believe any book can be boiled down to a single rating — there’s always more to it than that. So, in the spirit of “better safe than sorry,” I’ve never set up a rating system here.
I do, however, rate books on Goodreads. Perhaps this seems like a contradiction? My reasons for doing so are twofold. First, as mentioned above, I use Goodreads ratings to remember how I felt about a book overall. Because I know what makes a four-star book to me, for instance, so I can better recall my general feelings toward a book given such a rating. Second, I find it’s really helpful, when looking up new-to-me books on Goodreads, to see how others, with whom I’m Goodreads friends and with whose reading preferences I’m familiar, have reacted to a particular book. Since I use and love that feature of the website, I feel I should contribute.
Does this mean I am against rating systems on blogs? Of course not. Sometimes, I’ll see a blogger has rated something very highly, and I’ll feel compelled to read the review and find out why. The opposite is also true. Almost never do I glance at a rating and skip the review, so I’m really not sure why people will do so if I start using a rating system on Erin Reads!
Do you rate, on your blog or on your favorite book-tracking site? Why or why not? How do you use or react to others’ rating systems? I’m quite curious!
At the same time, though, I can’t really tell the difference between the narrators’ voices as they add their segments to the larger story. Obviously, there are plenty of context clues to help keep the narrators straight, and I’ve never felt I didn’t know who was talking at any given point. My mention of it here is less a complaint and more an observation. It’s interesting to me that an author so adept at creating characters doesn’t do much (at least, in my opinion) to differentiate their voices.
Have you ever wondered about the finer points of space travel? What happens to a human being who spends a few weeks without gravity, for instance, or maybe what sorts of psychological tests astronauts may go through before being sent into the void? Packing for Mars will answer these questions — and many, many more — in ways that are accessible, fascinating, and downright hilarious.
Catherine Parkstone is starting fresh when she moves from England to rural France, leaving behind her sister, mother, two grown children, and ex-husband and embarking on her own dream of making a living as a seamstress and tapestry maker. As she begins to settle into her new, rather isolated life, she encounters the sorts of unexpected quirks that often accompany wholly unfamiliar living situations and begins to build a little community of friends and neighbors. As life flows on, so does Catherine’s story.