What is your Goodreads star rating mapping?

[asp3]

I've been adding some of the books I read a while back and I'm realizing that most of the books I'm posting are getting 4 and 5 stars. I'm afraid my rating system might not be granular enough or I might need to expand the ratings for books I like from 2 to 5 stars and leave 1 star for books I don't like or found lacking. My rating maps as such:

5* - Absolutely loved it, it kept me very engaged and interested and had enough interesting plot points, twists and turns to thrill and excite me

4* - I liked the book a lot and it comes close to a 5 but misses the mark somehow

3* - I enjoyed the book overall but there were things about it I didn't like

2* - I got through the book but just barely

1* - I couldn't stand it and may have stopped reading it

 

[.matthew.]

That seems consistent with what Goodreads itself describes.

Maybe the reason you're giving books high ratings is that you're choosing books that already have high ratings and books that you think you will enjoy.

If you picked up a totally random book, you'd probably rate it lower.

 

[BigBadBob141]

I've read precious few 5s.
Mainly a mixture of 2s, 3s and 4s.
But unfortunately far too many 1s!

 

[Venusian Broon]

My understanding is that Goodreads and Amazon both have official star rating definitions but are slightly different

So in tabular form:

Ratings	Very Poor​	Poor​	Average​	Good​	Very Good​	Excellent/Genius!​
Goodread Stars		*​	**​	***​	****​	*****​
Amazon Stars	*​	**​	***​	****​	*****​

(I found these on the respective websites so they are by default what I use)

So Amazon was supposed to be more 'symetrical' with the third star being in the middle, while Goodreads is 'biased' towards more positive terms.

Or it means that I can't get more nuanced with my Goodreads ratings if I don't like something - I can only call it 'poor' and not slate it with 'very poor', but in my Amazon ratings I can't get nuanced with books/things I really like.

Sometimes I wish with stuff we really don't like we could change stars to 'black holes'. 'Cause some books I've read really did deserve 5 black holes as they really, really suck.

 

[.matthew.]

Sometimes I wish with stuff we really don't like we could change stars to 'black holes'. 'Cause some books I've read really did deserve 5 black holes as they really, really suck.

I just wish they'd used a percentage system instead - that would be far more granular and representative of what people think.

 

[Venusian Broon]

I just wish they'd used a percentage system instead - that would be far more granular and representative of what people think.

To be honest it's not something, as a reader, I worry about for books. (If I had some book as an author my opinion would proabably change. ).

I don't pick books on Goodreads or Amazon for their reviews or aggregated stars. Other people will have different tastes to me and find fault where I see brilliance and vice versa.

A while back I went through Amazon and picked out 10 books I hated, then 10 books I adored. The averaged scores of both sets of books were essentially identical!

I know what I like and what I might attempt if the author is unknown to me. And also I tend to ignore the suggestions and bestsellers that either website might throw at me, based on their careful algorithms. I am my own man and have other methods.

 

[Shoutman]

5: It blew me away and I loved every minute.
4: I enjoyed it and would highly recommend it.
3: It was a decent book, just not for me.
2: This book had serious flaws.
1: Why was this ever written?

 

[.matthew.]

I don't pick books on Goodreads or Amazon for their reviews or aggregated stars. Other people will have different tastes to me and find fault where I see brilliance and vice versa.

I generally end up getting more from the related books thing but while I'm not going to ignore a book because it only has 4 stars, I'm quite likely to be wary of a book with 1 or 2.

I do understand what you mean about the reviews though, luckily reviews do tend to mention what they liked/disliked about the style. That said, I tend to avoid reading too many for fear of spoilers

 

[Bick]

These ratings are all a bit meaningless aren't they? Highly popular books of marginal quality get 5* frequently, because the readership is not very discriminating. On Goodreads:

The Warriors Apprentice - Lois McMaster Bujold: 4.28
Monster Hunter International - Larry Correia 4.05

Whereas:
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens: 3.78
The Great Gatsby - Scott Fitzgerald 3.93

Yeah, Monster Hunter International is better than The Great Gatsby. Honestly, I almost completely ignore ratings for popular/genre books, except when you want to compare books within a single series or from the same author, then it might be a pointer to the better books in that series or from that author.

 

[Pyan]

I'm surprised that The Great Gatsby is as high as 3.93 - I suspect that there's an awful lot of people (including me) who were permanently alienated from it due to it being a set book in English or Eng. Lit at school. I've found that there's something about tearing a book to pieces and analysing it to death that destroys any pleasure in the story.

I have very little use for the rating systems for Amazon or Goodreads - there's been 5* rated books on both that I thought were a total waste of money, time and oxygen, whereas there's been several that other people have disliked down to the 2* level that I've enjoyed.
The Kindle has been a boon to me, especially over the last 18 months, as it usually has a 'Look Inside' feature to give you a taster before you commit your hard-earned cash to purchasing it. I also have Kindle Unlimited,which has saved me much more money than the monthly cost, allowing me to try books and authors that I would have just passed by in the bookshop.

 

[.matthew.]

Yeah, Monster Hunter International is better than The Great Gatsby. Honestly, I almost completely ignore ratings for popular/genre books, except when you want to compare books within a single series or from the same author, then it might be a pointer to the better books in that series or from that author.

I'd actually fully agree with that statement, just not with the sarcasm

Admittedly, MHI is pretty much a trashy read, but TGG is dull and worn.

I find a lot of people overly praise older books simply because they're old, much like art. There are literally thousands if not millions of artists who are better today than the great masters of the past, but there was barely any competition back then, meaning basically anything passed the test of time.

In regards to ratings, the people who like the genre are going to be the ones reviewing it the most, so yes, the ratings do appear higher than most people would rate them, but if you happen to like the genre yourself, they're usually pretty accurate.

 

[Montero]

I tend to qualify my ratings with a comment at the start like "This is a 4 star cozy paranormal mystery, and I am marking it for the genre."
I have also given 5 star reviews to flawed books, and started the review by saying that I know the book has problems, but I enjoyed it so much because of x, y, z that I am rating it 5 stars for the pleasure it gave me.
I've also marked up books I didn't totally enjoy because they are just so well written - never gone to 5 stars on them - but given 4 stars and qualified as "this wasn't entirely to my taste, but the quality of the plotting and the writing is such that rating it less than 4 would be wrong".

What is really needed is a double set of stars - what you thought the quality of the book was and how much you enjoyed it. Or a check box to say "recommend me more like this" and "don't recommend me any like this". For me Goodreads and Amazon are a bit coarse grained - I think that since books get recommended to people on the basis of star rating, it is wrong to down rate a decent book that didn't wow me, but that then leaves me being recommended lots of stuff I don't fancy.

I would also note that really popular books seem to have the "me too" mob - where everyone has to be "me too" about rating it 5 stars - and some even get arsey with anyone who gives it less or criticises it. Some books get tens of thousands of ratings as some people seem to have to join the party.

 

[psikeyhackr]

5* == Great on multiple levels, has serious things to think about months or even years after reading.
Komarr - Bojold. Daemon - Suarez.
Ender's Game

4* == Fun read, may have serious undertones
Ready Player One, For Love of Mother Not - Foster

3* == Barely worth finishing
Look to Windward - Banks

2* == Only finished because of extenuating circumstances
Fall of Hyperion Revelation Space - Reynolds

1* == Never finished only vary in how soon and how hard I throw them against the wall.

 

[asp3]

These ratings are all a bit meaningless aren't they? Highly popular books of marginal quality get 5* frequently, because the readership is not very discriminating.

I wouldn't say they are meaningless, I'd say that they aren't a good measure of quality. They are a measure of how popular a book is for the Goodreads rating audience.

I find it far more interesting to look at the books that someone who gives a book I 5 stars the same rating. Sometimes that's a good way to find other books I might like.

I know rateyourmusic.com has a feature where you can find other people on the site who's ratings are the most similar to you and I find that a great way to find other music to enjoy. I'd love to have something similar for books. Goodreads might have something like that but I haven't looked for it.

 

[Montero]

I know rateyourmusic.com has a feature where you can find other people on the site who's ratings are the most similar to you and I find that a great way to find other music to enjoy. I'd love to have something similar for books. Goodreads might have something like that but I haven't looked for it.

Sort of - via friends and following - you can compare your likes and dislikes to other people's and if you have a fair bit in common, follow them or ask them to be friends then see what they pick. It is a bit steam powered. You can look at reviews on books you like, pick reviewers who liked them in the way you did etc.

 

[psikeyhackr]

1* == Never finished only vary in how soon and how hard I throw them against the wall.

Destroyer by Chris Fox
Wrote galaxy rotated in 26,000 years.

 

[Rodders]

It doesn't matter how many books you give a 4 or 5 start rating to, aso3. At least you're having a wonderful reading time. Besides, you might just be on a good run. Don't feel obligated to mark down.

Personally, i think there are maybe a dozon books that I've read in my lift that i'd end up giving less than than 3 stars.

 

[farntfar]

Surely it's not surprising that most of the books you read are in the high marks categories, when you chose what books to read before you start.

It's not like the books you read are forced on you, and therefore that half of them are going to be in the 'I don't like this book. I don't know why I'm reading it" end of the scale.

 

[psikeyhackr]

It doesn't matter how many books you give a 4 or 5 start rating to, aso3. At least you're having a wonderful reading time. Besides, you might just be on a good run. Don't feel obligated to mark down.

Personally, i think there are maybe a dozon books that I've read in my lift that i'd end up giving less than than 3 stars.

Goodreads needs a system that makes it easy to find people with similar tastes and see what they rated books. It would be fine with me if I could just find SF books that averaged higher than 3.79 and I would ignore everything that scored lower.

It is all a matter of probabilities but there are so many books. Avoiding crap is a higher priority than finding gems.

Before I started using a text to speech program I regarded reading as a negative experience. Therefore a book must be good enough to counteract the negativity of reading. 3 is not good enough.

 

[Rodders]

I'd consider 3 to be an average read and we all need a palette cleanser sometimes. Besides, i think we need a little crap in our lives to make the gems stand out.