Goodreads Ratings

[msstice]

Finally, someone else who might DNF Hyperion!

Despite numerous attempts, I've repeatedly bounced off Hyperion. It just doesn't click for me.

I decided to try it because its so famous. The windup frame story is effective though transparent (he tells us about some catastrophic war about to happen and mentions "time tombs" but then we decide to tell stories around a campfire. Ok, I guess). My issue is the first story is a poorly written White Man's Adventures in Africa trope. In my experience, though some stories warm up as we read, the quality of the writing itself rarely improves dramatically over the course of a book. Writers usually try and polish the opening the most. Still, the book is so famous, I might skip to some random point and see if the writing improves.

 

[sknox]

Another consideration here. With a genre book such as Rama or Hyperion, those who read and rate are far more likely to be people who enjoy that genre. That's a rather different audience than those who read something like Romeo & Juliet. So the numbers are skewed there as well.

If find the whole business of numeric rating to be ludicrous. Let's use numbers to evaluate words!

Imagine if we all rated sculptures or paintings that way. Indeed, the system is actually worse than rating new releases on the old TV show American Bandstand. They at least had a greater range.

 

[Astro Pen]

Finally, someone else who might DNF Hyperion!

Despite numerous attempts, I've repeatedly bounced off Hyperion. It just doesn't click for me.

That makes three of us.

 

[therapist]

I think Goodreads ratings are an invaluable way of quickly checking a book. Obviously the rating system isn't going to perfectly correlate to your enjoyment of a book. But it will correlate. I avoid reading books with ratings below 4.00 because I think the chance of me enjoying them is too low. There's usually a reason they have been voted low.

I'm not surprised to see Romeo & Juliet at 3.74. In fact, I think that's genourous. The language is very dated and hard to read. Also there's no prose, its written as a play. I don't think the average modern book reader would really enjoy themselves with this one.

 

[Vertigo]

I still think context is everything in responding to other's ratings on GR.

For example I find that at lot of frankly pretty rubbish but frequently 'exciting,' mass produced (as in the 'author' produces in excess of 20 or 30 books a year), trashy pulp fiction get rave reviews averaging well above 4.0. Whereas more 'serious' books like, for example, 1984, Brave New World etc., that frequently are somewhat less accessible and demand a lot more from the reader, get much lower reviews. So I can't simply go on the rating alone, being someone who frequently likes those more 'serious' books.

So for example if I'm looking at space opera or military SF, both sub genres that I thoroughly enjoy but that also suffer some of the worst levels of trashy pulp and overinflated ratings, then I will rely heavily on authors known to me, personal recommendation or GR reviewers whose opinions I already respect and what their ratings are. When I'm looking at more 'serious' reading especially translated stuff including, but not limited to, magical realism, from authors like Murakami, Marquez, Bolano, etc., then I'm much more concerned with the author and the ratings given by known GR reviewers.

It's difficult and the ratings are, as ever, only one part of the equation. As with buying online, I often pay more attention to what the reviewers didn't like than what they did.

 

[ColGray]

I'm not surprised to see Romeo & Juliet at 3.74. In fact, I think that's genourous. The language is very dated and hard to read. Also there's no prose, its written as a play. I don't think the average modern book reader would really enjoy themselves with this one.

Well, it was written 5 centuries ago and is a play, so...

One of the biggest disservices modern education systems do is to have people read plays in their head-- from Shakespeare to Williams to Mamet-- there is rhythm and meter to the lines that reading in your head barrels over. A quick discussion of iambic pentameter isn't going to teach anyone how to read it -- you have to hear it.

Friend of mine is a HS English teacher and before they start reading Shakespeare, he has students bring in some snippet of the screenplay for a show or movie they love, then has the students swap and read it and most students are like, meh, this is boring/doesn't work. Then he shows it and it's like, OOoooh, that clicks!

 

[Wayne Mack]

One of the biggest disservices modern education systems do is to have people read plays in their head

I heartily second this. Shakespeare's plays are a difficult read. Presented as a play and they are wonderful stories; epic, tragic, and comic.