English Mysteries Club discussion

Bit random. I hope it's OK here. But does anyone else wish there were at least 6 stars available for rating? Unless a book really is awful I feel limited by only 3 options. I'd love it if there was a sixth star for - "really blew my socks off" read.

I agree that there should be more than 4, although I would go for an uneven number!

It's kind of hard to rate books. A 1 or 2 is really iffy. 3 means so-so. 4 is very good. And for me 5 means fantastic.

Thanks for the clarification, Timeforme. Somehow, I missed their explanation of their rating system.

To me a 3 is I didn't quit reading so I basically liked it but there are flaws..maybe that should be a 2. I am not like other readers who will follow a book they don't like until the bitter end.

@Diane - I am confused by your comment. You wrote: "Unless a book really is awful I feel limited by only 3 options..." With 5 stars, how are you limited to 3 options??

I pretty much follow GoodReads suggested meanings which Timeforme gave, although I mentally rephrase it a bit:
1 = terrible (which includes books I couldn't finish Jamielynn)
2 = OK to bad; would never reread
3 = good or acceptable; I liked it but writing was so-so OR well-written but not my cup of tea; probably will not reread it
4 = very good; probably will reread and would recommend
5 = excellent; definitely will reread OR I think everyone should read this at least once

To me "really blew my socks off" is a 5 star rating - I am pretty sparing of 1 and 5 stars, with most books not being exceptionally good OR bad.

I haven't given a five star rating on goodreads as to me that means that it can't be beaten, and as yet I have not found a book that fits that category. I wrote a blog post about the star ratings last year http://2pdesignskindle.blogspot.co.uk...
The majority of the books I have read are three or four stars, the books that I have given only one star to I have put a brief note explaining why.

Leslie wrote: "@Diane - I am confused by your comment. You wrote: "Unless a book really is awful I feel limited by only 3 options..." With 5 stars, how are you limited to 3 options??

I pretty much follow GoodR..."

I feel really mean giving 1 or 2 stars. Maybe I should toughen up!

Thanks for the feedback. It was good to see the Goodreads suggestion. I'd not seen it before.

Jay-me (Janet) ~plum chutney is best~ wrote: "I haven't given a five star rating on goodreads as to me that means that it can't be beaten, and as yet I have not found a book that fits that category. I wrote a blog post about the star ratings..."

Interesting you use two systems. Can see why but it would probably fry my brain.

I haven't put Wuthering Heights on my bookshelf. That's a 5 star for me. I gave Burial Rites by Hannah Kent a 5 star. Those are the ones that I could read in the middle of a fire. I'd say "Is it getting hot in here?" LOL

It's a tricky one. In a way, 5 stars should mean that it was a really enjoyable and satisfying read. So any book which achieves that should be celebrated as such. Why hold back? Let's have loads of 5 star ratings to signify there are loads of books out there worth reading.
On the other hand, what do you do when a book completely blows you away, if you've got nothing left to ratchet things up?
Then again, what you say in your review would reflect how you feel about it being particularly special, I guess.

I've gone through a few different attitudes since I joined Goodreads, only a few months ago! At first I did not like the star ratings finding them totally subjective, and what's the use of that when you try to write an objective review. I thought Amazon's categories were better.

I also felt like you, Jay-me, that I could never award 5 stars as where is there to go from there? One star was for books I didn't finish (with a note explaining that they might well be worth more.) So I only really used three categories.

Now though I use ALL the stars - and still find my average is about 3, which is correct. Five star books are still a minority, and have to really earn that 5 star status! Most books I give 2 or 3 stars - even many books I have enjoyed.

And I have made an extra category, so I feel I have SIX stars to play with. If I do not finish a book for some reason - maybe I'm in the wrong frame of mind - but suspect that it's quite good, I do not give it a star rating at all, and have an exclusive shelf for these books. That means I can now use my one star rating for books I think are dire.

By the way, hovering over the stars shows:

1 * did not like it
2 ** it was OK
3 *** liked it
4 **** really liked it
5 ***** it was amazing

which means it is a totally subjective system which we are all trying to redefine to make our assessments a bit more valuable!

Jean wrote: "By the way, hovering over the stars shows:

1 * did not like it
2 ** it was OK
3 *** liked it
4 **** really liked it
5 ***** it was amazing

which means it is a totally subjective system which we a..."

In most cases this is ok but it has caused me a problem a couple of times. The books were well-written and interesting BUT as a "heavy" read I couldn't really say I enjoyed them. In one case it actually made me feel quite uncomfortable.
Whether I enjoy a book depends on so many different things - genre, plot, characters, writing technique etc. 90% of the time I have no problem with 5 stars. I think the times I've struggled a bit is where one area is excellent but another dire.

This system is very hard on books that don't have a major publisher behind them & have to find readers without a big ad budget, = mostly from readers' reviews. On Amazon, anything less than 5 stars is seen as lukewarm, which gets carried over to Goodreads & becomes a barrier for new & especially indie books. One of my friends won't do stars on Goodreads, only reviews. Seems sensible, except that I suspect that brings down the ranking -- does anyone know?

Carol wrote: "This system is very hard on books that don't have a major publisher behind them & have to find readers without a big ad budget, = mostly from readers' reviews. On Amazon, anything less than 5 stars..."

I don't believe this to be a true picture. This is just encouraging 'grade inflation' with book ratings. Giving 5 stars to everything is the same as not rating at all...

I actually try not to read reviews before I read the book. I do better with a fresh attitude. Sometimes a book can be a 5 star book and the expectation is higher than my opinion. It can go the other way too. If it has a low rating I could expect garbage and be pleasantly surprised. I like reading reviews after I've read the book.

Sigh. I like the old-fashioned way: reading the plot and character descriptions on the inside of the front cover. I am such a dinosaur.

Portia wrote: "Sigh. I like the old-fashioned way: reading the plot and character descriptions on the inside of the front cover. I am such a dinosaur."

This is how I choose too, so that makes two dinosaurs :)

Leslie wrote: "Portia wrote: "Sigh. I like the old-fashioned way: reading the plot and character descriptions on the inside of the front cover. I am such a dinosaur."

This is how I choose too, so that makes t..."

So do I, for print books. Online I always read a sample before choosing a book, now that this is so easy to do (one good part of the publishing revolution) & now that there are SO many books, -> my taste has gotten fussier.

I'm with the dinosaurs, and prefer to get my first impression from actual content. Then I carefully wade into the deep water of reviews, which can either confirm or change my initial opinion. At least we have plenty of options to guide us in the quest for the perfect new book!

Jennifer wrote: "I'm with the dinosaurs, and prefer to get my first impression from actual content. Then I carefully wade into the deep water of reviews, which can either confirm or change my initial opinion. At le..."

That's why I love GR. I was looking for new authors. I sure don't have that problem now!

one comment I noticed once was from someone who rated but 'within genre' so that Wuthering Heights for example wouldnt be compared to a whodunnit mystery as they are not the same genre. That way you can award high ratings for the book if it achieved high merit within the expectations for that genre. I found that quite an interesting idea and my ratings have changed due to this. However in one of my groups everyone put up what their average was (its at the top of your profile) and I am extremely stingy - I give very few 5 stars maybe once or twice a year!!

Looked at the ratings I've given this year. Compared to many I probably am quite generous. Interesting looking back though.
5 stars - 19 times
4 stars - 28 times
3 stars - 19 times
2 stars - 4 times
1 star - once!
But then all 19 with 5 stars I would read again.

I wish we could give 1/2 stars. Often in my mind a book hovers between "ok 2" and "liked it 3", or between 3 I liked it and 4 I really liked it. Neither star fits and then I often feel i'm punishing the author because I always err on the lower side.

When choosing a book I never really read reiews but I will sometimes check star ratings. If it's somewhat skewed, i may glance at comments on either end of the spectrum to see why someone thought it was great and someone else panned it.

Randa wrote: "I wish we could give 1/2 stars. Often in my mind a book hovers between "ok 2" and "liked it 3", or between 3 I liked it and 4 I really liked it. Neither star fits and then I often feel i'm punish..."

I hate it when books are in-between. I like the idea of 1/2 stars too.

Are there other people out there who prefer comments to reviews? I love knowing how a book affects a reader more than a recap of the book.

Randa - yes I think a good review should include both. It shouldn't just be a precis, but a critique too. And in this sort of forum I think it's fine to give your personal view too, so it's three-fold really.

Timeforme wrote: "I don't usually do recaps of the book because many other reviewers do them and it seems redundant to include them. My reviews are usually my personal opinions and comments on the books, what I rea..."

Same here. I really write my "reviews" more for myself so later I can see why I liked or didn't like something in case I forget. So I am not writing them to help strangers decide whether to read it or not... I suppose that I should but don't feel qualified.

I'm with you - I write my reviews to help me remember whether I read a book, when I read it and a little of what it was about.

This is really interesting! GR reviews have a distinctive function which I suspect the company didn't anticipate (since there's no $$ in it): giving us an easy way to keep track of our own reading. I always meant to do this in longhand but never did.

Going back to ratings, I find I have given 25 5 star ratings, then 45,10, 2, 3 respectively.

May be as one gets older one reads a fair proportion of books by authors one knows and loves, and even re-reads favourites. I do. As well as a sprinkling of new and unfamiliar books too, of course

So, I know I'm going to love, say, The Warden by trollope, The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford, or any Maigret volume by Simenon. These will get 5 stars. Any genre can earn a 1 or a 5, surely.

One stars this year - Death Comes To Pemberley by P D James, and one other too bad to mention.

Either many people don't choose their books well, or don't get as much pleasure from reading as I do, or are just too stingy in marking.

Timeforme wrote: "Half point ratings would be a nice addition to the GR rating system. Right now I provide the higher star and then in my review mention the actual rating I would apply..."

I would love to have half stars! I also mention the 'actual' rating, although unlike you I tend to round down rather than up.

My curiosity was piqued by this discussion so I went to look at my average rating & my breakdown for this year. Currently my average rating is 3.59 and I have given this year:
5 stars: 20
4 stars: 109
3 stars: 118
2 stars: 20
1 star: 2

so I am more generous in practice than in theory. I have been reading a lot from the Guardian's "1000 novels everyone should read" list this year, which is where most of my 5 star books this year are from.

That's an interesting bell curve Leslie! I must do one of my own. I suppose I'd thought that since my average is 3.18 I was probably making fair assessments, but a breakdown would still be interesting.

Sorry Timeforme for the crass way I expressed my views - I apologise. Why not a continuous rating variable as with many rating schemes. All nuances covered in that case.

I was bitterly disappointed by "Death Comes to Pemberley" too, and cannot for the life of me think why there's going to be a dramatisation for it on Christmas Day TV.
And that's got me wondering, John, what your "too bad to mention" one is!

Jean - I now see there were two other one stars: Dewey - The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched The World by Vicki Myron (it has an average rating of 3.78 from 28k ratings); Rules, Regs & Rotten Eggs by HFR Keating, usually so good when writing about Inspector Ghote (av. 2.6 from 6 ratings).

Of my books this year I see that the highest average ratings by others for a book fitting this group is Agatha Christie's The Man In The Brown Suit at 4.33, which I thought was 4.

What very highly-rated books by others have members read, and did they ever violently disagree?

Timeforme - thanks for generous reply. I was thinking of consumer surveys I've completed which let one scroll along a line numbered 0 on the left and 10 (say) on the right, and one can stop wherever one wants. That way one's books read would actually end up with rankings that allowed one to list from best to worst. A web-site can still classify anything from 3.00 to 3.99 as 'liked it' or whatever for presentation purposes. A bit complicated to setup: I've spent too much time working alongside statisticians/social researchers, obviously!

John wrote: "Timeforme - thanks for generous reply. I was thinking of consumer surveys I've completed which let one scroll along a line numbered 0 on the left and 10 (say) on the right, and one can stop whereve..."

What an improvement that would be!

John i really enjoyed "Dewey" which is a 4 star for me. I often am not sure which book I want to start next so will look at the star ratings. a 3 i will probably wait for another time to read, a 4 will be my first choice. I have never given a 5 and I am suspicious of them. most of my ratings are 4's. Life is too short to finish a book that I don't enjoy, i usually give it 50 pages before abandoning which is probably why most of my ratings are 4's.

Evelyn. Aren't we all different? Both in rating the same book and in choice of books. I absolutely hate giving up on a book, so I choose carefully. Maybe that's why my ratings are high. But I probably miss out on unknown books that I might love. So, a resolution to be more cavalier, and to abandon the bummers! Thank you.