I have a confession.
I abhor rating books.
After experiencing but a small fraction of the work an author goes through to put a novel on the bookshelves, I can't help but want to give anything less than 5 stars.
I mean the hours, days, even years that went into drafting, revising, editing, submitting, persevering. The blood, sweat, tears...all of that alone deserves 5 stars.
But the reality is not every reader is going to like every book they pick up. Not even me.
So I'm stumbling through this rating process the best that I can..
I don't rate anything less than three stars. According to Goodreads, three stars means "I liked it" and if I finish a book it means I liked it. Life is too short and there are too many books to waste time on one you're not feeling. And I don't think it's fair to rate a book I haven't finished.
Four stars means "I loved it." Usually with four star books I'll be hunting down the author's website or blog to find out if there is a sequel and when. I'll pre-order the author's next novel and pass these books on to my friends.
Five stars means "This book was amazing." In my world, a five star book means I'm stalking the author for sequels or new books, entering every ARC contest I can find, booking my plane tickets to the author's next signing (okay maybe I don't go that far), and forcing everyone I know to read the book now. These are the books I finish in one night. These are the books I wish I had written.
So, do you rate the books you're read? And if so how?
I find rating books tough. I also don't go lower than 3 on goodreads and usually reserve 5 stars for a book I would re-read. But I recently read a blog post that said a 3 star review was not considered good to an author. Maybe because 3 stars on Amazon is considered "ok" rather than goodreads "i like it"--I don't know.
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I don't bother rating a book unless I really like it, in which case I always give 5 stars. I don't want to be someone's career damaging review.
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