I struggle with this a bit. Even if the book is 3.98 stars, i view that as not passing lowest bar. I consider most 4 stars books to not be there time, but rather the number of stars is how i filter out bad books
Also, how do you use your stars? Do you change your rating often?
For me, it generally goes like this:
- 1 Star -Either its so bad that its offense or i dnf it
- 2 Stars - Either bad or mediocre, not really work any time
- 3 Stars - An okay book with a couple of redeeming points
- 4 Stars - A great book with some flaws that bother me
- 5 Stars - An excellent book, i am jumping in my sits.
The Goodreads rating system is just fundamentally flawed. The range of rating for books is not 1 to 5 stars, it’s 3.00 to 4.00 stars. Any book with any notoriety I’ve read falls somewhere between 3 and 4. The more ratings, the more likely this is. I find the rating system at best useless and most likely actively harmful.
Which is all besides the point. No one else can tell me whether I’ll like a given book or not. I hate Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but it’s a highly lauded story. Should I force myself to like it because people disagree with me? I can appreciate that people view the work different from me and sometimes enjoy reading actual reviews I vehemently disagree with. A written review is, anyway, much more useful when considering a book. Though I don’t really read books based on reviews, I just try to find books that seem interesting to me in one way or another.
The star rating system can be disregarded offhand.