Five stars is reserved for books that I truly love. The ones I read over and over again and never get enough of. Books like The Outsiders, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, To Kill A Mockingbird. The ones that made me fall in love with reading and writing.
I have to seriously enjoy a book to even give it four stars. The last book I gave four stars was Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, which I finished with tears streaming down my face. If a book moves me enough to want to tell someone "You have to read this book," I will give it four stars.
My go to rating is three stars. If I read a book and enjoy it enough to pass it on to a friend or family member, it gets three stars. It probably didn't blow me away, but it was a decent read.
Two stars is dipping into dangerous territory. Generally a two-star rating goes to a book that I had to force myself to finish. I tend to give a book fifty pages before dropping it. If I get past 50 pages, and still end up not enjoying it, that's a two-star book for me.
Like the five-star, a one-star rating is rare for me. I have to genuinely hate a book to rate it one star. There have been a couple of book club reads that I ended up rating one star. I actually finished one about an hour before our meeting, muttering "I hate this book," as I slogged my way through the final pages. I won't mention the name of the book, but I will never read a book by that author again.
Even more rare than a one-star is a book I can't finish. I have a hard time with this, because I always want to give a book a chance to change my mind. But in the interest of saving time, I came up with my 50 page rule. If I get 50 pages into a book and still can't find a redeeming quality in it, I will put it down. I don't even bother rating these, I just remove them from my Goodreads list.
No comments:
Post a Comment