Everyone rates books differently. That much is obvious. Each blogger has a different rating system, a different method for rating books, and, most importantly, different reasons for rating a book a certain way.
Rating System
Every blog uses a different system to rate blogs. Some blogs use stars, some use hearts, some use other symbols. This blog falls under the third category. Here, I use snowflakes to rate books. Why snowflakes? It kind of ties in with the icy cold theme I have going on. Why the theme? Just look at the name of the blog.
Another way rating systems can be different is the number of symbols used. I know some blogs that use more than the “standard” five. I also know blogs that use half symbols and some that don’t. Personally, I think if you use half symbols, you are just making things harder for yourself. First, if you post your review on Goodreads or Amazon, you have to specify your rating since you cannot rate books something and a half stars there. You can’t just count on the number of stars that is shown with your review to portray your rating. Then, you have to differentiate all your different ratings from each other. Before I started this blog, I used to rate books on a 0.5 scale. However, I stopped doing that for a reason. I found that it was pretty easy (at least to me) to give reasons why a book decided to be 3 instead of a 4. But, I lost a lot of time deciding whether the book should be a 3 or a 3.5. What about the book made it deserve an extra .5?
Method
Some blogs use a more mathematical, precise way of rating books. They have different categories and assign each category a certain number of points. When they write their reviews, they then decide how many points the book deserves in each category. Afterwards they add all the points up to get the rating. Some other blogs go by intuition and instinct. They go by their feelings for the book.
Those are just some differences. If you picked each blog apart, you would find a whole lot more.
So how do I rate books?
When I rate books, I keep a few things in mind…
- the writing
- the romance
- the plot/story line
- how I feel about the characters
- if I would read it again and again
- whether it had me engaged and continuously flipping the pages or not.
What about you?
How do you rate books?
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