Why I Do Not Use The "Star" System To Rate Books

I really enjoy doing book reviews. I never do spoilers because I think a good reviewer should be able to give a general idea about a book and get the readers excited without spilling the beans.

I visit many blog sites on an almost daily basis. Including a lot of book sites. They all use some form of the 1- 5 star system with one star meaning that you did not like the book at all and 5 stars meaning that the book was amazing, or that you loved it.

I find it very hard to use this system. I can wind up giving a humorous book 5 stars, as well as an incredible piece of fiction the same. I think that is off balance. We need a better system.

I believe the review should stand on its own. That is what I do. If you cannot tell by my review how much I liked or disliked a book then I did not do my job.

I think it would take a lot of convincing to get people to just let their reviews stand on their own. Or to let the whole industry dump the 1-5 system. I think, as a society, we are used to rating many things. The new washing machine you got, the call back from the bank that wants you to take a 5 minute survey on your previously placed phone call, and after you spend a good portion of a few hours waiting for your laptop to be fixed, you can answer questions for five minutes in a survey, there too rating things using a 1-5 scale.

I understand where it is helpful in customer service. But as far as books go, I think you should read at least a few reviews on the book first before you decide to buy it. There will always be someone that thought it was the greatest book ever while a different person saw the same book in a completely different light and thought it was the worst book he ever read. America has gotten used to things being spoon fed to us. You see with the star system, we can say to ourselves "Wow! This book got 4 stars on average from 49 different people, it must be good". Solid reasoning. Where as others just breeze by because they do not really want to "waste time" reading a review they just want to know how many stars it got.

Using that same logic, a person can look at a book review and say "Wow this is a 5 star book" but did not take the time to read that only 3 people put up a review.

My favorite system, and this one I agree with, is Kirkus Reviews. They have Buy It, Borrow It, and Skip It. I think that is very clever and good advice. There are so many styles of writing it is not fair to pit certain ones against others which is where I find fault with the star system. I think it puts everybody on a level playing field but not in a good way.

So I want my readers to actually read my reviews and read them well. I want them to be able to judge my review, along with other reviews, and make up their mind about a book.

So you will never see my using stars, or hearts, or roses (some blogs are very fancy!). But I will always give you my best review I can so that you can make an informed decision and come home with an excellent book that you will really enjoy, or leave that bad book at the bookstore for someone that did not read any reviews.