Book Blogger Hop or Why I Give Book Rankings

  In the spirit of the Friday Follow, the Book Blogger Hop is a place just for book bloggers and readers to connect and find new blogs that we may be missing out on! This weekly BOOK PARTY is an awesome opportunity for book bloggers to connect with other book lovers, make new friends, support each other, and generally just share our love of books! It will also give blog readers a chance to find other book blogs that they may not know existed! So, start HOPPING through the list of blogs that are posted in the Linky list!!

Your blog should have content related to books, including, but not limited to book reviews.
Most importantly, the idea is to HAVE FUN!!

This week's prompt:

Do you use a rating system for your reviews and if so, what is it and why?

 

Oh, I like this question! I do currently have a fairly ill-defined rating system.  It goes from 1 (worst) through 5 (best) with half steps between them.  Originally, I called them "smileys", after what one of the first book review sites did, but I've pretty much phased that out and I'm looking for a new rating system and preparing to better explain the system. 

Why don't I just use a simple 1 through 5 without halfsteps?  It's because some books just are in that "middle" category.  Some of my favorite books would probably get a 4.5 instead of a 5 because there were some smaller problems that I had.  On some days I may think the same book really is a 5...on others I'm more critical and think that it's close to a 5, but just not there yet...but it's also not a 4.  

Since I've started blogging I've discovered some really great ways people rate books.  Connie at Constance Reader's Guide to Throwing Books with Great Force, gave clever notations as to what rankings mean (my favorite being "1 of 5 stars: Tonstant Weader fwowed up."  The cleverly titled English Major's Junk Food ranks books on an A through F scale. The blog A Guy's Moleskine Notebook does a unique system where he lists books as either "[Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]"

But, then there's the question of why rate books in the first place?  Some of the blogs I enjoy reading review books, but don't necessarily assign them a number or a grade or a command to read but borrow the book.  I could have very well just write a review, not rate the book, and let the reader figure out how much I liked/disliked the book.  There's really nothing wrong with not rating a book.  It would probably be easier for me not to rank a book, since I'll sometimes find myself agonizing whether something is a 4 or just a 3.5.

However, I sometimes you just want a very quick and easy way to tell how much someone liked something.  And unless a review is fervently favorable/unfavorable, sometimes you really can't easily tell how the reviewer felt about the book.  We've all been there:  Read a longish review, get to the end and then find yourself scratching your head trying to figure out if this person would recommend this book.  It always happen, but it happens sometimes.

 

I think part of desire to keep my comes from my watching a famous pair of fellow Chicagoans: film critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.  Siskle and Ebert were both film reviewers Chicago's two main newspapers.  Gene Siskel reviewed for the Chicago Tribune while Roger Ebert reviewed for the Chicago Sun-Times.  And being from Chicagoland, the fact that this was a show about two Chicago film critics who filmed their show in Chicago (originally for Chicago's PBS station, WTTW Channel 11), this was must-see-tv for a child who enjoyed films.

 

Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, photo credit

If you never were lucky enough to catch their show prior to Gene Siskel's untimely death in 1999, the pair would both discuss good and bad about various of recent to-be-released films.  At the end of the review, both reviewers would give a decisive "rating" to the films: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down.  It's a very simple, decisive way to tell their audience whether a film is worth their time and money or not.  I always looked forward to seeing what they'd "rate" the film and sometimes you needed for them to give the Thumps Up/Down because their orally presented review seemed to be somewhere in the middleground.

 

And though I will probably never use such a brilliantly simplistic way of showing my like/dislike of a particular book (this would be a very short blog site if all I did was post photos of Thumbs Up/Down!), I'm sure part of my my desire to include ratings with my reviews comes from the impression Siskel and Ebert made on me as a young child.

Thanks for stopping by...I didn't mean to be so long-winded on this post.  Look around and if you like what you see, feel free to subscribe to my blog.  If you have any questions or suggestions, either leave a comment or email me.