Sunday, April 4, 2021

Goodreads Needs a More Nuanced Star-Rating for Books


There. I said it. Goodreads needs a more nuanced star-rating for books. I mentioned this in yesterday's post, but I wanted to go more in-depth about this topic.

Many of us readers who use Goodreads are very annoyed about this aspect of Goodreads. We enjoy using Goodreads for various reasons (see my following post: Goodreads: Why It is So Useful).

For me, however, the fact that I can't give a book a fraction of a star rating (e.g. 2.25, 3.5, or 4.75) annoys the heck out of me. Let me explain it this way (since it's the only easy way I can think of). Let's say you just read a book that you enjoyed it, but it didn't live up to whatever hype it's receiving on the bookish internet. You don't want to give it a full 4 stars since that feels too much, but giving it 3 stars doesn't feel like enough.


That's where the nuance comes in. Allowing for fractions within the star rating system makes it so much easier for us reading. Take the example above. The book wasn't good enough to be 4 stars, but it wasn't okay enough to be 3 stars. So maybe the book was a 3.5 stars.

Using the stars, I'll mark whatever star rating I'll feel comfortable with for the specific book. If I gave the book 3.25 stars, I'll mark it as 3 stars. If I gave it 3.5 or 3.75 stars, I'll mark it as 4 stars. But I'll mention my actual rating in the review section before getting to the actual review. Here's how:
Actual Rating: 3.5 stars
Review: [insert review here]

Goodreads is useful and fun to use for readers. However, it definitely has some disadvantages that it could easily fix but doesn't.

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