✨️A New Star Rating System

I have been posting short book reviews on Instagram for over two years and with every review I consistently include a star rating /5. However, looking back at my older posts, it is clear that the parameters of these ratings have not been consistent at all.

In the month of August 2022, I apparently had an excellent month of reading, having rated all the books I read 4 or 5 stars (/5). I see now that I was blinded by my discovery of asexual representation in books and the joy that was giving me at the time. I have since reread these books and I would not rate them the same. They are still good books and ones that will always be important to me because of the personal growth I experienced alongside reading them, but for my star ratings to have more meaning, I need to start giving them with a bit more consistency.

Up until this point, I haven’t really been using any sort of system to grant my ratings beyond a short text note I have on my phone with limited descriptions including “3 stars = it was okay”.

So, it is time for change.

.

I think a good starting point of creating a star rating system is working out what I want out of it.

Consistency in the ratings I give is a big one which is why I’m creating this new system to begin with. But I also want to feel confident in the ratings I give and be able to defend them in any discussions with other book lovers, and to do that I will need to set stricter boundaries for each tier in the system.

Another thing I want to get out of this exercise is the have something that I can refer to in the future to help me give my ratings and make sense of ratings when I look back at old reviews. With that in mind, this system needs to work for all genres and have parameters that work for both fiction and non-fiction. For any sort of regular use, each description should stick to the task at hand and not be unnecessarily wordy.

I feel any type of rating will inevitably provide insight into how much a book meant to me in the moment, but I would like this new system to be a bit more objective than that and let the written review provide that information instead. I am also open to having another type of rating alongside the star system to indicate my emotional response if that fits in with my style of reviews going forward.

And one final thing: I have gotten into the habit of given ratings of half stars to books. I am not against this, but limiting my use of 4.5 and 3.5 stars will be an aim of this system. That should come from the stricter boundaries I intend to set and better descriptions of what each star represents. I will also not be including these .5 ratings in my system and will only use them when I absolutely cannot fit a book into the usual tiers.

With all that in mind, let’s create this new system!

.

5 stars – These are the books I struggle to find fault with; ones which are engaging and are accessible or have a captivating or dreamy writing style that kept me reading. I either raced through the book quickly, or purposefully went slow to savour the experience. Books in this highest tier will have challenged my world view or had me thinking about them for long after turning the final pages. A top rating will likely mean I find myself recommending this book to pretty much everyone and talking about this book at every possible moment. Books I give 5 stars to don’t all need to be all-time favourites, but are also ones that have the potential to have been if there weren’t as many books in the world.

4 stars - If I turn the final page and feel like writing an essay, or I’ve been making notes while reading, I know the book was good (this can be true for 5-star books as well!). Maybe the story had a slow start or a rushed ending, or maybe there was just that one section which lost me, but overall it was an excellent book. These are books I loved, but just don’t quite meet up to the standards of top tier. Maybe they would be five stars for someone else, but given ratings are both subjective and relative, four stars seems about right to me.

3 stars – I am happy to have read these books but might not be talking about them as much to others. Three stars feels like a solid ‘okay’ on this scale. These books are still good/ones I enjoyed, but are not excellent or especially well written. Or maybe it wasn’t my thing or left me feeling neutral, but I can definitely think of the type of reader who would enjoy this more than me and should mention that in my written review.

2 stars – I didn’t particularly like these books but crucially I did finish them. The fact that I felt it was worthy of finishing puts these books apart from lower ratings. Maybe I can identify the type of reader who might enjoy this book more than me or point to a few things I liked. But it wasn’t my thing and I don’t think it was all that well done. I should be able to clearly list the things I disliked about this book (perhaps the characters were all one-dimensional, or the structure was odd or hard to follow) and I can think of ways the book can be improved.

1 star – The only possible reasons for me finishing this book is for book club or academic study. I thought it was terrible and would not recommend to anyone. If I can think of a person who might enjoy this book I should be giving it a higher rating.

DNF – These are the books I did not finish. I have yet to ever give a book 1 star and feel that if I dislike a book that much, I should stop reading rather than giving it a rating. Although I will not be giving DNF-ed books a rating on the star system, I should explain why I did not finish in any review.

.

Finally, I want to make it clear that I do not expect everyone to rate books in the exact same way as I do! I am not suggesting this star rating system to become the universal one that everyone uses. I am also certain that I will not have got this rating system perfect first time. I can very much imagine myself returning to this system and making adjustments later down the line.

Rating and reviewing books is something that I have definitely improved at in the last two years. The more I read, and the more book club discussions I go to, the better I become at expressing my thoughts about a book and translating that into a meaningful review or recommendation.

I hope by creating this rating system my ratings will be more consistent going forward. But I also hope I continue to fall in love with books for unexplainable reasons and continue to hold onto nostalgic attachments to books which may not be five stars but are special to me regardless.