Book Blogger Hop

The Book Blogger Hop was originally created by Jennifer @ Crazy-For-Books in March 2010 and ended on December 31, 2012. It was relaunched on February 15, 2013 by Billy@Coffee Addicted Writer. Each week the hop will start on a Friday and end the following Thursday. There will be a weekly prompt featuring a book related question. The hop’s purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers to your own blog. 

This week’s topic is:

What review rating system do you employ? 

(submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)

Umm, I don’t really use one? I do use the star rating on Goodreads and on Storygraph, but those are purely based on how I felt about a book. I don’t particularly like either of their rating systems, but it is at least something that I can base a book on.

I do like to look at 3 star reviews, because I feel like that one shows that the reviewer didn’t love the book, and won’t be gushing about how good it is. Or didn’t hate it so much that the review is full of negatives. I like to see what the reviewer didn’t like about a book, as well as what they loved. I think that is more balanced, and what they didn’t like, might be something that I don’t like either, so maybe I won’t like the book.

I do follow a couple of blogs where they have very elaborate systems for their ratings. I appreciate them taking the time for these systems and their reviews are very detailed and well thought out, but I just don’t have the time for that. I don’t even really have the time or the energy to fill out Storygraph’s little checklist about the moods or characters.

Rating systems also worry me a little bit. On Goodreads I see a lot of books getting star ratings when they are first announced and way before any ARC’s are available. These are mostly given by people who are just excited about a book by their favorite author or the next in a beloved series. This tends to skew the results when the book does come out, and maybe it wasn’t as great as they thought it would be. So please just stop rating a book before you have read it.

This will be another topic I am very interested in seeing how everyone is going to respond. It is nice to see how other people come up with their ratings.