What Do the Stars Mean?

An attempt to capture our approaches to rating books.

One of my best friends of 30 years recently said in comparing our ratings on Goodreads - “I don’t think we like the same books.” I was floored and offended - “Yes we do! I get book recommendations off of your Goodreads all the time!” (see Culpability, The Tell, Pachinko…) What could she have been talking about? Our TBR and Read shelves, while she has read almost twice as much as I have, are quite the Venn Diagram of taste, with a large overlapping chunk. Then I realized (or hoped!) that perhaps her assertion had more to do with how we approach the 5 star rating rubric than our actual taste in books and that just maybe the challenge here is in Goodreads’ lack of the ½ star option. Though to be able to resist the ½ star rating in my reading journal is to show more restraint than I’ll ever hope to have.

The Queens have had more than a few discussions about our ratings, including Claire’s recent observation that many Bookstagrammers take the approach that it’s unfair to “rate” a memoir with stars because it feels like you’re rating their personal experience as well as their work. Even this may be up for debate.

Here’s where we’ve landed with our ratings, as we each have a few overlapping guiding principles and perspectives on how to rate a book. We’d love to hear where you differ or what you’d add. As a Likert scale, it perhaps has some areas of growth. Hit us up in the comments!

⭐One Star: This book made you mad or made you feel like you wasted your time. It was close to becoming the dreaded “Did Not Finish” (DNF). If you’re Erica, you tend to talk relentlessly about why you didn’t like it and are incredulous when other people do. If you’re the rest of the Reading Queens, you’re patient with Erica and her tirades, especially when they’re about a book that you actually liked.

⭐⭐Two Stars: Quite simply, you didn’t like it or just didn’t “get it.” Close to being a DNF, but it’s a less passionate dislike.

⭐⭐⭐Three Stars: This is where things start to fall apart and where we start to see disagreements among the Reading Queens. A three-star book is a book that you liked but maybe didn’t love. But when I recommended a three star read to Laura she was not convinced. Laura’s point was that when there are so many good books out there to read, a three-star review from me isn’t exactly selling her on it. This may suggest that my stars and recommendations are a bit more inflated than the other Queens. You’ve been warned.

⭐⭐⭐⭐Four Stars: The difference between a four star review and a three star, is a four star is one that you really liked. You find yourself recommending it to everyone and you continue to think about it after you’ve put it down. These are the books, like their 5-star brethren, that when you are out on the town, you can’t help but think that you’d rather be home curled up with your book.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐Five Stars: The Reading Queens tend to be more sparing in our five star reviews. Claire once alerted us to one of hers with an “incoming 5 star review!” text for The Safekeep. You don’t want a Five Star book to end and you can’t stop thinking about it long after. These are the books that Nana and Laura find themselves hugging. I’ll never forget when Laura handed me Fiddler on the Subway and had to hug it tightly before passing it along to me. It happened again last week when she handed me Less is Lost, and she even asked that I give it back when I was done (this is very rare for us, even for a five-star review, as we are happy to freely give books to friends and never expect to see them back).

How do you rate the books you read? What would you change in the ratings above? Do half-stars lessen one’s credibility or add to it? What are some of your favorite five star books that the Reading Queens should read? Any 1 star books that you still finished despite your ire?