What does it really mean to give a five star review? In the age of Amazon it’s become pretty meaningless.
So I try to rate according to how much I would recommend something.
If someone asks me for book recommendations, I want to take it pretty seriously. I know that their time matters. I think it’s actually quite rude to give a bad book recommendation — especially to a friend — because someone might waste a bunch of time on that. Think of the opportunity cost!
In order to give good recommendations I want to have a clear, consistent system for rating books.
So on Goodreads I rate books as follows:
- 5 stars = I would recommend to most friends
- 4 stars = I would recommend to someone interested in the topic
- 3 stars = If you told me you were going to read it, I’d say go for it
- 2 stars = If you told me you were going to read it, I would try to stop you
- 1 star = I will go out of my way to dissuade you from reading it
A result: It feels like a very good compliment when someone “wants to read” a book that I’ve recently read & given 5 stars.