Saturday, February 23, 2008

a question about good reads/librarything/the others

So, with all the discussion of personal library organizers going on, I have a question. Well, a couple of questions. How do you assign stars to things? Do you ever look back and think "What was I thinking?" when you see how you rated things? Do you change ratings, or figure you should listen to your previous self?



I ask, obviously, because I just did that. I was looking through my LibraryThing, trying to find stuff to recommend to my awesome father-in-law* who has been asking for good YA books to read and kept thinking "I gave THAT four stars?!" "I gave ______ and ______ the same rating? And I wanted to change things, but then thought, "No, no, don't confuse things. Stick with what you gave it in the first place, even if it was crazy. ... But what if someone sees that I gave ______ that many stars and judges me for it?"**



So, what about you? Do you have an official policy?



*Seriously. He's awesome. He read Twilight after I told him about a vampire prom we had at our library, then said that he was in the school library (he teaches high school science) and saw one of his cooler-than-thou students there checking out New Moon. He said something to her about Bella and Edward and then watched her jaw drop. "You've read Twilight?" After that, he thought it would be fun to freak out more of his students, so he read Uglies, The Lightning Thief, and some of the sequels.

** Clearly, I have some book-related self esteem issues.

2 comments:

joanna said...

I am not a good rater. I stopped rating on library thing because I can't decide what to put.

Patti said...

oh that's so funny! I usually give three to anything that i enjoyed, but didn't blow me away. Most things I read get a three. One star is I hated it. Five is nothing could be improved. Not very many books get a five.

I've also found that I rate things lower if I re-read them. Except for Sloppy Firsts, I think I've read that 3 times :)

I would probably change my rating. I dunno though, it seems like work to go back and change things...so maybe i'd just leave it, after all its your first impression right? And mostly things either suit your mood at the moment or they don't - its so hard to pin down.