I've opened an account on Goodreads.com, and I'm slowly entering books and adding my two cents about them. So here's the problem: I have rater's anxiety.
If I disliked the book, that's easy; 2 stars. If I hated it, or it was terribly terribly written, it might even get 1 (that hasn't come up yet). If I liked it, thought it was okay, 3 stars. Here's where the trouble starts: if I really really liked, maybe even loved it, it gets either 4 or 5 stars.
Of course my favorite books get 5 stars - The Master Letters, The Mercy Seat, Never in Anger, Pieces of the Frame. But then along comes Wislawa Szymborska's View with a Grain of Sand. I think it's a 5-star book, but I don't love it as much as I do my favorites. Do I give it an objective 5, or a subjective 4? This is maddening, which probably says more about me than about Goodreads or the classificatory process in general. I can't help it; when it comes to books, I really want to tell the truth.
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1 comment:
i know what you mean, but no book comes with stars attached.
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