The “Book Blogger Hop”, hosted by The Coffee Addicted Writer, poses weekly thought-provoking questions for book bloggers like myself to ponder. This week’s question is one that I’ve thought about quite a bit – does a book’s rating on a site like Goodreads impact whether or not you’ll buy it?
This question ties into a policy that I’ve followed on my blog for years – I don’t rank or rate books. I regularly share my thoughts, feelings and opinions on books, but I don’t assign star ratings or point ratings, and the reason for this ties back to my thoughts on the role of a librarian.
As a librarian my job is to connect people with books that meet their needs, preferences and interests at a specific moment in time. Need a book on tigers for your school project? Looking to learn a new school? Want a book to help cheer you up? I’ve (hopefully) got just the book for you!
The important thing to note is that my needs or interests don’t, or at least ideally shouldn’t, influence my ability to connect people with books. What I think about a book isn’t what matters, at least not if that opinion might keep me from providing the best possible service to my patrons. Obviously we all have biases, even unconscious ones, and my own personal biases can still influence the books I recommend, despite my best efforts to be impartial. But to the best of my ability I strive to get the right books into the right hands, no matter how I might feel about them. After all, if I were basing my collection weeding on my preferences, there would be a lovely hole in my shelf where all the Daisy Meadows Rainbow Magic books had once been. But that’s not how being a librarian works, or at least how it should work, and if your child wants to take out 50 books about fairies saving the day (again), I’ll do my best to make sure they get their books.
Imagine if I were to give a book a low Goodreads rating, say 2/5 stars. For whatever reason, the book just really didn’t tickle my fancy. Another person might look at that review, see the star rating, and decide not to read the book. That person might be missing out on their new favourite book because they were put off by my rating! Reading that book might have been a life-changing experience! Or it might just have had a good time reading it. As a librarian the thought of coming between someone and a book makes me shudder. To be honest, even as a book lover I hate the thought of discouraging someone from reading a book simply because I didn’t like it. Now, if I think a book is derogatory or dangerous in some way, I’m always sure to include that in my reviews, but I leave the decision of whether or not to read a book up to an individual.
In addition to this, I often find ratings frustratingly arbitrary. What one person gives 4 stars, another person might give 1 star, and a book that you might give 5 stars at one time in your life, you might give 0 stars at another, simply based on your mood at the time. Not only can star ratings deter readers from discovering a book for themselves, the ratings themselves don’t necessarily even mean anything! As a reader, I don’t look for ratings, for much the same reason I avoid giving them – I don’t want someone else’s rating to influence my own reading experience.
This is a rather long-winded way of saying that all (or at least the vast majority of) books are good books, they’re just waiting for the right reader to unleash their potential, and I wouldn’t want to hinder anyone from finding their next great read.
But of course, if you want to give books star ratings, all power to you! Many people find these ratings very helpful (they wouldn’t be such a common feature if that wasn’t the case), and if they help you narrow down your reading choices, that’s fantastic – anything that helps brings book and readers together is a good thing in my book (ha, pun intended).
What about you? Does a book’s star rating have any influence on whether or not you read it? Do you give books star ratings?