These are things I really, really like: studying viruses. Horror movies. Collecting weird old knives I bought at flea markets. Monster High dolls. X-Men comics. Candy corn. My Little Ponies. Talking about dead stuff. Snakes. Octopi. Coyotes. Watching television.
These are things I really, really dislike: sports. Serious romances, the kind where someone gets hit by a car or catches a wasting disease and I wind up sobbing into my ice cream. Shopping for shoes. Bratz dolls. High heels on small children. Coconut. Mango. Bell peppers. Going to the dentist. Dishes. Leeches. Clowns. Most shoes that are considered "fashionable." Watching the news.
Now here's the thing. None of the things I like are inherently better or morally superior to the things I dislike. Nor is the opposite true. My little sister loves shoes (although we both hate and fear clowns). Her room is a shrine to shoes. She finds the fact that I own between two and four pairs of shoes at any given time faintly horrifying, although not as horrifying as the fact that I wear them until they are literally falling apart before I'm willing to break down and buy more. If my sister and I were asked to give a one-to-five ranking to the same shoe store, you'd see one of the two following combinations:
Seanan: "This store carried one style of shoe! It was so easy! 5 of 5 stars!"
Seanan's sister: "This store had no selection and no style. 1 of 5 stars."
...or...
Seanan: "Oh Great Pumpkin it was huge and confusing and I was there for hours and I HATED IT. 0 of 5 stars."
Seanan's sister: "So many shoes! So many styles! Best shoe store ever! 5 of 5 stars."
It's the same store in both cases. It's not changing to suit our rankings. It's either a store that sells one kind of functional shoe (my ideal), or a great many kinds of fashionable shoe (her ideal). The problem is that we wandered into the wrong stores, and our current critical dialogue only seems to have two settings: "it was good" and "it was bad." "It wasn't right for me" is nowhere in the equation, and that's sort of a problem for me.
What does "3 of 5 stars" mean, anyway?
Also—and this is, I fear, unfixable, because the internet is big, and we're all coming from different social and educational backgrounds—we have no common understanding of what "good" means. For me, ranking something 3 of 5 should mean "it was good, I liked it, I will keep the book/may watch the movie again/enjoyed the meal." For some others, ranking something 3 of 5 means "it failed in every substantial way, but the words didn't slide off the page when I shook it, so I guess I may as well give it something."
For some people, 1 of 5 means "it wasn't available in the exact format and language I wanted it to be in, exactly when I wanted it," or "the main character didn't get with the guy I liked in the last chapter, so even though I liked the rest of the book, it sucks." It means too much sex, too little sex, and, in the case of one review that made me want to throw the website across the room, not enough rape (thankfully, this review was not of one of my books). For others, anything below 4 of 5 means "this book is not worth my time."
This lack of standards is why I had to stop keeping up my Goodreads page. I found myself giving inflated scores to everything, because I had no way of explaining that from me, 3 of 5 was a really good rating, and I didn't want to be the one who hurt the ranking of a book I really loved. When I realized I was giving dishonest 4s and 5s, I walked away. It wasn't fair...and yet, giving 3s, when most people seem to view anything below an aggregate 4 as a bad book, also seemed unfair. I had given up context for convenience, and that didn't work for me at all.
The problem with "it's not for me" becoming "it's not for you."
"I bet you'd love to criticize that, wouldn't you, you critics! But you can't."
"It's not for you."
—Penny Arcade.*
One of the issues with saying "I don't like a numeric rating system, it's too arbitrary because it doesn't tell you anything about the people spitting out the numbers" is that sometimes, people hear that as "you can't criticize this because I didn't write it for you." That's bull. I can criticize my sister's taste in shoe shops as much as I want, and I can tell you for a fact that they didn't build that shoe store for me, or for the other people like me in this world. They built it for her, and for the people like her. And yet, at the same time...
There's a book I really love called Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures. The word "gross" is used in the cover text of the edition I have, several times. The cover shows a super-magnified blood-sucking mite, staring at you, thinking about whether you might have some blood available for sucking. It is not a book that drapes itself in pastel colors and tries to trick you into thinking it's about unicorns. And if you go and read the reviews on the various numeric review sites (Amazon, Goodreads, etc.), the low reviews are almost universally going either "it was icky" or "it was full of science and also icky."
It's a book about parasites, written by a scientist, as part of a popular science series. If you don't like a) parasites, b) being a little grossed out in the pursuit of knowledge, and c) science, it's sadly a fair bet that this book? Isn't for you. Even if you're a critic, it's not for you. It's for the people who like parasites, being a little grossed out, and learning about science. Does this mean you can't criticize it? No. But it does mean that I wish there were some option for saying "this book was not my cup of tea, I made a mistake when I picked it up" that was not "1 of 5 stars icky book is icky."
Why book bloggers counter this trend.
Part of why I love book bloggers is the meatiness of their reviews, even the terse ones. When someone says "I didn't like this book, 1 of 5," they follow it up with a substantial why. They let me see their love of shoes, dislike of bell peppers, and love of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. They show me their biases, and by doing so, their review becomes relevant to me. Yes, even when it's of one of my own books, and even when it's negative. Because nothing in this world is perfect for absolutely everyone. Some of the best reviews I've read, of both my own books and the books of others, have been negative. It's seeing why that matters, and seeing what else the reviewer has listed in their like/dislike column.
Because that's the other thing: a lot of the time "it's not my cup of tea" becomes "I won't give bad reviews, and you shouldn't, either." When I see a horror movie that's a bad horror movie, I say so. I just don't review it the way I would review a comedy, just like I don't review a comedy the way I would review a musical. I would never call Glee a bad show because people break randomly into song—it's a musical! But I've been calling some episodes bad episodes, because the character choices don't make sense, and the entire current season is based around something that isn't supported by the show's canon. If something is bad, say so. But we need to say why it's bad...and admit that sometimes, the problem isn't the thing we're reviewing, it's us.
I do think we need to remember that "this isn't my thing" is a column on the good/bad metric. I am currently slogging through—and yes, I mean that—the latest Stephen King novel, 11/22/63. If you know my tastes at all, you know that he's my favorite author. I'd read his laundry list. And that's why I'm still reading this book, rather than chucking it across the room. It's a time travel story about trying to prevent the JFK assassination, and I. Don't. Care. That happened so long before I was born that I can't imagine what the world would be like if JFK hadn't died, and thus basing an entire doorstop of a novel around trying to keep him alive just doesn't do it for me. Is it a good book? Objectively, it's written with the same style and skill that King brings to all his books. All the reviews I can find are fantastic.
And I still don't care. This book is a good book. It is well-written and well-researched. It is not for me. Something I love very much—maybe even something I've written—probably isn't for you. And that's okay.
It'd be a boring world if we were all of us the same.
(*Yes, I love supporting my points with old Penny Arcade strips. Around here, that's just how we roll.)
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November 21 2011, 17:01:48 UTC 5 years ago
This may be why half my reviews turn into 'what I think about this trope in fiction'. I also think I've used the line 'this was not the book I expected, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I might have otherwise'. Which... I've had that happen; where the author presents a situation and I'm all 'tell me more' and she focuses on the 'boring bits'* and I'm all 'but... but... look over there! I want to know about that!'. Which tends to mean I'll be less happy than when the author says 'I am going to tell you a romance story about romance' and I'm all 'that's cool'. (Different from a twist in that the author just has a different idea of what kind of story she wanted to tell.)
* Well, things I find boring, hence the quotes.
November 21 2011, 17:06:36 UTC 5 years ago
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November 21 2011, 17:09:57 UTC 5 years ago
(Also, 'dishes'?)
November 21 2011, 17:11:48 UTC 5 years ago
And yeah. Your mileage may vary, no matter what.
November 21 2011, 17:11:13 UTC 5 years ago
The one time I gave a low rating out of five (for good reasons to do with mis-selling, not my opinions), the person on the other end immediately deluged me with demands I retract. So I now avoid the whole thing.
I'm such an internet wimp. (In person is a whole other matter.)
November 21 2011, 17:12:16 UTC 5 years ago
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November 21 2011, 17:17:31 UTC 5 years ago
Second, thanks for the reminder to explain myself when I talk about books I've read. When I write my reviews, on GoodReads or elsewhere, I try to explain what I liked or disliked, but what I'm not so good about is explaining my context. As you said - you hate shoe shopping, so fewer choices might be better. If I say "Look, only six choices!" no one will know if I'm happy about it, or not, nor will they know why...
November 21 2011, 17:19:32 UTC 5 years ago
And no problem! I wish we'd all remember to do that more.
November 21 2011, 17:18:20 UTC 5 years ago
3 stars from me means "I was reasonably entertained, there are no major flaws (or that the movie/book/whatever was very uneven), and I am satisfied." Most things are middling. This is what *average* means folks.
November 21 2011, 17:19:42 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 17:20:48 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 17:34:11 UTC 5 years ago
I'd like to request reprint permission on Cruise Critic and Trip Advisor (yes, they are travel sites but your overall point holds - credit will be given, of course!)
November 21 2011, 17:49:43 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 17:37:20 UTC 5 years ago
For me, the "okay, just not for me" books usually fall into the 3-star category. Not bad, but not a major winner.
November 21 2011, 17:49:52 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 17:44:04 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 18:05:36 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 17:44:21 UTC 5 years ago
i do tend to be positive, although i might mention things i didnt like, but i tend to assume the only person reading my reviews is me :)
also, i use the comments to remind myself what i thought/why i gave it 3 stars ("liked it/it was ok") etc... i very rarely give below 3 stars, tbh.
November 21 2011, 18:05:46 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 17:46:38 UTC 5 years ago
Also years ago I stopped reading most of the book reviews in Locus because it seemed that only one reviewer and I liked the same books. Most everything else being reviewed just didn't interest me that much.
November 21 2011, 18:06:08 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 17:47:55 UTC 5 years ago
That's not to say that a review is necessarily a perfect guide either. I certainly do utilize them in finding new books or other items that I'm interested in. But I think you need to be open to the fact that your personal experience isn't going to be the same as another person's, no matter how close your opinions might be.
I'm even more loathe to give any notice to ratings after a rather, um, unpleasant experience awhile back where I had changed a rating I made (without altering the review itself) and it got quite horribly out of hand. But what truly boggled my mind (other than the whole it getting out of hand) was the person's insistence that the rating change itself was such an important thing. Like I had gone from one extreme to another in my feelings, when in all honesty I had rather arbitrarily given the rating...Oh, well.
November 21 2011, 18:09:36 UTC 5 years ago
It's a horrible mindset, and why I avoid looking at those sites as much as possible.
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November 21 2011, 17:47:58 UTC 5 years ago
I can see how it's even worse in these situations you're seeing, since the very subjective rankings are being bundled into a single metric that is then used to influence consumer choices. At least I *know* the limits of the soft numbers I assign.
November 21 2011, 18:06:26 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 17:48:50 UTC 5 years ago
And yet I see so many people doing "I picked this book up by accident and also it did not involve baby seals wearing tutus despite being titled A Compleat History of Waffles" and therefore it sucks. 1 star." that it drives me batty.
Thus: bloggers (and reading actual reviews instead of just the star rating) ftw. A few of our books have gotten really thoughtful reviews by bloggers, which I appreciate more than I can say. Erekos is really, really not for everyone, and I want to hug every blogger/reviewer who addresses that. "This book is gorgeously written; it just didn't do it for me, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to knock down the rating" means a lot more than "ONE STAR!!!!!ELEVENTYONE!!!!"
Hell, there's a few books that I've picked up specifically because the review said, "I didn't like it because of X" and X was something I was interested in. Critical (not necessarily NEGATIVE) reviews are gold.
November 21 2011, 18:06:45 UTC 5 years ago
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November 21 2011, 18:07:16 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 18:01:34 UTC 5 years ago
I've given a 3-star review to something because 3 stars is what I do with "competent work, has flaws," but I wrote that because it was totally not the story I was expecting, I might be unfairly dinging it a star. And then I wrote about how it is not a light, fluffy, cute SF story, but is instead TWILIGHT ZONE. As Twilight Zone, wrote I, it seems to work (I'm not really a Twilight Zone fan, so I can't be extremely positive), and if it'd been billed as Twilight Zone and not broader SF, I might've liked it more.
Hm. For 4 and 5 stars, I can be content to flail around and go, "IS GUD BUK YES!" If I go to 3 or lower, I want to express what I thought the flaws were -- and, if it's from someone I want to like, I try to clearly express what the positive aspects are, too.
I like thoughtful negative reviews. (And also, I have decided that even Bad Books/Movies/TV have a wonderful place in life: it serves to inspire totally snarky reviews that make me giggle.)
November 21 2011, 18:07:49 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 18:03:48 UTC 5 years ago
There are a few out there who really stand out because they give honest reviews, tell WHY they feel that way, and use examples from the book to illustrate it.
I mostly hang in the YA book circles, so it might be different than the adult book blog circles.
November 21 2011, 18:08:03 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 18:10:41 UTC 5 years ago
After working for two shoe companies, I still only have four pairs of shoes and I don't wear three of them regularly. Come to think of it, that pair is worn out and I need to get a new set to replace them. Who has more shoes? Jim. Seriously.
I now work for a furniture importer as well. I fear for my little house once I decide to bring some of the perks home with me.
I also stopped with the GoodReads - um, everything actually. One, I couldn't keep up with the reading AND posting about the reading. So yes, I have read more books - a lot more books - than anyone would get from looking at my profile. Reading the books is good - posting about reading the books, really really optional and not done often if at all. Rating? Oh dear ghads, that's voting for something again isn't it. Watch me run. There is the odd duck once in a while - when I think something is So Good Everyone Needs To Know - but that's rare.
Amazon reviews, I generally ignore entirely. The ability to read sample pages is far more useful, in my experience.
Thank you for saying this about Glee, BTW. I have been really putting part of my head on the shelf to watch this thing on occasion. My college education is beating me senseless screaming 'you've got to TELL THEM what's really going on here! Did you just see that holy cow myrtle!' My sleep schedule is winning this battle, just saying.
I am very able to say that I am not everyone's cup of tea, on any given day and that is subject to change the next time you encounter me. This rule applies to all things - except for repaircritters who break things instead of repair them, customer disservice done with a smirk and food that wants to kill you. Those guys, I tell on - loud and proud.
I hate voting for things. I've come to the conclusion I really really do.
(Also, you'd appreciate this. Bell peppers? Were the only vegetable anything I could get Cliff to eat on a routine basis. Our first date? He made me dinner. Stuffed bell peppers. It's love, I tell you - when you gratefully eat the stuffing and offer the shell back - neh? I learned to make dish after dish with the #@%^!EWEWEW#@$%! things in them. I have had no regrets since his passing when it comes to the lack of contact I have with bell peppers. But I can definitely cook something delicious if someone desires the dish, lemme tell ya. Love, I tell you.)
November 21 2011, 18:11:51 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 18:15:24 UTC 5 years ago
But it's interesting that the stars don't necessarily mean the same thing. Four stars for a Nolan Batman film doesn't necessarily mean that it's superior to a four star film like The Social Network. It only means that each is the best film you can except to find within its genre and budget and goals. In other words, it's even more subjective than you think.
And yet...when I go to Ebert's website on a typical Thursday, the first thing I do is look at the stars. And not at even the first lines of the review. As much as everything you say about the meaningless numerical review is true, after so many years of being drowned in them, we sometimes still flock to them.
November 21 2011, 21:07:27 UTC 5 years ago
November 21 2011, 18:29:31 UTC 5 years ago
(petting the shelf of books with that and the ones on virology) reading about the human body imploding or bleeding out .. all before breakfast...
(I call my sister Imelda when we are looking at shoes, I have literally seen her buy every color of a shoe that she likes...)
November 21 2011, 21:07:41 UTC 5 years ago
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November 21 2011, 18:35:03 UTC 5 years ago
The hardest thing of all is writing a bad review, because as another commenter mentions, you have to sit and think, "There's a real person who wrote this..."
Making both more difficult is that my editors don't communicate much beyond "Thanks for your review. It will be published on this date." I don't get constructive criticism because I'm not a paid reviewer, and I don't really know what they like and don't like.
November 21 2011, 21:07:52 UTC 5 years ago
I'm sorry.
November 21 2011, 18:38:37 UTC 5 years ago
The other thing is balance in reviews; if you're going to give a bad review of a book, you need to not relentlessly focus on the negative unless there really isn't a positive, and even in a strong review, it's foolish to not note where it could be improved (there's no such thing, however much we might like to think otherwise, as the perfect book).
But that's just my tuppence.
November 21 2011, 21:08:02 UTC 5 years ago
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November 21 2011, 18:53:07 UTC 5 years ago
Totally with you on the ranking issue. What one person hates about a book might be exactly what I'd like, so knowing they hate it without knowing why is utterly useless.
November 21 2011, 21:16:52 UTC 5 years ago
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