I've been thinking about revamping my ratings system a bit. I'm finding that my ratings don't always reflect my overall impression of the book and how much I enjoyed it. Take, for example, one of my recent reads,
The 57 Lives of Alex Wayfare by M. G. Buehrlen. With my current criteria, I ended up giving it 3.57 out of 5 ladybugs, which I rounded up to 4 (because the idea of chopping a ladybug in half seemed just plain wrong). But that 3.57 doesn't really take into account my overall impression or how I felt while I was reading the book; I do have a rating for enjoyment that factors into the total, but it often seems not to make enough of a difference (and that also applies when I
haven't enjoyed a book that was otherwise well written but maybe wasn't my cup of tea). Had I rated the aforementioned book without doing all the math, I probably would have given it a solid 4, just based on my overall impression.
I'm going to figure out a way to have my numerical ratings better
reflect how I really felt about what I read. I'm not sure if that'll involve somehow giving the enjoyment number more weight, or reworking the criteria altogether.
Beyond that, I'm going to have some half-ladybug ratings. But, don't worry! No bug abuse was involved. The icons will look like this:
Then maybe books like
Eat, Brains, Love won't end up with a misleading 3-ladybug rating in my review archives when my enjoyment rating was only a 2 (it got 3 points for pacing and originality, which skewed the final outcome).
I love the way you do your ratings because they remind me a little bit of mine! I've found that I also have to do some adjustment on the ratings to get it to total up to what I feel is an accurate total. I like your solution of an enjoyment rating!
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