I struggle with this a bit. Even if the book is 3.98 stars, i view that as not passing lowest bar. I consider most 4 stars books to not be there time, but rather the number of stars is how i filter out bad books
Also, how do you use your stars? Do you change your rating often?
For me, it generally goes like this:
- 1 Star -Either its so bad that its offense or i dnf it
- 2 Stars - Either bad or mediocre, not really work any time
- 3 Stars - An okay book with a couple of redeeming points
- 4 Stars - A great book with some flaws that bother me
- 5 Stars - An excellent book, i am jumping in my sits.
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These days (in fiction) I mostly read in the indies. It’s pretty rare for them to have a star rating on the ebook store I use and I don’t use GR because it’s owned by Amazon. Since there are so few reviews, when they do have a review or star rating, it’s easy for one person with a sour opinion of the work to push the average rating low.
Once upon a time, Amazon’s review system was worthwhile. You could save yourself from buying a fire hazard coffee pot by reading the one star reviews. In that period of time, I learned that most reviews are bad. Not that they’re necessarily rating the product lower than it deserves. They’re just bad at giving other customers a clear idea of the strengths or weaknesses of a product.
That was back when they were all definitely written by humans. The situation hasn’t gotten better since a large percentage of the best rated reviews are blatantly slop. As others in this thread have pointed out, star ratings are too easily gamed by people with money to pay for it to be done.
As a reader, I think you’ll have better success checking what’s available in the preview than you will refusing to read anything below four stars. It’s not necessarily even about what’s good and what’s bad. There’s plenty of classics that have great ratings that I personally hate. They’re not for me and that’s ok.
EDIT: You also asked how I dish out stars. I publish stuff and the TOS for the stores generally takes a dim view of me rating others’ work since they assume I could be colluding with other authors or trying to sabotage competitors. I don’t use star ratings.
Four stars on what rating system?
4/5 on goodreads. When someone recommend online, I look it up on goodreads and if its less than 4 stars, I avoid it, usually anyway
I don’t think I’ve ever looked up a book up there to evaluate it. I might glance at an Amazon rating if I’m buying it on Amazon and it’s already in front of my eyes. But, let me see what I think.
looks a few books up
I don’t think that I’d want to use a 4.0 bar on that website. For example, I enjoyed Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber fantasy series — particularly the early ones — and the first book is 3.97. Frank Herbert’s Dune series does, I think, go downhill over the course of the series, but books #2, #3, and #4 all are below 4. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, which I was kinda disappointed with, is 4.1.
Over time I have discovered that for me, the scoring of The Storygraph (which also tends to match Goodreads) aligns reasonably well with my own views.
That being said, there are almost literally no books with 5* and the universally acclaimed masterpieces sit at around 4.3-4.4.
So I avoid anything below 3, and only read below 3.5 if I’m really in the mood for that. That way I’m filtering pretty bad stuff, but not letting my filter stand in the way of many (hopefully any) books I would have enjoyed.
And yeah, there’s cases where you don’t agree with the rating but that’s why there are other mechanisms (like reviews) to supplement it.
If I find the content interesting, I’ll read it, if I find the author interesting, I’ll read it, if a friend recommends it, I’ll read it.
It’s not much effort to read, you can always stop reading and put the book away. If it’s not worth your time. Libraries are great for this, pick up a book. Read a little bit. Decide if you want to keep reading…
Yes. I have a hard 50 page limit. An author has 50 pages to demonstrate to me that continued reading is worth it. If they can’t do it in 50 pages, the book is set aside and never opened again, instead being donated or thrown out.
I don’t look at stars I just read books that I think might be interesting
so much this. I don’t give a fuck what OTHERS think of a book. I just read (and watch) stuff that catch my eye. There are numerous movies/tv/books that I thoroughly enjoyed that were panned by critics.
Bot are cheap, stars are a lie
I ignore stars.
I read reviews.
If the reviewer shares tastes and warrants with me, I will pay attention to their opinions and recommendations (pro or con). If the reviewer’s tastes and warrants are opposed to mine, I will again pay attention to their opinions and recommendations … and go the opposite direction. If the reviewer can’t really get their point across, I ignore that review and move on to the next.
Ratings mean nothing.
Stars? I never look at ratings. I read based on the writers i know, those that are recommended to me, topics that interest me, worlds that might captivate me.
I’m a little confused, are you asking if, after reading a book, many of them are less than 4 stars on my own scale? Or are you asking if I use someone else’s rating to pick the books I read, and avoid ones less than 4 stars?
I mostly read SF, with some fantasy, and not much else. The core of my reading list is made up from books that have been finalists for the major SF/F awards (Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C Clark), sequels to those, and books recommended by other sources that I respect a lot (e.g., Locus Mag reviews, recommendations by authors who I really like, etc.).
So those probably translate into 4 or 5 star ratings from external sources, though none of them use a rating system like that. I very, very rarely end up hating the books I end up reading, though some I don’t really like a lot, even though they were critically acclaimed.
You can see the books I’ve read in 2025, with links to prior years, in this post.
Or are you asking if I use someone else’s rating to pick the books I read, and avoid ones less than 4 stars?
Yeah. I just added the question of how You use your stars as a bonus.
Oh, okay, makes sense. I avoid stars personally. I just say if I liked a book and why - you can see from my link if you look at a few.
I just grab whatever has an interesting cover from the library. Find some surprisingly good books but some real stinkers also.
I’ll defend your choice to go by cover here, from the perspective of someone in marketing.
The cover is the first contact point anybody has with a book. It is there to let the prospective reader know things like genre, style, intended target audience, etc. A good cover should match the contents to your tastes. A bad cover doesn’t.
We form a large amount of our opinions on things from quite literally the first glance: people, food, vacuum cleaners, and yes, books. If the publisher has even a half-decent marketer on staff, that book cover should absolutely be intended for you to judge the contents before you first crack the book open.
I do also read the back to make sure its interesting but mostly I just have the mind that if someone spent the effort to write it then I might enjoy it. I can be very stuck in my niches if I dont introduce randomness into my choices.
I just go to the library and if a title grabs my attention I read the back and if that grabs my attention I make sure it’s not in first person. Then I check it out.
I just checked the goodread metric of the books I recently read that I considered beeing completely great.
Only two of the 8 I checked had a rating (slightly) above 4, most were in the range between 3.5 and 4, one even at 3.3.And this fits, as I would assume that a book that is not at least a little bit controversial, might be making too much compromises to appeal to everyone and thereby loose the stylistic edges or provocative thoughts that could make it an outstanding thing for you personally.
So, I would rather say for me personally: 3.3-4.5 star range seems to be the range where to expect great books.
Below the quality might decline rapidly, while ranges above might be dominated by well crafted, but bland stuff.Reviews are subjective. The greatest book in the world to you could be the worst book in the world to someone else. Read what sounds interesting.
Similar to the other commentor who ignores stars and only reads reviews, I do something similar, but I mostly only read negative reviews.
The problem I have is that positive reviews too often just uncritically praise the book, telling me nothing about why the book is good or why it might be bad. (And the fact that bots are so prevalent only makes this phenomenon worse).
On the other hand, negative reviews often directly state what the reader disliked about the book. So, I hunt through negative reviews to find reviews that hint, or directly mention having elements of the book that I like/am in the mood for.
For example, one time I was in the mood for fantasy where the protaganist does magical research. So I found this one book and started looking through reviews, and I saw this 2/5 star review where the reviewer was complaining “MC never fights, they just research and grind in the lab all day”. I started reading that book immediately, and I had a great time.
When I read reviews, I look for the reviewer understanding Goethe’s rules. Basically they have to answer three questions:
- What is this book trying to accomplish?
- How well did the book accomplish this aim?
- Was this an aim worth accomplishing?
Good review or bad, if it’s structured this way, or at least contains this information, I can figure out if I’ll like a book or not.
The problem is that most reviewers are utter shit at writing reviews.
That’s a great method, and also, your example book sounds like my jam. What was it, if you remember?
It was Years of Apocalypse on Royalroad: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/81002/the-years-of-apocalypse-a-time-loop-progression . Ah, it looks the first book was published to Amazon, so it’s no longer available entirely free online.
I also have a list of researcher/scientist type novels I have collected here: https://www.novelupdates.com/viewlist/140708/ . Novelupdates only covers translated works (usually webserials translated from Chinese/Korean/Japanese), so I put the works I liked that are originally in English in the description.
Five star = a lot of mediocre people liked it. It is probably pretty boring.
Four star = mediocre people liked it, but for some of the mediocre people it was too complex or too sophisticated
Three stars = this isn’t intended for mediocre people, only sophisticated and/or educated people will understand the value
Two stars = this is low quality. On the other hand, you (as a true Connoisseur with exceptional taste) may have stumbled over a golden nugget.
One star = this is probably total crap. Yet, it might be five star for some exclusive, true Connoisseurs
4 stars is too high a bar. There are plenty of books that receive 4.5 stars that I rate as 3, and occasionally 2. Of course there is a correlation, but it’s weak. A lot of the old Reddit darlings (probably now also Lemmy darlings) are a bit meh for me, and so conversely, a lot of less popular books are good for me.
I think I wouldn’t go below 3 stars on rating sites like Goodreads/storygraph. That’s where the correlation seems to make it make sense. The current book i haven’t read for several days because it sucks is rated 3.6…
