Rating System

My rating system for publshed fiction comes from my lack of storage space. I live in a tiny apartment, and if I kept every book I liked, my family would soon have no place to sleep. I had to develop a book purging system just to keep my bookshelves down to a reasonable number.

Six is a reasonable number, right?

To keep the mountains of books from falling on our heads; I only keep a book as long as I know I'll want to read it again, and I purge my bookshelves monthly to make room for new fiction. Some books go immediately on the re-sell pile, some stay for months, some for years, and some will have a place on the bookshelf until the day I die. I've been winnowing my library like this for so many years that I can usually predict a book's eventual fate on the very first read. Since I already do this automatically, I think it makes a pretty good basis for a rating system.




Black Sky, No Stars--This book is so awful that I can't even finish it. I'll skim through it so I know how it ends, the put it on the re-sell pile.




One Star--This book isn't so great. I can manage to finish it, but it goes straight to the re-sell pile when I reach the last page. It's too boring, too derivative, or too something. I know I'll never want to pick it up again in my life.




Two Stars--This book is a decent read. It will stay on the bookshelf long enough to read it again, but it will be one of the first to go when I run out of room on the bookshelf.




Three Stars--This is a good book. I'll re-read it two or three times before it goes to the re-sell pile, and I'll probably read it again at least one more time before I actually take it to the used book store.




Four Stars--This book is really good. I know I'll re-read it more than two or three times, and it might have a place on the bookshelf for as long as twenty years. There's just something about it that makes me hesitant to get rid of it. It may just be sentimentality; perhaps it influenced me during a particular time in my life, and I'll want to keep it even though I've outgrown the thing. It may be that the power of the story outweighs any problems with the writing that make the book less than perfect, or it may be the power of the writing that outweighs any problems with the story. This book may go on the re-sell pile more than once, only to be rescued at the last moment. If I actually do sell it in a burst of spring cleaning or something, I'm likely to regret it and buy a used copy again someday.




Five Stars--This book is so awesome that I know it will stay on my bookshelf until I'm dead or homeless. This is the kind of book that is so well-written that it will always have the power to interest me. I know I'll discover something new each time I re-read it, the characters will become like old friends, and someday the pages will be held together by packing tape and a prayer.




Half Stars--I add a half star when I'm not sure about a book's eventual fate on my bookshelf. I make rating judgements after the very first read, and sometimes I'm not certain how I really feel about a book until I've read it more than once.

As you can see, this rating system is based on personal preference rather than any objective critical reading strategy. I'm not a publisher or editor, so I can do that if I want. (Nyah, nyah, so there.) :D