how I rate my books on goodreads.

I love using goodreads to organize my books. I record every book I read and put them on “shelves”. I like to know when I read a book, both month and year. I also keep track of which books were borrowed from the library and what format I read a book in – ebook, hardback, paperback, etc. I also rate every book I read.

Goodreads allows you to rate books from 1 star to 5 stars, with 1 star being low and 5 stars being high. Honestly, I don’t sit and think for hours about my ratings; I usually just go with my gut when I am entering books I’ve read. Did I like this book? Did I not like this book? Did I love it? I don’t usually change my ratings either. Once I’ve chosen a number of stars, it stays with that number. It’s always fun for me to look back at the end of the year to see which books I’ve read and how I’ve rated them, although I have been known to rate books as 5 stars and then forget all about them.

Here’s how I rate my books on Goodreads:

5 STARS ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
I loved this book. This book was awesome and I will be telling all my friends about it and recommending it to everyone. If it’s a book I checked out from the library, I might buy the book to keep on my bookshelf. I don’t keep a lot of books that I’ve already read, but the ones that I do keep are all 5 stars books. I might even read this book again or read my favorite passages. These are books that you stay up all night reading.

4 STARS ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
This book was great. I liked it a lot but maybe there was something that didn’t quite make the book a 5 star book. I will probably still tell people about this book and recommend it to friends. For me, there is not a lot of difference between a 4 star book and a 5 star book, but a 5 star book has that extra little appeal.

3 STARS ☆ ☆ ☆
This book was good. It was fine. I feel that I rate most books as 3 stars. They are books that I thought were good, I’m glad I read them, but I will probably not read them again. I think of 3 star books as standard books. They aren’t the best books ever, rather they are what I would consider being your average, run-of-the-mill books.

2 STARS ☆ ☆
This book was okay. I didn’t hate it but it wasn’t that great. Maybe I really wanted to give this book a 1 star, but there were some positive features to it that pushed it up into the 2 star range.

1 STAR ☆
A 1 star book is a book I did not like at all. I don’t want to say I hate these books because hate is such a strong word, but I definitely have feelings about these books and they are not positive. I rarely give books a 1 star because I feel like there has to be something good about every book, otherwise why would it have been published, but to me a 1 star book is a book I thought was horrible and had no redeeming qualities.