I feel like I have to recalibrate and reconfigure my ratings scheme. For the record, I don’t really use the one described on this site. Because I use Goodreads and because I also have been rating books for a while, the scale here is just not right for me.
So for me: Five Stars means something that I think is utterly in sync with my mode of being, which hits me perfectly, which is something meaningful in my reading and thinking about it, and something that has that transcendent quality to it.
Four stars means it’s very very good. It’s an A or A-. I think it’s good, it’s well-written, or interesting or something like that, and it lacks that transcendence of the 5 stars but it’s otherwise high quality.
Three means it’s fine. Sometimes a three is a bare there but perfectly ok book. Sometimes it’s a disgraced four. But it’s not good enough and bad enough for a different rating.
Two means I thought it was bad.
One means it’s gross or offensive or barely rates.
This book is about as three stars as it gets. It’s never going to be more than barely being there and being perfectly ok. It’s a fine book…no shade, but no warmth either. It has a very good opening chapter. The rest is ok too, but nothing much happens in the book, and I feel like it’s a distilled book in a lot of ways, but it didn’t do much beyond that.
(Photo: http://510readings.blogspot.com/2010/02/february-20th-kevin-sampsell-jane.html)
