Ratings: Valuable Or A Mere Benchmark? - #SheSaysSheSays

As we've started countless times before, this blog originated as a discussion space where we could speak our mind. To maximise our motives, we're going to be commencing a discussion series entitled "She Says, She Says." The topics can range from books to current affairs, but will always explore ideas through two perspectives. :)

Ashvini:

As a self-proclaimed “book reviewer” living a whole life in the book interwebs within a mountain of words; I felt the pressure to form my own “rating” for a novel. From the start of TwoGirlsThatRead, the entire process of numbering my thoughts felt foreign and unnatural, and similar to my purple sweater, I simply assumed I would grow into it. Even today, my opinion of ratings still hasn’t found a home.

    Stepping into the world of Goodreads and such, ratings were a safe house.

 A guide of what I should expect, that saved me a 50/50 chance letdown. However, the farther along the path I travelled, the more of a wild-eyed goose chase it became. Subconsciously, my casual curiosities transformed into notorious cravings for refined TBRs of only the “best” books.

How was it, though, that with a whole pile of carefully selected, “buzz-worthy” novels, reading was a chore?

 Following the Goodreads review traffic, I had unwillingly converted my reading into a streamlined diet of New Releases. I was so caught up in trying to find a novel that I could give a 5/5… a novel that I loved, that I had constricted myself to literature I had no interest in pursuing.

Rediscovering a shelf of childhood favourites on a sweet summer day, I found myself pouring over realms of spies and mermaids. I was adrift in the nostalgia for autumn mornings when walking into the large expanse of vellichor for read-alouds, was the axis my world revolved around. Nostalgia for days when the slight angle my head tilted at, to observe the spines of volumes on the library shelves, felt incredibly natural.

Yet above all, I ached with nostalgia for the days when getting lost in a bind of pages  to find yourself was a genuine feeling that was driven by instinct not forced desire.

That was what I read for. To this day, my ideas still aren’t whole when the subject turns to ratings. You step into the water and often find that it’s a lot deeper than originally imagined. Paragraphs in a novel can be awkwardly worded, it happens… What was the author thinking when they wrote it, though? What was the author trying to portray? Could it have been intentional? I’ve come to understand that like people, novels are flawed and written in the fashion they were made to be told in. Ratings are a guide; a reflection of someone else’s interpretation. 

Another's rating cannot gage how many times you'll think of that book tomorrow.

 In many ways, ratings present much value, but they should never be placed in the position of being the deciding factor for your reading experience.

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Emma:  

Plenty of reviewers uses ratings, not just for books, but for many other things including movies, games, and even makeup. I’m sure you can relate to at least one of these. Let’s say you want to see a movie so before actually bothering yourself to watch it you look up a review and since you hate reading long passages you skip right to the rating. 

Though ratings seem very useful they can actually be quite misleading.  

Now let's say, for the sake of visualisation, that the particular movie you wanted to see was rated 4.5/5. This rating was so good, you decided it was worth it to go see the movie in theaters. After paying to watch that 2-hour long film you could not see how the reviewer thought it was that good! It had no real plot line and was way too much violent for your taste.

Taste is the key word here. 

That's your personal opinion just like the reviewer stated their personal opinion. If you had read the text maybe you would have seen what the movie was about and why the reviewer enjoyed it so much. Unfortunately, some reviewing companies take the mean for all the people who rated the book/movie (eg.Rotten Tomatoes, Goodreads etc.). This way someone could have rated the movie 2 stars and someone else 5. And the rating would have been 3. I think that when it comes to this kind of rating system instead of going on Goodreads to check out a possible book try reading the summary first. Then you can turn to a trusted reviewer whose opinions you often share.

    From the time this blog popped into existence on February the 14th 2015, I felt like exactly as Ashvini said. 

Unfamiliar with putting a number on how I felt. I knew 5 was the “best” and tried to avoid low numbers because they were “bad” and meant that you didn’t enjoy the book. But all the numbers in between still confused me. 

Now it is September and we are coming close to the three-year mark. Believe it or not, I have still become entirely familiar with the rating system. Ashvini would come up to me after just finishing a book and say 3.5/5 and ask me my thoughts (of course I never really established a rating till when we posted a review). 

One day I finally decided to sit down and draw out a rating system. 

One that would fit my standards of what I thought as a good book, and that's when I realized that rating systems are something made solely from your opinions and what you’ve read.

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Well I hope you enjoyed our attempt at something new, but we want to hear your thoughts. 

Ratings: valuable or a mere benchmark? #shesaysshesays.

More Emshini humour, opinion, and discussion coming to a computer near you soon!

Yours Truly,

Emma and Ashvini

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