I know, The Story Siren already did this, and no, I'm not simply following the pod leader. In fact when I first saw she had pulled all her stars I kind of rolled my eyes. It seemed like a big, dramatic gesture for something sort of meaningless.
But then Kristi answered a Dear Story Siren question and part of her answer consisted of this quote:
"I feel like reviews don’t get read when there is a rating. It’s very simple to just look at those stars and move on. And if the review does get read, the ratings often sets the tone, I want my review to set the tone."
That hit home for me and I realized that my reviews should be speaking for themselves and three-stars does not mean three stars all the time.
I am not pulling my Goodreads stars. They stay, I have fun punching in those stars having finished a book and writing that small blurbish review. I encourage you to follow my reviews on Goodreads because you will see my book ratings as they happen. I pre-write, so if you want constant access to my brain as it happens, you want Goodreads.
I don't want to make a big deal out of this, or make it seem like I'm making some big statement of "I didn't become a blogger to rate books!" Because I rate books, I just don't want my reviews to be simply defined by a number, if you like my review style I hope you see why star ratings just don't work for The Mod Podge Bookshelf.
Note: You may see the ratings for a couple months, because, like I said, I pre-write, but the rating is no longer a part of my review template.
Note: You may see the ratings for a couple months, because, like I said, I pre-write, but the rating is no longer a part of my review template.
3 comments:
Your reasons for this change are completely understandable. That said, I love stars and ratings of all kinds, so I'm glad that I'm already friends with you on GoodReads. I'll watch for stars there and your great reviews here and still be a happy camper. =)
Erin @ Quitting My Day Job
I recently dropped my review system as well. I had been considering it for a few weeks mainly because it has become harder and harder for me to decide what rating a book gets, because I don't feel the same way about each book I rate the same amount of stars. But, that edition of Dear Story Siren gave me the final push to go ahead and do it.
I also felt as if some readers would simply think I was copying Kristi, but honestly, it just doesn't feel that way to me and I decided that its not my problem but the readers, and while her post did bring to mind a few things I had never considered, the decision to drop the ratings was my idea, 100%.
Wow. I really rambled there. Sorry about that.. :)
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