I like to read books, and sometimes I might even review them. But my opinions do change over time, a book can enthral my attention on first read through and subsequently I realise the characters are flat and the plot full of holes. Alternatively I struggle the first time, but on a re-read realise how carefully planned it was and discover a new appreciation. Consequently I generally do not review any books until I have read them at least twice and with a month between readings.
When I review books I use the following system:
0 stars. Unreadable. I generally won’t give this out for a book, as this means that it is quite literally unreadable due to either damage or not being written in English in the first place. Since that is not really a measurement of the quality of the book, I’ll generally leave it out. War and Peace in the original Russian would go here, not because it is a bad book but because I can’t read Russian. I haven’t read a translation either, to I don’t know where an English version of it would go.
1 star. English spelling and grammar achieved. If I review a book as being this bad, they know how to put a sentence together and that’s it. Terrible characters, plotting, setting and atmosphere.
2 stars. This is a bad book, but I do have something good to say about it. There might be a good idea in here somewhere, but the execution is terrible.
3 stars. A passing grade. This is the minimum quality I would expect from any published book. In some cases, I might have nothing bad to say about it – but nothing good either. Other times there are good parts but let down by weaknesses elsewhere.
4 stars. A good book. I would hope for a traditionally published book to reach this point, to stand out from the slush pile in some way.
5 stars. An amazing book. This rating is for the best books, the ones that I turn to again and again. Lord of the Rings is one such example.