Goodreads is by far the most popular and most-used book cataloguing and rating site, and for a lot of us, it probably also is a major source of finding what to read through the Lists feature. So for those of you who use Goodreads – how much weight do you put into the ratings on the site? Does a higher/lower score influence whether or not you want to read a book? More importantly, if there's a book you've been wanting to read, does a lower score dissuade you from reading it?
Personally, I'm finding myself paying less and less attention to Goodreads scores as time goes on, and using the site almost exclusively just to catalogue what I've read. There are so many books I've loved that I've seen rated on the lower side (3.7 and under), and lots of books that I thought were terrible or mediocre having 4+ scores. I just don't really trust the scores anymore.
by keepfighting90
25 Comments
The only thing I really find good reads useful for is when reviewers discuss similarities between books. For example, if I like x, and reviewer compares y to x, I will be interested in checking out y. Other than that, I really don’t like a numeric score being attached to art, as it’s too subjective to be consistent.
I ended up switching over to StoryGraph because I realized I never paid attention to the scores at all, I just liked tracking my reading and making lists. The only thing I liked was seeing what my friends were reading, but now I just ask them and talk about it. Between those conversations and reviews from professional publications, I don’t really see much reason to see what the Goodreads score is on anything.
0%. If the book sounds interesting, and if the first 10 or so pages in the store keep my interest, I’ll read it. I could give a shit what randos on the internet think.
I only really make note of really high or really low scores. And by really low I mean like < 3.3.
Sadly more than I like lol. I tend to not want to read a book if I see it below a 3.5. Trying to get better about it because some of my fav books are 3.7-3.9.
At the same time, after I read a book that scores below a 4.0, even if I don’t agree, I can see why it was rated below 4.0.
I don’t look at it at all.
It means absolutely nothing to me what other people think about fiction. Because it is extremely subjective from any angle you care to choose.
Therefore, there will be dozens and dozens of variations of experiences…
And not one of them will be as meaningful to me as the thing that I discover for myself.
No, they are one of my last sources for deciding what to read.
0/10
There was a sequel which was taking forever to be released. I got in the habit of checking Goodreads every couple months to see if there were any updates. This book, which by all accounts wasn’t even written yet, much less published, had hundreds of reviews.
I would probably take a look if a book is very popular on a specific platform but is poorly rated overall. But if the book is not an overnight wonder, I would pay no attention to the score. I liked some pretty niche and low-scoring books and absolutely hated some Goodreads Top books.
I pay no attention to the rating. Some of my absolute favourite books are rated very poorly. The Odyssey by Homer has a 3.8 rating on good reads.
I weigh the opinions of critics much higher when it comes to books. I tend to gravitate towards books that are awarded or shortlisted for certain prizes, such as the Giller, Booker, etc.
But it also depends on the reader’s palette. Think about it like food, those fancy Michelin star restaurants are run by highly skilled and trained chefs who have honed their craft and often take creative risks to push boundaries. That sort of experience isn’t for everyone. I’m willing to bet if we took a rating of the Michelin star restaurants and compared them to low-cost, faster, and less complex alternatives the ratings wouldn’t be very different.
The only reason I still have a goodreads account is because some of my favorite authors are active on there. If they give a book 4 or 5 stars, I know I’ll love it. I tend to ignore the other ratings though.
0.
I only use it to catalogue my own reading. I don’t really care about the score. And having read reviews some people are dumb af and their reasons for liking/disliking a book don’t align with mine.
Ruth Madievsky, who is an author herself, wrote a whole essay about how people can’t really handle complicated women which leads books by women about complicated women to have lower scores:
[https://lithub.com/why-does-goodreads-have-a-problem-with-fiction-by-women-about-women/](https://lithub.com/why-does-goodreads-have-a-problem-with-fiction-by-women-about-women/)
I once brought a book to my book club because it had something ridiculous like 4.8 stars on Goodreads and everyone ended up hating it, myself included. If I did before, not anymore.
Not very seriously. I’ve enjoyed plenty of low-rated books. I will sometimes read reviews just out of interest though.
I use the list of yearly winners to look further into the plots as I consider new books
If something has terrible ratings in general it probably isn’t very good, but I have a hypothesis that Goodreads (or any review site without a specific focus) will over-inflate poorer books that perform well at market (i.e. ones that are trendy, written at a lower reading level to appeal to more people, and have very little risk-taking in form, structure, plot, etc). These appeal to mass audience and are not intimidating or ‘pretentious’.
And then more literary books that assume higher reading levels, are avant garde, take risks, etc (both new and *especially* ‘canon’ books) are rated lower because they are read by a lot of people in school or because they want to read the “classics”, but who simply are not cut out for it.
It’s the same for all media, really. Marvel movies get rated highly by fans, but they aren’t great examples of film as a medium. Where as the more niche films generally get watched after they win some awards and the people who only want Marvel movies will rate it lower and lower the rating. And there are more of the people who want a fun experience than a good film or novel or whatever, so they have more weight in the overall score.
What I think is a better gauge is finding reddit discussions, blogs, and written reviews that talk about what makes the book good (or bad) and then judge it based on what I *know* I like.
I usually read 3-star reviews if I’m really not sure. I find that they’re usually the most detailed and nuanced compared to any other rating (not all of the time, but this is just for when I’m on the fence about buying a book).
The fact that romance slop with genuinely awful writing gets such good reviews means the entire platform is worthless. No, do not critique me about disliking romance. You know exactly what I mean. No, I’m not sexist, I critique shitty writing and sexist themes that are present in a lot of the most popular books.
Shy Girl has like what, above 4* ratings? It’s an AI generated book.
On Goodreads, there are multiple books that are little more than mediocre popcorn fluff, like Project Hail Mary, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Where the Crawdads Sing, anything Brandon Sanderson etc., books which will be forgotten in a few years, rated quite a bit higher than all-time classics like Moby Dick, Beloved, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Things Fall Apart, Wuthering Heights etc. These are some of my all-time favourites that I consider 5/5 reads.
Some other ones that I really liked that are lower-rated are Convenience Store Women, Tender is the Flesh, The Sense of an Ending and The Luminaries. The scores for these are shockingly lower than I expected.
Which is to say – I don’t take Goodreads ratings all that seriously. I think the overall user base of the site leans very strongly towards specific demographics and age groups that enjoy specific types of books (i.e crowd-pleasing, mass-appeal speculative fiction with lots of cool/badass moments), and the scores reflect that. It’s always important to actually read some of the reviews to see what the thought process behind the high ratings are because a highly-rated book can often just be a generic crowd-pleaser and a lower-rated book could be doing something unique or weird that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.
For books that I want to read, along with GR I’ll also read some reviews on other sites and check Reddit comments to see what the general non-GR consensus is.
With that said, Goodreads *does* get it right sometimes. Some of my favourite books, like East of Eden, The Brothers Karamazov, Blood Meridian etc are rated quite highly there.
Not at all because I tend to really love surrealist or kind of grotesque books, which Goodreads hates.
Lapvona and Tender Is The Flesh are two of my favorites; iirc the community didn’t like them much.
Depends on genre.
A 3.5 in literary fiction is like a 4.2
A 4.5 in the 4th book of a fantasy series is like a 3.5
Same goes with science fiction
I used to heavily rely on it but have been burned too many times. I’ve learned I love a lot of 3 star books. Now I make my own judgements.
If a book has 50,000+ people weighing in on it, I’m ignoring the rating. If there are 50, I’ll make note of it.
I won’t speculate as to why less popular books have (imo) more accurate ratings, but they totally do.
Absolutely not at all. A lot of people have absolutely appalling taste. And plenty of others read for very different reasons than I do. Their ratings are useless to me.
I use it for logging what i read and seeing what my friends read and that’s it. I pay no attention to Goodreads ratings and scores.