Wandering Thoughts is where I let my mind stray, think and talk about non-routine things. This is an avenue for bookish personal stories, fun posts, musings and discussions.
In my years of blog hopping adventures, I rarely find book reviews with a one star rating. Subsequently, when I skim though user ratings in Goodreads, I noticed that one-star ratings often come from non-book blogging users. I am not sure if other book people noticed this before and already offered a reason for it. Maybe no one’s wondering or asking but still, I’d like to give my unsolicited take on why one star ratings are rare among book bloggers.
The obvious reason that I came up with is simply because book bloggers love books. We created our blogs with the goal of promoting our passion for reading. So most bloggers when we come across a not-so-excellent book, we don’t easily dismiss it as bad-bad and give it a one star. In fact when writing reviews, we try to be objective and come from the “it’s just not for me” angle. Or we try to look for any redemptive attributes that other readers might like about the book. For the record, I do not find joy in writing negative reviews. My negative feeling for a book is more of a disappointment rather than an intense hate. I am sure that this is the case with most book bloggers as well.
And this is where I come with my next reason. Book bloggers have developed a heightened sense of compassion to authors who spent blood, sweat and tears to deliver their book babies out in the world. Most of them, especially for #ownvoices authors, have to confront past traumas that they’d rather forget because they believe that they have an important message to say though their books. I think because of our experiences in blogging, we know how hard it is to write and create quality content for our blogs. Personally, If I didn’t quite like a book, I can’t bring myself to just recklessly declare, “Meh, it wasn’t that great. One star rating and off with the author’s head!!!” I am not that heartless. I mean, if I feel that the author genuinely meant well, I mention that merit in my review. The book will still get a negative review from me but I feel that a one star is stretching the bitchiness too far.
In my review policy, a one star rating means I didn’t like a book and I thought that I would give it to books that I DNFed. The funny thing is that I have yet to learn the art of quitting when a book is not working for me. So the one star rating is pretty much a non-existent gremlin in this book blog. I am not saying that we get rid of the one star rating because we rarely use it. I think we can harness the power of its rarity by giving it to evil books that actively cause harm. Those bad-bad books that promote misogyny, bigotry, culture misrepresentation, erasure of minorities, and other vile things. Now, these levels of malevolence deserve that shitty one star.
I am linking up this post on 2018 Discussion Challenge hosted by Feed Your Fiction Addiction and It Starts at Midnight.
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I'd love to hear from you!
Have you observed this rare one star rating among book bloggers phenomenon as well? Do you agree with my explanations? Do you have any additional reasons why this is so? What kind of books do you think deserve a one star rating?
Have you observed this rare one star rating among book bloggers phenomenon as well? Do you agree with my explanations? Do you have any additional reasons why this is so? What kind of books do you think deserve a one star rating?
