Review star scales
I mean there are more dimensions to a book than just liking it or not, right?
I started adding a star scale to my reviews that looks like this e.g. for Diaspora (1997)
Overall Rating: ★★★★☆ (4 out of 5)
Science Fiction: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5)
Literary: ★★★☆☆ (3 out of 5)
Vibe: ★★★★★ (5 out of 5)
Anything over 3 out of 5 is a net recommend on the “overall” rating, and a general passing grade on the other dimensions. “Overall” is kind of a weighted average of the other elements but the weighting differs depending on what the book is (or seems to be) going for. Generally it should be clear from the prose below why it got the various scores, but feel free to comment on the review if you think I’m being irrational. For the overall rating:
5 = Recommend; would read this specific book again
4 = Recommend; would read another in the series or by the author even without supporting information
3 = Recommend, but would need supporting information to read another book in series or by the author
2 = Do not recommend, but no bad feelings — maybe it's me
1 = It's not me, it's you1
“Science Fiction”: This factor rates how a book is in terms of science fiction — the general exploration of perturbations to human society as a result of science, technology, ideas, and alternative ways of living. A book can be really good and do this terribly, or be awful and do this well making it a fairly orthogonal dimension to the literary and “vibes” dimensions.
5 = Made me think about a real world problem in a different way
4 = Something novel or an implementation of something wonderfully obscure
3 = Interesting sci fi idea
2 = Tired ideas that others have written about better
1 = The sci fi at best sounds like it was developed by your stoned roommate at 3am
“Literary”: This factor rates how a book reads as a contribution to the corpus of English (or translated) novels. Is it poorly written? Is it pretentious? (This book is a ‘yes’ on both.) Or is it at the level of Ursula K. Le Guin?
5 = Didn't know you could do this with language
4 = You must have gone to school for this or at least practiced a lot
3 = Most writing, not bad, not remarkable — one or two cringe lines
2 = Regular cringe lines or just totally emotionless, flat
1 = Didn't know you could do this with language (derogatory)
“Vibe”: This factor rates my own opinion of the je ne sais quois that contributes to the feeling of reading it. Pure gut feelings. Pure vibes.
5 = bliss
4 = nice
3 = fine
2 = meh
1 = ugh
Data with his emotion chip saying “I hate this!”.