In their comments to my post about the whole 5-star thing, Eva and Rhi Etzweiler talked about ratings being based on reading experience and went on to outline what they meant.
This really interested me because I didn't think I'd really differentiated between my feelings about a book and the actual quality of the work itself.
Consciously, that is.
The more I considered it the more I realised that, yes, there were times when I pointed out a technical niggle which could easily put particular readers off.
By the same token, I've also recommended stories you'd think had never seen an editor because I knew they would appeal to certain types of people.
For me, Rhi nailed it when she wrote:
"Because readers have different tastes, and different reading moods even, and one or the other doesn't necessarily preclude a book from being technically sound.
Nor does "technically sound" automatically translate to "five stars" because otherwise we'd all be sitting around reading Doctoral theses and scientific journals."
Dear God. Just the thought of reading those kinds of tomes makes me want to curl up into a fetal position and start whimpering. Hideous. *shudders*
So, how much does the quality of a book matter to you when you rate it? Perhaps your enjoyment trumps technique every time? Or maybe it's a balance between the two? Tell me what you think.
