Ratings, ratings. This is my first year blogging and rating books. As I look over my list of books I’ve read this year, I’m not happy with some of the ratings I’ve done. I try to compare each book I read with others (obviously!) to see where I would place it. I’ve found that some books that I’ve given a “4″ should really be a “3.5″. There are quite a few I would change to 1/2 point to even one point less. I don’t think there are any that would increase.
What are the ethics of this? I guess it’s my blog and I can do what I want to, but should I really change my ratings? I could list all the ones I changed and the reasons why. Should I just start from here and leave my former ratings alone, or is it acceptable to go back and change a few as long as I explain myself.
I finished this book two days ago, and I still don’t know how I feel about it. Loved some of it, hated some of it, and was confused by the ending (particularly the second to last chapter; did they ?). I am reading this with my Book Awards group in September, and I have many things I’d like to talk about and discuss with them first before I write any kind of formal review.
I guess I will write one later. Lay Ter. (If you’ve read this book, you know what this means!)
I was disappointed in this book. I expected great things after loving The Handmaid’s Tale earlier in the year. I was especially disappointed as it was over 500 pages; it could have easily lost about 100 pages of detail. I guess that’s my main gripe about it. It just seemed too detailed for me. Also I correctly predicted almost all that happened. Long, too detailed, and too predictable. But still, Atwood does know how to turn a phrase, and that is why it still gets a 3.5 star rating.
It’s very simple. When this is passed on to you, copy the whole thing, skim the list and put a * star beside those that you like. (Check out especially the * starred ones.)
Add the next number (1. 2. 3. 4. 5., etc.) and write your own blogging tip for other bloggers. Try to make your tip general.
After that, tag 10 other people. Link love some friends!
Just think – if 10 people start this and the 10 people pass it on to another 10 people, you have 100 links already!
Kimmie has nominated me for the Rockin’ Girl Blogger Award. Thanks so much!!
It’s always hard to nominate others because there are SO MANY blogs that I love! Maybe I’ll just set up some parameters that will make anyone reading this eligible.
I nominate you if:
1. You’ve completed any reading challenge this year.
2. You’ve completed at least 4 books in the month of July and have written reviews of them on your blog.
3. You are, in fact, a female.
That’s it. Those are the qualifications. If you meet them, you are a Rockin’ Girl Blogger!
The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books
by J. Peder Zane
2007, 323 pp.
Rating: 3.5
This book has top ten book lists for 125 writers. Zane then scored these selections with a #1 pick getting 10 points and a #10 pick getting 1 point to come up with an overall list. The top ten works are the following:
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877)
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (1869)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (1600)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)
In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (1913-1927)
The stories of Anton Chekhov (1860-1904)
Middlemarch by George Eliot (1871-1872)
I find it interesting that the breakdown according to nationality was 40% Russian, 20% British, 20% American, and 20% French. I LOVE Russian lit-especially Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. I have read the titles in bold and would like to read the other books on the list in the following order: Middlemarch, War and Peace, The Stories of Anton Chekov, Lolita, and then In Search of Lost Time. I want to read Middlemarch in 2008 and perhaps War and Peace as well.
There were various other top ten lists in the back with the following as the #1 pick for each:
#1 work of the 20th century: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#1 work of the 19th century: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
#1 work of the 18th centure: Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne
#1 work of the 16th and 17th centuries: Hamlet by William Shakespeare
#1 work of the 15th century and earlier: The Odyssey by Homer
#1 author by number of works selected: William Shakespeare
#1 author by points earned: Leo Tolstoy
#1 work by an American author: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#1 work by a British author: Hamlet by William Shakespeare
#1 work by a Russian author: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
#1 work by a French author: Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#1 work by a living author: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez
#1 comic work: Don Quixote by Cervantes
#1 work of fantasy/science fiction: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Carroll
#1 mystery/thriller: The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
He also lists all 544 books mentioned by the writers in point order with a summary for each. I did glean some titles for my TBR pile that I’ll list here:
The Golden Argosy edited by Van H. Carmell
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
Mrs. Bridge/Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Stones for Ibarra by Harriet Doerr
The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard
The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos
Wheat That Springeth Green by J. F. Powers
The Gate of Angels by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni
Silence by Shusaku Endo
The River of Earth by James Still
The Beginning of Spring by Penelope Fitzgerald
The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett
I like lists of books so you may be wondering why only a 3.5 rating. I just really liked The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop and The King’s English so much better. Also, out of the 125 authors that participated, I had only heard of 55 of them. As I read through the selections, I found that other than the obvious classics I haven’t read and the above titles, I just wasn’t interested in many of them. Doom and gloom and s*x and violence. I don’t have to have a happy ending to enjoy a book, but I do want to feel something other than utter hopelessness.
The God of Small Things
The Blind Assassin
The Top Ten: Writers Pick Their Favorite Books
