this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
-13 points (30.3% liked)

Books

8214 readers
176 users here now

A community for all things related to Books.

Rules

  1. Be Nice. No personal attacks or hate speech.
  2. No spam. All posts should be related to discussion or reviews related to books. (Please avoid posts that are just a link to the book and a generic summary)
  3. No self promotion.

Official Bingo Posts:

Related Communities

Community icon by IconsBox (from freepik.com)

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
dresden@discuss.online
dresden_do@lemmy.world
JaymesRS@literature.cafe
JaymesRS@lemmy.world
dresden@piefed.world
-13
Do you normally read books with less than 4 stars? (programming.dev)
submitted 16 hours ago by cactus_head@programming.dev to c/books@lemmy.world
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I struggle with this a bit. Even if the book is 3.98 stars, i view that as not passing lowest bar. I consider most 4 stars books to not be there time, but rather the number of stars is how i filter out bad books

Also, how do you use your stars? Do you change your rating often?

For me, it generally goes like this:

  • 1 Star -Either its so bad that its offense or i dnf it
  • 2 Stars - Either bad or mediocre, not really work any time
  • 3 Stars - An okay book with a couple of redeeming points
  • 4 Stars - A great book with some flaws that bother me
  • 5 Stars - An excellent book, i am jumping in my sits.
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 4 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I'm a little confused, are you asking if, after reading a book, many of them are less than 4 stars on my own scale? Or are you asking if I use someone else's rating to pick the books I read, and avoid ones less than 4 stars?

I mostly read SF, with some fantasy, and not much else. The core of my reading list is made up from books that have been finalists for the major SF/F awards (Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C Clark), sequels to those, and books recommended by other sources that I respect a lot (e.g., Locus Mag reviews, recommendations by authors who I really like, etc.).

So those probably translate into 4 or 5 star ratings from external sources, though none of them use a rating system like that. I very, very rarely end up hating the books I end up reading, though some I don't really like a lot, even though they were critically acclaimed.

You can see the books I've read in 2025, with links to prior years, in this post.

[–] cactus_head@programming.dev 2 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Or are you asking if I use someone else's rating to pick the books I read, and avoid ones less than 4 stars?

Yeah. I just added the question of how You use your stars as a bonus.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 2 points 15 hours ago

Oh, okay, makes sense. I avoid stars personally. I just say if I liked a book and why - you can see from my link if you look at a few.