What are you reading?
I just spent a day adding books to my account over on goodreads.com. At over 450 books, it’s a fair stack. And yet, I probably have another thousand to add, at least, just from books that I own.
But at least I’ve finally got a good way to answer those “favorite books” questions on online dating sites.
One of the things that I noticed, looking through my list, is that I’ve given a lot of four- and five-star ratings. Maybe that’s because I’m not attached to finishing books I don’t like, and maybe it’s because I was mostly just entering books that have stayed with me over the years. I any case, it leaves me wondering if I need to re-rate them with a stricter eye. For example, “Love Poems from God” is a great book – one of my favorites, really – but I could imagine improving it (by adding the poet’s name to a running header or footer in each section). Usually I don’t give a five-out-of-five rating unless I can’t imagine any improvements. That would trim the five-star set a fair bit. Then I could down-grade any four-star book with which I disagree. That could do a lot, really, but what about fiction whose message I don’t remember? Does that, alone, qualify it as a three-star book? Is it an error to lack a memorable message?