> [!infobox] <s class="aside-in"><em>mentioned in 2 evergreens</em></s> #### [[How to review books]] First:: [[The five star scale is for consumer and the ten point scale is for the critic]] As a consumer, when I rate books I want to hold my rating to whether or not somebody else should read that book. For me a book doesn't have to be "flawless" to be a rated five stars, it just has to be meaningful enough for anybody to read it. | Rating | Meaning | | ------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | 5-star | Everybody who can ^[can here means that even if the vocabulary or length is too much for someone, the book can still be rated five-stars, i.e. not everybody is able to spends months reading *War and Peace*] should read this book | | 4-star | If you are interested in this book you should read it | | 3-star | This book should be read by people who have read similar books or books in the same genre and think they will enjoy it/find it useful | | 2-star | This book has many flaws and shouldn't be read by someone unfamiliar with the content area or genre, but there is still some value in the contents | | 1-star | This book is harmful, uninteresting, or bad enough that nobody should read it | ##### Who has the right to critique books This largely depends on the medium. The scale above can largely be applied to both non-fiction and fiction, but when critiquing books, the book should be able to be compared to other books within it's genre. I think the reviewer should be well read in a genre before they start critiquing books in the genre, and for non-fiction they should be critiquing books in light of current information. ^[Yes this means that a book's rating may fall over time, but this only adds more weight the rating, a true 10/10 should be timeless] I haven't reached a point in any genre to start being a critic, ^[except the genre of reviewing reviewers] but I think that a good critique would likely involve at least some of the following categories. | Category | Meaning | | --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Informational content | Is the [[information]] accurate and useful | | Educational content | Is the [[information]] conveyed in a understandable way | | Emotional content | Does the book elicit the proper emotional responses to the content | | Quality of [[writing]] | Is the writing understandable and fits the genre | | Literary merit | Does the book as a offer something unique and valuable to it's genre | ### <hr class="footnote"/> **Status**:: #EVER/SAPLING *edited 7:35 AM - July 08, 2022* **Topics**:: [[critique]], [[literature]]