I wrote a post about my hatred for King Killer Chronicles recently and said I gave it 1 star. A respondent told me even if I disliked the book it wasn’t worth one star because of the writing being so good.
I reflected on what he was wrote and I still tend to disagree with his system. I’m currently reading Lessons in Chemistry which consistently gets 5 stars from my friends of Goodreads. Im a feminist and have a Masters in a Science so I had very high hopes but I plan at this point (50 pages to the end) to give it 3 stars. Why? Because it is what I call “put down-able”, which I have classified as my number one requirement for a 5 star. If I keep going for another chapter, then another one and suddenly it’s 3 am? – that’s 5 stars.
What makes a book 5 stars for you?
by shethenorth88
2 Comments
Everyone has their own system and everyone experiences the same books differently. For me a 5 star book invokes enough emotion in combination with spectacular writing to make me feel love or strong attachment to the book. Or it’s so funny that I legitimately laugh out loud multiple times while reading it. That’s my personal criteria.
For me, there are two main metrics that I use to judge the quality of a book.
The first and most obvious is the technical proficiency of the writing, and the second is the book’s literary value. Does the book contain a worthwhile message that the author wanted to share with the world?
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I would like to use your example of the Kingkiller Chronicle. From a technical perspective, it’s incredible. If I were judging the book by the sentence structure, the diction, literary techniques like metaphor, rhyme, readability, it would easily be 5-stars. Rothfuss has an undeniable command over language that few other writers can match. That said, what’s the point? The book is saying nothing at all. It might be a fun read, but the plot barely holds together. So from a literary perspective, I understand your 1-star.