The Most Nerve-Racking Part of Book Blogging

Truth to be told, the hardest part of book blogging isn't getting books read on time, writing book reviews, or even making sure you get at least one post in each week. Nope, the most nerve-racking part of book blogging is definitely giving a book its rating. Reading books on time isn't too hard. I mean, when your hobby is reading, it makes sense that you have to convince yourself to STOP reading, not read a book ON TIME. And book reviews are basically written rants, so it's not that hard. And one post a week? Come on, try and keep me AWAY from writing posts! Now giving a book a rating...not so easy.

You know how in class, teachers sometimes make you read over your partner's assignment, and give them a grade? And of course, being the nice person you are, you tend to give that person a higher score than they deserve. For book bloggers, this is something we have to try REALLY HARD not to do. If we end up giving books a higher rating than they deserve, then our blog readers won't trust our reviews anymore, and that kind of takes away from the entire purpose of blogging. Instead, many times we spend more time thinking about how many stars - or in my case, clock dials - to give a book than actually writing the review.

I don't know if this is a me problem or a problem everyone has, but my rating of a book tends to be different right after I finish a book, and then later, as I'm writing the review. Usually, the rating is higher as soon as I finish, which is before I actually have time to think about and absorb everything I read. Thanks to this, nowadays I tend to sleep on a book rating rather than review it right after I finish. Ratings I'm unsure about can NEVER be posted, and so I give myself adequate time to consider all the aspects of the book, as well as my enjoyment of it, and only then do I settle down on a number out of five. Unfortunately for me, I've recently discovered another problem with book rating.

After reading a book last week, I ended up giving it a rating of two-and-a-half dials. I gave myself a few nights to sleep on the rating, but by then, I actually forgot about it (oops). Then of course came the day to write the review, so I did. However, by the time I had to actually give the book a rating, my thoughts on the book had changed. Believe it or not, by writing my review, I actually convinced MYSELF that I enjoyed the book more than I thought I had, and so I actually ended up increasing the rating to three clocks. I don't know about you, but I find that beyond weird. I guess sometimes you don't realize how much you like or dislike a book until you start talking about it.

And that, pretty much, sums up the nightmare it is to give a book a rating. It's not an art by any means, but more of me fumbling around, trying out different ratings until I find one that fits, one I'm happy with. It is by no means a simple process, and sometimes I have to stop myself from giving books ratings like 4.125 clocks, but really, it's actually a fun challenge to try to sum up a book in a number, and I hope as I continue to review books, it will become easier to correctly judge the number of dials a book deserves (though it's entirely possible that it might actually get HARDER to summarize a book in a number).

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It's obvious not everyone has the same methods of reviewing a book, so how do you determine what rating a book deserves? Do you think it's the hardest part of book blogging, or is there something else you find more difficult?