The Complexity of Rating Contemporaries

If you've been here a while, you may or may not know I've done A LOT of discussion posts on ratings, rating systems, when to rate books, et cetera et cetera. But I just finished a book and I realized something I wanted to add to my previous discussion about the complexity of rating systems. And that "something" I want to discuss is genre.

I touched briefly on my lack of specific rating categories for different genres in the original post, but that's not exactly what this is about. Perhaps I'll discuss that at another time, when I've sorted all my opinions out. What I do want to talk about today is the harshness of my ratings when it comes to different genres.

Specifically, I have the tendency to be more critical of contemporary novels than any other genre. I don't know about you guys, but it makes sense in my mind why this would be the case.

Based on my experiences, there are less "categories" that I have to rate when it comes to contemporary. For one, there's no world-building to critique. Contemporary is about the present on this very planet, so there's not much world that needs building that we don't already know about. Also, although romance can be a part of contemporaries, it seems that there are more books without a romantic focus in the contemporary genre than any other.

In addition, since it's a story that takes place in our world, I want the story to have meaning. In my opinion, it needs substance; it needs an emotional plot and deeper character development than any other genre. While I know there are "cutesy" contemporaries that can be as equally as enjoyable to read, unless they're executed brilliantly, they rarely receive above 4 stars in my book.

Lastly, the characters play even more of a role in the story. Unlike science fiction or fantasy, the plot of a contemporary novel cannot be carried by the evil villains or magic and mayhem. In my opinion, the best characters in contemporaries have to be written better and must be more flawed, more raw, and often more emotionally hurt to make it a good story. They are the driving force of the plot, after all. And not only do they need to go through greater catharses than in other genres, but I also have to like them. Not that I want to read about horrid characters in other genres, but it makes even more of a difference in contemporaries.

So in summary, I guess what I meant to say is that my criteria for contemporaries is almost identical to my criteria for other genres, but said criteria matters even more for me in contemporaries.

What do you guys think? Do you rate specific genres more harshly than others?

Is There a Perfect Time to Rate a Book?

The main reason why I wanted to bring this up is because I feel like there's a certain euphoria after finishing a book that sometimes obscures our better judgment, whether we'd like to admit it or not. I used to think I was immune to this euphoria, but that proved wrong quite recently, as I was reading other people's reviews of a book I had just rated and reviewed. It was a sequel to one of my absolute favorite books ever, and I enjoyed it enough that I thought I'd fallen in love with it the same way I'd fallen in love with the first, but the fact of the matter is that the book wasn't as good as the original. It was captivating and written wonderfully, but the plot just didn't quite hold up as well. Despite all this, I was disillusioned because the ending was almost exactly what I wanted it to be. So I initially rated it 5 stars. But looking back, it wasn't truly a 5-star read, and realized this has been happening a lot lately. So today I thought it would be interesting to discuss the perfect time to rate books, if there even is one.

Usually I rate a book as soon as I finish it, or at least within a few hours of finishing it, but that's just a natural instinct. If you've read my post about the complexity of rating systems, you'd know that 1) rating books is not a simple task, and 2) I have a rating calculation based on writing style, creativity, characters, plot, and romance (if applicable). However, this is still a rather quick evaluation and lately, as I previously mentioned, I've been altering my ratings a lot after the fact.

My main problem is that many books fail to grab my attention from the start, but by the end, I'm completely captivated. That euphoria I mentioned before so often fills my mind and heart with happiness by the last page, and, as a result, I often give those books a rating higher than they deserve. I'm not saying that loving an ending and rating a highly book because of it is necessarily wrong, but obviously we're supposed to be rating a whole book, not just based on the second half or last 100 pages (or whatever the situation may be).

For me, based on when I usually change my ratings, I should probably decide the rating within a few days of finishing the book. I always have to start writing reviews right away since I don't have the greatest memory when it comes to books, but I think it's better to decide the rating after starting to draft the review. That's not what I've been doing, but it probably makes more sense to do it that way so I can articulate my thoughts and recognize the problems the book may have had (and base the rating on those things).

So the thing is, I don't know the answer to the question I'm asking, but I do know one thing. That it might not be be the best idea to rate books as soon as I finish them. I misjudge books frequently, and it's not like my initial ratings are lies, but I think I do need some time to settle and organize my thoughts. I'm always so giddy and want to share my opinions right away, and don't have the patience to think things through. And I don't usually realize my mistakes until much later. I know they're mistakes that can easily be fixed, but since I've made this mistake so many times, I figured it was worth analyzing further.

In Which I Start to Ramble about the Complexity of Rating Systems

Before I started blogging, my review/rating system was non-existent. I would rate based on how much I liked a book, and that was it. Looking back, I realized that it's much more complicated than that. There are so many different things one can like or dislike about a book, and it's rare to like every single aspect of a book (or hate every single aspect of a book, for that matter).

Even after blogging for about six months, my rating system was still volatile. And I still continue to find myself becoming more and more critical of books that I probably would have given 4, 4.5, or 5 stars rather easily a few months ago. Years ago, I used to be that person who gave 5 stars to anything that kept my attention and had no grammatical issues, even if there were tons of underlying problems with the characters, plot, and romance. But that isn't me anymore.

For a while now, I've been breaking down my ratings into five categories and rate each book on a 5-star scale per category, then average the them out to get the overall star rating. I'm pretty sure a bunch of people also do this (or something similar), although I definitely still need to rethink and tweak my system. The five categories (at this point) are as follows:

1. Writing Style
2. Creativity
3. Characters
4. Plot
5. Romance (if applicable)

Since I read so much fantasy, I am considering adding a world-building category, but there are obviously other problems to the system other than lacking rating categories for specific genres. For example, I value certain categories more than others, but I don't weigh the ones I value more more heavily than the ones I don't care as much about. Also, there are tons of sub-categories I could be rating to determine the overall category rating (like rating the main characters, secondary characters, and villains separately to get the overall character category rating), but then it gets super complicated. Do the main characters have more of an influence on the character rating than the secondary characters? And if yes, how much more influential to the story are they? Because honestly, secondary characters are more important than I initially thought.

I understand the importance of rating books, and I try my best to be fair with the books I read, but it's definitely more complicated than I imagined. Obviously we all have different opinions of books, and therefore will have different ratings, but everyone's rating scales are very different. Some people are really easily blown away by books, while others find problems with almost every book they read. And since we all are unique individuals, we're bound to love certain things about books that other people will hate.

Is there (or can there ever be) some sort of universal rating system? What rating scale do you use to rate and review books?