The rating binge

I think we’ve all been guilty of this from time to time. You love books and you don’t really think about reviewing the book you just finished before picking up the next. Before you know it, you’ve gone through 10 books and you really need to get your reviews done. I know plenty of people that have blogs devoted to book reviews, or are professional reviewers, and even more people that just take reviewing books seriously. Regardless of where you fall on that list, you like to share your opinion about books, which is awesome.

Something that I find myself doing on the traditionally published books, when I’m on a roll and I don’t have any new opinion about the book or the author, is that I will just do a star rating. Anyone that visits my Goodreads reviews can see which books I have done this with. I also do this with books that I read when I was much younger and sites like Goodreads weren’t even a thing yet. I will say, however, that at most I’ve found myself rating no more than 5-15 books at a time. This is my preference and not to be mistaken for me “laying down the law” but it got me thinking.

Bookworms tend to read more than the average person. We’re never with out our Kindle, Nook, or a good old book in our hands. We have hundreds of reviews under our belt and no qualms about who knows it. Some of us do our due diligence by sharing our opinions (either by reviews or rating) because we want other people to know what we may or may not have liked. But when is rating a lot of books too much rating?

This is a question I found myself asking when I came across a person on Goodreads that had a couple thousand ratings on her account (which isn’t unheard of) but she had just recently gone on a rating binge and had rated 500 books in a day. My first thought was that she had a serious back log to catch up on. My second thought was whether some of those ratings were legitimate or not. I value the reviews I read for certain books because I am interested but I legitimately want to know what people think. Should I take a rating at face value, even though it could be a binge rating?

I would sincerely love to hear your comments on this (for lack of a better term) “phenomena.” Please know that I am not trying to bash anyone’s methodology, I am just trying to get some insight. All views welcome!