The Book of Ratings: Opinions, Grades, and Assessments of Everything Worth Thinking About

by Lore Fitzgerald Sjoberg

"Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg could be talking about bowling shoes and still be funny (speaking of which, the low-fashion shoes rank C−, right below actual bowling)." —Washington Post

Are you harshly judgmental? Yes! Do you walk around snidely rating everything in your path? Of course you do! You can't help it—it's just too easy and too much fun to rate everything from your coworkers and dates to restaurants and supermodels.

The Book of Ratings, which grades and compares everyday items in its own unique way, is the ultimate catalog of the most mundane and most hilarious rankings around.

For instance: Have you ever considered marsupials?

Koalas: Koala bears eat only one thing, day in and day out. Koalas look cuddly, but they're actually irritable, solitary beasts who do not want belly rubs. What kind of mocking god created creatures with poofy ears and big black noses that don't want belly rubs? B

Opossums: North America gets one lousy marsupial, and let's just say it's not going to win any beauty contests. Or even not-ugly contests. C−

Wombats: "Wombat" is a great name. It's got a "wom" and a "bat," and an "omba." They're kind of nondescript animals, cute in a generic pudgy mammal way, but their name spelled backward is "tabmow," and that makes all the difference. A

The Book of Ratings is hysterically arbitrary and undeniably infectious.

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction

218 pages, Paperback

First published October 22, 2002

Reviews

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now about 20 years old, "The Book of Ratings" is a compilation of grades and quizzes. It consolidates the materials of the "Brunching Shuttlecocks" humor website, a true web 1.0 pioneer. I was familiar with the original work, and so was delighted to revisit it.

This book aims to assess topics other than specific cultural products, such as books, music, or movies, but instead turn more broadly to everyday or pop culture topic, say pizza toppings, breakfast cereals, comic book characters, or office supplies. For each topic assessments, each is given a paragraph of opinion, followed by a letter grade. These reviews are punctuated by quizzes for assessing the reader, as well as some bonus materials.

This book is consistently entertaining and occasionally quite funny. I didn't generally find it a laugh-out-loud experience, but enjoyed the trip. In my opinion, the quizzes are the best part of the book, as they slowly become more unhinged and progressively more meta. Though some of the opinions are now no longer fresh takes, they are delivered in a consistently enjoyable way.

Sometimes, the book is even rather insightful and has changed my mind on a topic or two. Extra cheese _is_ a lame pizza topping.

This book is now old enough that it's gone from fresh, to outdated, to vintage in some of its references. It makes references to the collapsing value for banner ads and the first tech bubble collapse. And it's wonderfully free of bitter political humor in a way that reflects the ethos of the 1990s.

Overall, this book is really a delight and would be a great book to keep in the guest bathroom for any company.

[Koen Crolla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Remember when this was a thing? That was a long time ago, apparently.
Certainly too long for me to remember many of the ratings, so I couldn't tell you how much of this book, if any, is new things and how much of it is just copied over from the website. There's some filler content in the form of quizzes I mostly hadn't seen before (though at least one of those— Porn Star or My Little Pony? —went on to achieve Internet fame in its own right, in those halcyon days when associating MLP and pornography was still a rare and transgressive act), though, and in the form of Lore Brand Comics that I had.

2002 (which the publishing year turns out to be) is also long enough ago that much of the material is really dated now, both because of the temporality of the references (AltaVista! That's not ironic, Alanis! VCRs!) and because some of the jokes, though probably original at the time, have now been repeated so often even the Internet is sick of them (Aquaman has sucky powers!).

Still, if you liked the website, you'll get your dollar's worth of entertainment out of the book—it holds up as more than just a nostalgia piece, and it beats sifting through the Shuttlecock archives now.

[J. Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lore is a funny, funny man.

[Derrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun toilet or coffee table book, Lore has a great sense of dry humor.

[Colin Sinclair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining stuff. Brought back fond memories of the old Brunching Shuttlecocks website from back in the day.

[Ubalstecha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lore Sjoberg is an Internet superstar. One of the brains behind Brunching Shuttlecocks, his weekly columns on Wired have been must views for many of us. This book is a collection of his rating lists, where he will take five to seven items related to a topic, talk about them briefly and then assign them a letter grade a la elementary school. Occasionally interspersed between the lists are surveys.

This is laugh out loud stuff. The book was banished from my bedroom because I kept waking my husband up with my laughing. Sure it's mostly available online, but this is in convenient hand held form.

[Holly Lindquist · Rating 4 out of 5]

For an unabashedly random collection of oddments, this book is hilarious. Sjoberg's diverse opinions never get tiresome and there are enough laugh-out loud portions to make drinking a latte while reading this a dangerous exercise.

[Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lore Sjoberg was doing Internet humor before it was cool, or even before it was uncool, and his Ratings were a highlight among his many hilarious writings. I'm not sure if this book is still in print, but you can still read almost all of these online, and you should.

[Marlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hilarious. Good for multiple reads. Just open anywhere and have yourself a laugh.

[L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic humor from the mid-morning of the web.