piranha answers “Why is even the rating of this book so...”

A Goodreads user asked this question about The Selection (The Selection, #1):

Why is even the rating of this book so high? I'm like 100% sure I will give it a 1 star if I read it.

piranha The person asking the question didn't even mention the cover, so why's everyone DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER? Such common "wisdom" often is nonsens…moreThe person asking the question didn't even mention the cover, so why's everyone DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER? Such common "wisdom" often is nonsense. Publishers design covers for exactly that purpose.

I judge a lot of books by their covers, I could show you some of them, and I bet you'd judge them too. ;) I also judge books by their blurbs, and by opening them and reading the hook and a random couple of pages. I judge them by character names ("America Singer" gets an automatic ding). And I judge them by obviously overblown ratings on GoodReads. I have honestly not liked a single new book that I solely picked up because it had a 4+ rating here. It's a reliable reverse indicator, if anything. Especially if it's a heteronormative teen romance, or a libertarian military SF book, high ratings mean it slots straight into a certain group's preferences, which are diametrically opposed to mine.

Those are all perfectly valid choices if you know yourself well and you have a good sense of what does and doesn't work for you. Prejudging sensibly saves us all a lot of time.

Here the cover puts the book squarely into a category that isn't likely to interest me (young girl all dressed up for a fancy ball or something -- very pretty cover, btw). The blurb starts out bad, feels like "The Batchelor", but then the next paragraph sounds a bit better, at least our heroine isn't a money-grabbing harpy. But paragraph 3 indicates a standard love triangle (which bore me).

I wouldn't ever say something is a bad book per se when I have not actually read it. But I can definitely judge the likelihood of it being a book I enjoy. So if you think you might not enjoy this, move on. There are hundreds of thousands of books out there, and while there is some value in reading a classic anyway even if you might not enjoy it, there is no reason to read random, popular fluff if you have no interest in it.(less)

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