Ratebeer Readers discussion
Your five star books
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I wouldn't if he said "that book's a 3.9" I think the experience of reading, particularly something really complex, is harder (for me at least) to quantify, especially on a simple 1 to 5 scale. I'm using the scale here (because it exists), but not thinking about it too much.
I'll post a list of favorite SF/fantasy books soon, since that's the genre I know best, but all of my ***** rated stuff is probably at least 200 books.

The books I've rated 5 are definitely some of my favorites though. But some of the ones I rated 4 or even 3 are just as good at different times. As with my beer ratings I try to save the top ratings for a small minority of my favorites, even if I do enjoy the others quite a bit. I would say anything 3 or higher I liked; 2 means it has some merit, but I didn't like it as much. One star is everything else. I think that with books the reviews are more important than the ratings - even moreso than with beer. I'm going to try to write a review for everything I read this year, but it's hard. I haven't written anything other than forum posts, e-mails and technical literature for a long time.
I do think that rating the books is nowhere near the best feature of the site.
Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Ceremony - Leslie Marmon Silko
Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - Alfred Lansing
A River Runs Through It - Norman McLean
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Essays of E.B. White - E.B. White
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water - Marc Reisner
East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
A motley crew there, for sure. Not all are "literary," of course, and those are rated on a hedonistic scale a la ratebeer.