On Reviews, Ratings, and Opinions

Generally, I don't write discussion posts that I've planned way ahead of time. I write them when something happens, when inspiration strikes and my creative juices are flowing, and I can't NOT write something about it. Such an incident happened yesterday morning. 

On Goodreads, I've been fielding more friend requests than usual. With each one, I'm evaluating to see if we have similar opinions on books, since I don't trust the general community of reviewers all that much. Just look at the average ratings on some of my favorite and least favorite books and you'll get why. As such, I try to collect some like-minded people, so that I can trust their reviews and be aided in deciding whether to read something. I do make exceptions for those I know better, and thus can better evaluate whether I'm likely to share their opinions or not. This is all to explain why my friendship request question is what it is: "what's your most common rating and why?" or something similar. With this, the person generally expands on how they rate books. If they're afraid of one stars or give out 5 stars more than anything else, we'll have issues.

Today, I got perhaps the most puzzling review request response ever. While I won't name names, I do want to share the request in its entirety, and then I want to talk about why I find it so upsetting. I have not altered the quote in any way, nor is this intended as an attack on that author; I just have a lot to say with regards to some points raised.

"My most common rating is a 4 star. I'm an author and I know how hard it is to write, so I'm reluctant to go lower unless the work truly warrants. I see a lot of reviewers give low ratings cause they didn't like the story, which in my view is an opinion and not truly a review of the story and how well it is written, executed, etc. I love to give 5 stars. "

To start with, this is odd because my Goodreads average is a 3.12, so it seems like, rather than wanting to be friends, this person would loathe me for daring to critique books. Moving past that, let's think about what she's saying here.

Sure, this person is technically correct that evaluating the book based on the story is an opinion. Why, yes, it IS an opinion. Explain to me, though, dear readers, how rating and reviewing how well a book is written and executed is NOT an opinion. I've written reviews where I praised the beauty of the writing and then seen a friend's review, also honest, that said the writing was atrocious and overdone. A great example of this dichotomy in opinion would be the Shatter Me series, which is either generally found lyrical and gorgeous or the worst in purple prose. While writing does have some more objective qualities than story maybe, unless all the review goes into is grammar, it's all opinion. We all like different styles of writing and our evaluation will be an opinion based on our own preferences.

Even evaluating a book for grammar can be a matter of opinion when it comes to fiction. A first person perspective might include intentional grammatical errors. Take, for example, books written in dialect, like Blood Red Road or The Knife of Never Letting Go. Then, there are books like The Testament of Jessie Lamb, which annoyed me with its grammar fail but which was nominated for the Man Booker Prize; though I couldn't take the errors, apparently others saw them as perfectly acceptable and fitting for the narration of that character. The same can be said of simple sentences, which personally annoy me in books but might be in line with the intellectual level of the character.

There is very little that anyone can say about a book that is NOT an opinion. Even professional reviewers, paid for their opinions and likely more qualified to weigh in on a book's merits, do not deliver the same evaluations of books from on high. A book might get a starred review from one professional review publication and be panned by another. No matter how objective one tries to be, they're always bringing their own opinions to the table. They've been shaped by the books they've read, the knowledge they have, and their own personal preferences. That cannot be entirely eliminated. Following the logic of this person who requested my friendship, EVERY SINGLE REVIEW IS INVALID. This is what I have to say to that:

That's not all I want to comment on here, though. We also have the commentary on being an author and how that affects this person's ratings. This is something I've heard and seen a lot. A lot of authors feel uncomfortable writing negative reviews, the stated reason being understanding of how hard the craft is and the actual reason generally being more about not wanting to piss people off and make enemies. Now, I think it's perfectly logical for authors not to want to anger their fellow authors by ripping their books a new one. However, if you won't provide honest, helpful reviews, why review at all? If, for every book, you're just going to say: this book met minimum requirements of being a book, so four stars, what's the point? We could go through and rate much of what's on GR for you right now, unread. Of course, that's the author's business and they're perfectly welcome to do that, just as I'm perfectly welcome to rate all books 1 and 2 stars unless they blow my mind if I so choose (note that I do not do this). Still, this person saw fit in her review to critique the way that reviewers do things, so I feel like I have license to do the same.

Listen, I get that writing a book is hard. I do. I'm in awe of all of the people who can do it and, even more so, of the people who can put that book out there in the world to be criticized and evaluated. At the same time, though, by nature of publishing the book, authors are inviting such criticism. Expecting that people will evaluate your book on how hard you worked rather than on the plot, world building, writing and characters is illogical. That's never going to happen. Besides, how can we tell how hard you worked? Some authors write quickly and can bang out a decent novel in a couple months or less even. Some craft their novels over a decade, but there's no guarantee that book will be any better than the one written in a couple of days or that the time spent on it will show. I do sympathize with how hard book creation is, but, if you want to keep the book unsullied by the opinion of the masses, the only way to do that is not to publish it. This has been said before, but go look at some of what you consider the best books ever written and take comfort in the fact that even they have scathing reviews declaring the book to be without any sort of merit. Readers having opinions of your work is a guaranteed side effect of letting them read it.

To sum up, reviews ARE opinions and Goodreads is built for reviews. If you don't think that readers should be allowed to give opinions on novels, then Goodreads probably isn't a good place for you to be. Comfort yourself that they ARE just opinions if that helps, but don't try to argue that reviews can be anything but an opinion or that there's one right way to do things.

Oh, and, just to be perfectly clear, in no way do I think that all authors think like this. I know that this one does, and that a few others might share these opinions. Many do not. I've had authors thank me genuinely for my reviews, even if they had criticism. I've gotten review requests from authors whose books I've given 3 stars previously. Some authors genuinely appreciate thoughtful criticism and use that to improve. Please do know that I do not think the opinion stated in this friend request message is not representative of authors as a whole.

That's my opinion of all of this. What's yours? Do you think book reviews can be totally objective? Is it fair to comment on the story? Do you have thoughts on how authors rate books on Goodreads?