How I Rate Books

I have been writing book reviews for publication since I was a teenager, but I was always somewhat uncomfortable with the subjectivity involved in the process. As an English and writing teacher, I graded hundreds of papers and had to keep my personal feelings about the writer, topic, etc out of the grade. I used technology to achieve some of this: having students submit via Google anonymously, for example. But primarily, I used a rubric. A simple yes-no system. Does the author do this? Awesome. Did the author not do this? Hmm, gonna lose some points there. You get the idea.

So, when I got back into my reviewing, I wanted to find a system to rate books using my opinion as little as possible. Of course, it is impossible to leave me completely out of a review. But I was primarily concerned with leaving my current mood out of a review. If I otherwise enjoyed a book, but finished it on a bad day and wrote the review then, it would affect the overall rating of the book. And that’s not fair. That’s where my book rubric comes in.

It started with CAWPILE -- Character, Atmosphere, Writing, Plot, Intrigue, Logic, Entertainment. But I found that to be both too limiting and too broad for the diversity of genres I read. CAWPILE really only works on fiction, and is best when applied to fantasy. I read a lot of contemporary fiction and nonfiction as well. I needed something that could work for just about everything with few tweaks between genres. I also wanted to put more emphasis on what is more important for certain genres.

This is the rubric I use right now. This will probably change as I continue, but for now, this works well. It is divided into 3 overall categories, and each of those is divided into subcategories. Each of those subcategories is given weights based on the common genres I read. 

For example: if I am reading a fantasy novel (like I am now -- Mistborn again), plot and setting are weighted, character is not. I chose to do this because I feel the most important parts of good fantasy, what differentiates good fantasy from mediocre fantasy, is the story and world-building. World-building includes the magic system (if there is one), plot includes the originality and pacing. Likewise, in the personal reaction category, theme is weighted while emotional resonance is not. I believe that good fantasy is used as a mirror into the real world, but in such a way that makes the reader draw their own connections as opposed to giving them a map. Good fantasy says ‘this is your world’ and ‘this is what it could be’ or ‘this is what it will be if things don’t change’. Meanwhile, my own feelings toward the characters or story is less important to me than the message. 

Each genre has their own weights for each category. But they all add up to 10. I rate each subcategory out of 10, multiply by the weight, and divide the result by 100. This gives me an overall score. I then round to the nearest half, and that is the star-rank I give.