How to Rate a Book

I’ve been tracking the books on my reading list for a handful of years now. This serves as a guide for others looking for their next book and as a way to keep my own thoughts organized and available to retrieve at a later date. In addition to giving a few sentences about each one, I also give them my personal rating. There are a number of ways I’ve seen to rate books so I decided to catalogue a few of them below. Method 1 is what I currently use but the other two have sparked my interest since I discovered them. So here’s my question to you: which of these book rating systems do you think is the most valuable? Which would best help you to decide future books to read for yourself?

Method 1

Standard 5 star system. 5 stars is a book you absolutely MUST read, 3 is an average read, and 1 is definitely a book not worth the pages it’s printed on. This is what I currently use here.

Method 2

“An old author whose pen name was Cladius Clear said that a reader could divide his books as he would people. A few were ‘lovers,’ and those books would go with him into exile. Others are ‘friends.’ Most books are ‘acquaintances,’ works with which he was on nodding terms.” source: Spiritual Leadership

Method 3

“The best guide I know to readerly judgment is our old friend Auden, who graciously summed up a lifetime of thinking about these matters in a single incisive sentence: “For an adult reader, the possible verdicts are five: I can see this is good and I like it; I can see this is good but I don’t like it; I can see this is good, and, though at present I don’t like it, I believe with perseverance I shall come to like it; I can see that this is trash but I like it; I can see that this is trash and I don’t like it.” source: The Pleasures of Reading in An Age of Distraction
So which is the best in your opinion? Better yet, have you found anything better?

Do You Want to Read the Bible Without Falling Behind?

Sign up your email and I’ll send you a PDF to download and use my custom-made reading plan system. There’s no way to fall behind on this system and every day will be different no matter how long you use it!

I’ll send future content directly to your inbox AND you can dive into the Bible like never before.


Download Your Free Copy


Jeremy Jernigan

Speaker | Author | Founder of Communion Wine Co. https://linktr.ee/JeremyJernigan