I was looking through the non-manga part of my library and realized that, aside from several volumes of 本好きの下剋上, I had only given two books a rating of 5/5: 獣の奏者 (1) | L33 and かがみの孤城 | L28. This made me curious how often people give a rating of 5/5.
For me, if I include 本好きの下剋上, I’ve given 11/44 books a 5/5 rating. (If I exclude 本好きの下剋上 it’s only 2/23.)
For manga, I gave 43/245 volumes a 5/5 rating. Apparently all but one of them are volumes of my favorite manga series. Obviously it would trend that direction since those series are my favorites for a reason, but I do find it surprising (and a bit sad) that I’ve only had one stray 5/5 score.
I gave 98/339 a 5* rating.
I was pretty positive about light novels when I started reading them, since I was new to the medium. I would probably give 4* to quite a few of those nowadays. (But it might also be that my enthusiasm for those specific series has died down since then).
For manga, 233/677 5* ratings. I can see a strong bias here: I tend to go for longer series and drop them quickly if I don’t love them, so that does make sense.
So, apparently ~30% of the time?
Speaking of which, I only have 10 among the last 50 books (so lower than average) and a bunch of 1*s. So, me feeling like I’m having bad luck with my recent book picks is not just in my head, stats confirm it too
Haven’t read nearly as much as you two, but out of the books I’ve rated, I’ve apparently rated 11/22 as 5/5. So 50% of the time. But a lot of those are the same series which is mostly 5/5 with a few 4/5s in there. I’m curious how this will change as I read more. I doubt I’ll still have anywhere near 50% 5 stars once I start reading a lot more.
(Edit: if I take out 極主夫道 (series) | L25 (which I’ve rated 8/10 of them 5 stars), I’ll have 3/12 5 star books. So 25%.)
If we count the Stopped books I’ve rated (I don’t like rating books unless I finish them, but there’s some exceptions), 11/26 are 5 stars. And 3/26 are 2 stars (no 1 stars yet…)
If I filter to novels, short stories, and light novels (I rarely read manga and it’s usually because I’ve already seen the show, so unfair bias, and children’s stories I rate differently) which I have finished I have 28 out of 88, or ~32%.
I have given zero 1 stars in that group, and only two 1-star ratings on the site overall. One was in Other because it’s nonfiction and it was a suicide note. It felt really weird to rate a suicide note but I couldn’t review it without rating. The other was 冗談に殺す | L35 which is basically just graphic, glorified animal cruelty. I didn’t finish reading it for obvious reasons.
I tend to know more or less what I’ll like or not at this point, so landing on 5 stars isn’t shocking and I tend to rate books for what they are, rather than against some higher standard. Trashy novel provides entertaining trash? 5 stars. Gritty hard boiled cop drama provides grit? 5 stars.
I give out stars pretty frequently from 2-5, it’s just 1s I rarely do as I typically won’t even finish the book/story/etc that bad, and only review it if it’s a case like the above where I think it’s worth calling out content for others (both were on Aozora Bunko).
I’ve only rated 12 manga/books so far, so that’s not much of a statistic yet, but I gave 5/5 twice… so 16.7%. One short children’s book, and one manga.
Part of the reason might be that I’m only now really starting to be able to read things that I actually want to read. I definitely hope that this number will be higher in the future!
(Also I’m quite sure that the next two manga I’ll finish, ルリドラゴン 1 | L19 and ロジカとラッカセイ 第2巻 | L21, will both be 5/5 as well, so then we’re at 28% )
Right, that’s also how I go about it. My 5* on a spicy TL does not mean the same thing as a 5* on a 異世界 light novel, which is not the same thing as my 5* on 天冥の標 1 メニー・メニー・シープ (hard SF).
I should do that… but sunk cost fallacy… numbers go up…
(And sometimes, I just like to hate-read; anger does get the adrenaline pumping, making you feel alive and stuff )
More seriously, leaving something unfinished just feels wrong. The only time it happens is when it’s something I rented from the library. If I didn’t finish it by the time I have to return it, that’s it
(Also, it seems I tend to not add my stopped book on Natively)
On LearnNatively, counting only the books I’ve finished, and including textbooks and graded readers, I have 13 out of 173 five star rated books, or about 7%.
It’s not far off from the data I have from GoodReads, which includes the books I’ve read in English – on there I have 95 out of 1062 books rated at five stars, just under 9%.
I have Very Strong Opinions™ about star rating systems, so I try to be stingy with my five stars and reserve them for the books that are really memorable experiences and easy to recommend to others.
Out of 21 books (novels and short stories), I seem to have given 5* stars to 7 of them. There are zero 1* stars, that would be reserved for a book I dislike so much I couldn’t even finish, and happily this hasn’t happened yet.
I rate books against my own expectations for each one of them. If they deliver what I expect or more, they’re five stars. So not all 5* stars ratings mean the same thing.
I very rarely give 5 stars, but that’s true for books in any language. I have a fairly consistent rating system which is basically the goodreads rating system.
1 star – didn’t like it (more like, I hated it but for some reason didn’t DNF XD basically toilet paper)
2 stars – it was OK
3 stars – liked it
4 stars – really liked it
5 stars – it was amazing
(I also sometimes don’t give any ratings for various reasons, but those reasons haven’t come up yet with Japanese books.)
I have only given 2 (out of 102) non-manga books 5 stars, but anything 3 stars and higher is worth reading. (1 of 38 manga has also been given 5 stars.)
Edit: I checked my goodreads stats, and I give 5 stars to about 5% of read books (currently 87/1789), so my Japanese ratings are below that. However, I have been tracking on GR for over 10 years and it includes some books from my childhood. (Basically, if I still remembered a book very fondly and clearly, I thought this was a good sign it’s a 5 star, even if I didn’t re-read it.)
Looking back at my ratings, even a DNF book got two stars - it just wasn’t for me but it wasn’t heinous
Five stars is rare enough - I gave the first novel I read five stars but that might have been partly sentimental. Only 4/17 have hit five stars so far!
About 4% of the time, apparently. Though, there are quite a few in there that might deserve 5 stars, but I read them so long ago I’m not confident enough to give them that.
I do feel like I’d benefit from having a /10 or half stars for me, as I think I’m giving perfect scores to something that neither deserves a perfect score nor a 4/5 but something in between.
Yeah, I also prefer half star scales. I usually err on the lower side, if I am in between ratings. However, I take the overall rating on GR into account, i.e. If there are very few ratings, I usually go for the higher rating.
I don’t really rate books outside of a 5 point scale since that’s what Goodreads also uses, so I make do. Once or twice I would have liked a half star option, but it’s not a common occurrence for me.
That said, on AniList I use a 20 point scale (1-10 with half points), so translating that to a 5 point scale when TV/movies launches will be a bit awkward. I think I’ve decided to round down ties, because if I convert 9/10 to 5/5 I’ll have way too many 5/5 scores (about 50%) compared to books. Instead I’ll have very few 5/5 scores, but I guess that feels better to me. Of course, instead this just means nearly everything will get 4/5, which isn’t great either, so I may need to change this a bit.
I know my ratings trend high, but after counting them up, it wasn’t as dramatic as I thought it might be.
For books, I have 18/45 (so 40%) 5-star reviews. However a lot of those are 本好きの下剋上 for me too, so if I exclude those I get 9/35, or around 26%. 4- and 3- stars make up basically everything else, since I’m quite picky about what novels I choose to read in the first place.
For manga, I have 63/134 (about 47%) 5-starred. I tend to rank volumes of the same series about the same level though, so after turning on ‘collapse series’ and recounting, about 18/60 (30%) of unique series had consistent 5-star ratings (and two fluctuated between 4- and 5-stars).
I’m not sure what a 5-star rating means to me, exactly, but I guess I agree with others here that it varies by each book. I also occasionally adjust older ratings when looking back at my library and considering how much I’ve thought about a book after finishing it. Sometimes a book I only gave a 4-star rating ends up sticking in my head for a long time, becoming a reference point for thinking about other media, and I start to appreciate it more over time. On the other hand, once or twice I’ve looked back on a book I’d rated highly but then basically forgot about, and even paging through it again I can’t remember what it was I liked so much about it.
Like candy on Halloween. Unless I’m bored out of my mind reading a book, which is rare that I would finish something I didn’t enjoy, I usually give it a 5 star.
I give 4 stars if an book is as good as I thought it is. 5 stars if it is better than I thought, which is rare, as I usually look into it before I buy it to check whether I like it or not.
A book will get 3 stars and below if it is less good than I thought. Until now only one was in danger to get 2 stars so far, but it got better to the end, so it could reach 3 in the end
I’m an easy grader. If I really enjoyed the book then it’s a 5 stars. I think 3 stars may be the lowest I’ve given on Natively. If I don’t enjoy a book and don’t end up finishing it, I don’t bother to even grade it.
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