I’m a big time Ishiguro fan and can’t for the life of me understand why his books are rated so low on Goodreads?
My hunch is that he doesn’t always go for the happy endings, not always a perfect resolution, and can leave someone unsettled but the books themselves are great works of literary art. It won’t end like some superhero movie with the good guys saving the world from the bad guys
But am I missing something?
Also no spoilers on any of his books!
I struggle with reviewing books between ‘am I giving this a rating based on the books objective quality’ or ‘my personal rating’. A book I may rate 1 because I didn’t enjoy reading/just wasn’t for me I could also rate a 4 if asked for the former rating system. For people using goodreads as a personal library/bookshelf, they could be lowering the rating of a book based on personal taste.
Yeah I think this is a big part of it.
I recently got a goodreads account, and when you set it up it tells you to start rating books in order for them to reccomend you new books you might like. That makes it seem like reviewing based on how much you like it and how much you’d like to read similar things is what their review system is for.
I can easily want to rate a book 5 stars because I loved it, and want the website to reccomend me other similar books, while knowing that it’s really a 2 or 3 star book in terms of quality and literary merit.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with rating a book on a personal rating though. At the end of the day isn’t that what determines a book’s worth? If people like it.
Lotr, great movie.
I couldn’t stand the book. Credits to him for creating a whole world of fantasy and language etc, tons of poetry and characters. I’d rate it highly “objective quality” wise.
But I found it a terrible read. I had to flip through multiple parts to finish it.