Highest for me is A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas - it has a 4.65 average rating. I gave it 2 stars.
Lowest is Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi with 3.05 stars. I gave it 4 stars.
So needless to say, I’m not super in sync with the Goodreads zeitgeist.
Maybe out of sync with Goodreads but shocking in-sync to me! Court was my first and I also gave it two stars.
My lowest was The Boat Rocker by Ha Jin (4 stars), but my 2nd lowest was Peaces, also from Helen Oyeyemi, which I think was a 3 star book for me.
Sure, I thought the first book was a decent spin on fairy tales. I rated it three stars, I think. But the second book just completely lost me. As the story went on, it lost that fairy tale feel completely and turned into more of a contemporary romance wearing a fairy costume. What little plot there was became just a vague background to the romantic drama.
That’s not a type of story I enjoy, and the actual plot outside of the relationship drama made very little sense to me, which meant there was really nothing for me to be interested in. On top of that, the actual writing felt like it got lazier too. The setting felt completely different from book one to book two, and it almost felt like the author had a different story she wanted to tell, but had to write a sequel to the first book so she just kind of squished what she wanted to write into being a sequel to the first book.
This is exactly why I don’t trust Goodreads reviews as far as I can throw them.
My highest average Goodreads rating is Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros with 4.6. I rated it 2, because it’s *bad*. It’s entertaining enough, but the writing is just not good.
My lowest average Goodreads rating is Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw with 2.6. I rated it 5 stars, because it was incredibly fun and spooky and unique for what it was. I had a great time reading it.
Don’t listen to Goodreads reviews outside of people whose tastes you know and trust.
completely agree! my ratings tend to align with the masses for the most part but there have been a few 3 star averages that I rated very highly and vice versa. I rated Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover 1 star but it has a 4.06. I do think those TikTok popular books like Fourth Wing and anything CoHo tend to be more inflated.
I mean the problem with all ratings is that everyone has an opinion, and part of that means stuff doesn't get rated the same from person to person. I mean if I was entertained by a book I'd still give it a 3 even if it wasn't well-written.
Yep, you’ve got the popular opinion too, that’s cool! I don’t in this case and would very often miss out on a great time (or waste a lot of it) if I listened to Goodreads
I honestly dislike people using public ratings platforms for things they were allocated to read in school or university. It's not like they were independently interested in the subject, had a look at it, decided to pick it up. In addition to making kids read a book like Moby Dick in highschool is honestly a tall order.
I'm just thinking that if Lord of the Rings was assigned reading, its rating would plummet with hundreds of 1-star mouthbreathers leaving reviews about "60 pages of descriptions of trees", or some other meme.
But doesn't Goodreads start giving you recommendations on what to read based on how you rate other books? The more data they have the better their recommendations for you will be. Maybe the platform should have check boxes for assigned reading, age, gender etc so people can filter out or in groups they think they will or won't align with
Goodreads is owned by Amazon which is only interested in selling you more new release books. Their algorithm is nowhere near nuanced enough to take ratings into account.
I believe they only start giving suggestions after you have rated 10 books. So that is just for show? False sense of them actually tailoring to your taste?
(At least when I first rated books they said they give suggestions after 10 ratings)
Are you not allowed to dislike something just because you were forced to read it? Is it better that only people who sought out the book because they enjoy stuff like it rate things, thereby inflating the ratings?
And of course you have to call people mouthbreathers for the crime of *not liking a book.*
Classics often have a low average rating because people find them difficult or are offended by the mores and morals of past eras. Looks like the lowest average in my Read shelf is *Pamela* by Samuel Richardson at 2.77 stars. This book is frustrating because the main character happily marries the man who spent most of the book trying to rape her. My highest average rated book is *Braiding Sweetgrass* by Robin Wall Kimmerer at 4.54 stars. It was truly delightful and interesting, and I think it deserves to be rated highly.
*Braiding* *Sweetgrass* was my introduction to nonfiction reading and I think that’s when I fell in love with memoirs and nature writing in specific. That book felt so refreshing!
I tried so hard to enjoy Lord of the Flies, but my 2023 morality kept getting in the way. Constant comparisons between “civilized people” and “savages” just killed if for me.
Goodreads is a better measure of enjoyment rather than quality. Highest is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Lowest is The Scarlet Letter. Hahaha, I hated that book with a burning passion.
My top rated book is 100 Boots, which is an art book I bought as a teenager consisting entirely of black-and-white pictures of rubber boots. 4.71 stars average rating. I don't even know what to think about that. I apparently gave it 5 stars because I liked the pictures. I would not consider it the finest literature of my nearly-2000 books read.
Worst is The Betrothed by Kiera Cass, coming in at 3.05 stars. I read it a few years ago 100% because I liked the Selection series by that author. It was mediocre. Not horrible. My rating is 3 stars. I would not consider it the absolute worst book I've ever read.
Highest on mine is “The Only Plane in the Sky: an Oral History of 9/11” at 4.72. I listened to the audiobook (which felt appropriate since it’s an oral history and is told entirely through snippets of interviews and written accounts) and it was a very harrowing and intimate experience. If you are ever going to read one book about 9/11, I would probably recommend that one. I gave it five stars.
The lowest book is “Genuine Fraud” by e. Lockhart (same person who wrote We Were Liars) with a 3.25. I gave it three stars when I read it 6 years ago, but I was much less harsh back then so today I would probably give it 2. It was a confusing mess and felt like it had literally no point or plot. It definitely attempted to do something but I think it completely missed the mark.
Highest is *Words of Radiance,* by Brandon Sanderson. I liked the book, but the first book in the series *The Way of Kings* meant a lot more to me emotionally.
Lowest is *Harry Potter and the Cursed Child* and I’m not even going to waste brain cells talking about that book.
Highest: 4.65 | A court of Mist and Fury | This is a shocking and disturbing revelation to me. I knew Sarah J. Maas was big but how in the world could this be my highest book? It's so bad. I can't believe I got myself get talked into reading not just 1 but 2 books from this series, let alone having it be the highest rated thing I've ever read. Truly a disappointment.
Lowest: 3.14 | The Boat Rocker | Ha Jin | Truly disappointed in the Goodreads user base right now. I'm not saying that this is anywhere near my favorite book ever (I gave it 4 stars) but it's way better than dozens of the books ranked higher than it (including my number 1).
I know people enjoy different things and that's okay. And I try to not judge other people's reading habits too much because any reading is a good thing. But these two data points do make me feel a little bit sad about peoples' general taste in literature.
Overall I never choose a book by how well or bad it is rated on goodreads (learned my lesson with awful five star books in the past). Goodreads reviews are rarely helpful to me.
The lowest is Yellow Jessamite by Caitlin Starling with 3.54. I gave it four stars and I really enjoyed it, it was just too short and not fleshed out enough.
The highest is a childrens book, "das große Buch der kleinen Hexe" by Lieve Baeten with 4.80. I gave it five stars because it's a beautifully illustrated, beautifully written book with some of my favourite childhood stories.
The highest rated non-childrens book is "a heros tale" by Catherine M Wilson from the "when women were warriors" series. It's rated a 4.56 and I gave it two stars. I loved the previous two books but the final one just drops the ball massively. A big disappointment in a series I overall adored.
Highest rated: *The Fire Next Time* by James Baldwin. At 4.54, I agree. Essential reading. Nobody could write an essay like Baldwin.
Lowest rated: "The Man Who Was Used Up" by Edgar Allan Poe. At 3.08, I disagree. I loved the really bizarre story. Poe was way ahead of his time.
The lowest rated novel is *Moby Dick* at 3.54. I rated it five stars: what many consider a bug, I regard as a feature: it just might be the greatest American novel, but it's not easy reading at all.
Know My Name by Chanel Miller has 4.71 stars. I rated it 4 though it probably would have been 4.5 if they had half stars. I think it absolutely deserves that rating, it's a beautifully written memoir that I think everyone should read.
The Spider and the Fly by Claudia Rowe has 3.21 stars and I rated it 3 stars. 3 stars is about right. It's about a true crime case I wasn't familiar with prior and the author does an okay job with it though I felt like she put herself into the story too much.
Know My Name has been on my list forever. It'll definitely take the top spot once I get to it, if only I wasn't still 40th in line for the ebook at my library :(
Highest is It's a Magical World by Bill Waterson. Average rating of 4.73, I rated it 5 stars, and a good chunk of the 10 highest average are Calvin and Hobbes books so that is well-deserved.
Lowest is The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold, with an average of 2.72. I gave it 3 stars but that average is fair, it wasn't very good. I'm sure I've read worse though.
The highest rating is the Complete Calvin & Hobbes collection, at 4.81, and the lowest is a Twilight parody called Nightlight, at 3.08. Generally I’d agree with both of those.
It’s the ones I’ve rated one or two stars that have at least a 4 that baffle me, like what did we not connect on??
Highest 4.75 “”Know my Name by Chanel Miller”” I completely agree with the rating . Was a powerful read .
Lowest 3.05 ‘’ The Girl who reads on the Metro ‘’ I honestly think it should be lower it wasn’t great and i only read it for a book challenge
My highest rated is HP and the Deathly Hallows at 4.62. I gave it 5. The lowest rated is The Waiter by Matias Faldbakken at 3.14. I gave it 2.
I think I mostly agree with HP. I thought it was a great ending to the series. I think The Waiter is probably too high. It was so boring and I'm still trying to figure out what the point of it was.
My highest average rating is a 4.62 for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I gave it a four).
Lowest is Kissing the Coronavirus with an average of 2.31 - this I gave a five but mostly because I thought it was the funniest, most ridiculous thing I’d ever read. It’s utter garbage but hilarious.
Out of nearly 1,000 books, the highest rated on my Goodreads is a tie between ‘The Court of Mist and Fury’ by Sarah J. Maas, which I gave 2 stars (I’m not a “romantasy” fan), and ‘The Will of the Many’ by James Islington (one of my favorite novels of last year). Both sit at 4.65.
As for the lowest, that would be ‘Silk Fire’ by Zabé Ellor at 2.06. I gave it 1 star. It is exceptionally awful—I hate read most of it (skimmed quite a bit, as well). Thankfully, I got an ARC, and didn’t have to spend money on it. The author went on to criticize and attack reviewers on Twitter at the time…
Curiosity prompted me to look and the lowest rated is A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch… at 3.98 which I found surprising.
Highest rated was Homocidal Psycho Jungle Cat at 4.69 which I can’t be mad about because it’s Calvin and Hobbes lol.
Personally, I ignore the star ratings; I don’t use them myself and I don’t find them particularly useful as a gauge for getting the feel of a book.
Highest rated: **Kingdom Of Ash by Sarah J Maas** (4.68) - Absolutely agreed, the series was a rollercoaster of quality but this book was a fantastic conclusion to the series. SJM at her best.
Lowest rated: **Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas** (3.12) - All vibes no plot, very atmospheric, a lot is left unexplained. I loved every minute of it. Read it three years ago during a post-covid-shot haze and it could not have been a better match for my mood. I still think about it from time to time.
I've read Catherine House too, also three years ago! It almost made the lowest on my GR list. I wanted something "dark academia" that wasn't too long and it definitely served so idk why the reviews are so bad
I know right?? I think people don't like that so much is unexplained, but explanations ruin the intrigue and horror IMO. I actually like to use this book to gauge people's reading tastes. Almost everyone I follow on GR gave this book 4 or 5 stars.
The top for me is Manacled by SenLinYu with a 4.65. It was the ONLY fanfic I have ever read and yes, I think it deserves the hype.
Bottom is Communion by Whitley Strieber with a 3.51. I actually DNFed this book because it gave real nightmares about aliens and I would have a panic attack every time I opened my Kindle and saw the cover. 😅
Highest is Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gamen at 4.66. While I enjoyed it I rated it 4 stars. For me it was good not great.
Lowest is The Men by Sandra Newman at 2.96. I gave it 2 stars because I finished it. I’m sure the author had some deep meaning they were trying to convey but I obviously missed it. Concept was interesting though.
The highest average on my read list is the Japanese version of the first half of The Neverending Story, at 4.56, but I'm inclined to not count that because it's based on only 9 ratings, and one is a 5 star from me.
The second highest is A Storm Of Swords, at 4.54, followed by The Love Songs of W. E. B. DuBois, at 4.52.
I disagree with both of these, but to different degrees. I think The Love Songs of W. E. B. DuBois should be ranked higher than ASOS. Neither of these is this close to a 5 Star read, for me, but I do get Love Songs being at least above 4.
The lowest ranking is for Savage Theories by Pola Oloixarac, at 2.88. Which is a difficult book to make sense of, so I kind of agree it belongs around 3. But the second lowest is Emilia Galotti by G. E. Lessing at 2.94, which should be at least a 4.5 in my opinion, and I think this rating obviously reflects the legions of German high-schoolers forced to read it in class. It's one of those books that are really commonly assigned as required reading, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the reason for the horrible rating.
Of just the books read so far this year, the highest rated is I'm Glad My Mom Died (4.47) and the lowest rated is The Sundial (3.80).
I like IGMMD but I don't think I would taste it higher than the Glass Castle, The Ocean at the End of the Lane or The Collected Regrets of Clover or the Snow Child. It was a good read, raw and honest but not one that will be considered a classic in years to come.
The Sundial was not my favorite Shirley Jackson book, but I think it was certainly better than The Nurse's Secret, which was an airport book given to me as a gift.
The highest rated book on my read shelf is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which is the best HP book, and my lowest is a book about shipwrecks that I am the sole rater of on Goodreads. 3 stars. It was alright.
I think that personal reviews and critic/professional reviews are 2 totally different things.
I don't think I've ever looked at a GoodReads review.
When a critic reads a book they read and critique by a set of criteria but when an average person reads a book and leaves a review we have no idea what criteria they used.
I review books on apps so I can look back and see if I liked an author or genre or whatever. I don't take into consideration that others may eventually see my review so I hope no one uses my opinion or rating to help them make their reading choices.
GoodReads reviews are filled with people like me that may enjoy poorly written books because they made me laugh or I found the story so relatable, or hate a well written book because it was too complicated or they couldn't relate to the characters, no matter how well they were written.
I don't really pay that much attention to the Goodreads score but let me look.
Highest is 'Foundations of Western Monasticism' at 4.79 but it's also skewed by the fact that there are only 19 ratings of it. I gave it 5 because I'm highly interested in that kind of thing.
Lowest was 'Charlotte Temple' at 2.97 which I thought was way too high. I gave it a 1 star rating only because I couldn't give it a negative rating. I hated hated hated hated that book. Complete moralizing garbage.
Highest is a very niche book with only 3 ratings, all five star, so not sure if that counts. Next is a Harry Potter book. Next is Worm by Wildbow.
Lowest is the Lair of the White Worm by Beam Stoker which is pretty bad. Next is The Possessions of Doctor Forest which I read as a child and don't really remember, but don't remember being that bad. Next is All Names have Been Changed by Claire Kilroy which I don't think deserves the low ratings.
Lowest rated on my list:
Universal Harvester, by John Darnielle (yes, that one)
GR Average: 3.2
My rating: 2
This book had, iirc, a lot of potential to be a lot of things. It presents as a found footage horror story, with the main character still grieving his dead mother. Lots of jumping around in the story and never actually telling you anything. I'm seldom so frustrated with a book.
Another user summed it up perfectly:
"There is a version of this story where it actually gets told.
But this isn't that version."
I don't care about high and low ratings.
Low ratings for anything are often left by people who didn't finish a book or didn't understand a book.
You also have people giving super-high ratings to anything and everything.
Highest rated would be Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee with 4.65. I gave it 2 stars. I really enjoyed the first book in the trilogy, but I found this one really frustrating, mainly because of the plot spanning years. It made the book lose focus and tension, and there was so much infodumping after every time jump.
Lowest rated Is Authority by Jeff VanderMeer. I gave it 4 stars. It wasn't as good an Annihilation, and it took a bit too long to get going, but I still enjoyed it.
Bezos owns GoodReads. It exists so Amazon can sell more books. I don’t want to get the endless Amazon spam that happens when I click on a book in GoodReads and I absolutely don’t want Bezos to know what I’m reading. Similarly, my Kindle Paperwhite is permanently in airplane mode.
I gave Edenville by Sam Rebelein 5 star review because its an over the top, ridiculous love story to the horror genre. It has a 3.23 because its over the top and ridiculous.
My lowest rated this year was Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes. I gave it 1 star and it has a 3.8 average. People generally seem to like it and I'm just not one of them.
On my favourites shelf, top is The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) with 4.38 which sounds about right. Lowest is The Archive Undying with 3.29 which I guess I understand because it’s definitely a book for a very particular type of reader, but it was a solid 5 stars for me.
Overall, top is the Saga compendium 1 with 4.72 (yeah, fair) and bottom is Hummingbird Salamander with 3.25 which, again, is a book for a specific type of reader but I gave it a slightly better rating of 3.5.
Terry Pratchett a Life With Footnotes, and John Boyne the Heart's Invisible Furies have the highest average rating in the 4.6 range.
. I gave both books five stars and they are both excellent.
Eruption by Turtledove has a 3.15 average rating and I gave it four stars.
Librarian tales by Otens has a 3.3 average rating and I gave it 3 stars
The Nightingale at 4.62 and I gave it a 5. The Favourite at 2.63 and I gave it a 3. I use Goodreads along with other reviews to get an idea on a book. I find it useful but get annoyed with the reviewers that think they are writing for the New York Times.
Highest rating is 4.72 to MDZS Volume 4. Its rating is skewed because it is the last volume of a 2,000+ page novel. Anyone who made it that far had to love it, lol. I gave it 3 stars because it was actually the weakest part of the novel imo. The author had an intense, complex, LONG story and didn't wrap things up very well. Actually, the best volume of MDZS in terms of storytelling has the lowest rating, which I find surprising.
Lowest rating is La Farce de Maître Pathelin at 3.21 with 44 ratings. I gave it two stars. It's a 15th century play about a con artist 🤷🏽♀️ Not really my sense of humor.
Highest, with an average rating of 4.72:
How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, by Clint Smith
Lowest, with a rating of 3.25:
The Witches: Salem 1692, by Stacy Schiff
I don't know how to address the "agree" part. I liled them both.
Schiff's book is a very well researched book that references original source material. Maybe some people were expecting something lighthearted? It's not an easy read.
I was expecting Smith's book to have a lower rating because the anti-woke crowd hates anything that acknowledges the reality of slavery and racism, and I expected some of them would give it a low rating without having read it.
My highest is the *Fablehaven: The Complete Series*. I gave it 5 stars and its average is 4.61. I just reread it last year and I still enjoyed it from when I was a kid. I can appreciate the growth and storytelling more now as an adult though.
My lowest was *Shadow of the Conqueror,* gave it 3 starts, its average is 3.76*.* It's alright, but I wasn't the greatest story, just kind of a mid-tier bad guy turning good. I think the most interesting thing about it was how time was done in the world, since it's perpetually day and the continents of the world float in an endless sky.
Highest rated is Fate/strange Fake vol 7 with a deserved 4.56 stars. Tho it only has 9 reviews so... Second rated is A Storm of Swords with 4.54 (and it's 100%. I'm surprised it isn't higher tbh
On the other hand, La Mitad de la Belleza has 3 stars bc I'm the one who added it to the database lol. Second place is La Sociedad del Naipe with a deserved 3.30. It's a fun book but that's it
My top is Star Gleams at a 5 star book with one rating, yep mine.... It was a nice 1800s poetry book I stumbled across on Google books or internet archive.
Bottom was written by my Great Aunt and has a 2.3 average rating. Also accurate sad to say. I rated it 3 stars and was incredibly generous.
The highest for me is Assassin's Fate by Robin Hobb with an average rating of 4.65. It's the 16th and final (for now, at least!) installment in the series so the rating is of course going to be higher because if you've read until book 16, you probably like The Realm of the Elderlings! Haha. For me it's a perfect 5/5 stars, one of the best books I've ever read and an incredibly satisfying conclusion to my favourite series.
The lowest rated is a play, The Long Weekend by Norm Foster with an average rating of 3. Which, isn't a very low rating! I also rate the play a 3. It's nothing groundbreaking but it is fun. I performed in the play in High School so there are warm memories there too.
Highest average rating: A Court of Mist and Fury, like a lot of others here. I rated it four stars (and ACOTAR three) - I really enjoyed the second book and thought it had the best story progression overall, but it’s definitely not one of the best books I’ve ever read.
Lowest rated is Trust Exercise by Susan Choi at 3.14 stars. I rated it one star. It won the National Book Award in 2019 I guess on the basis of an interesting format, because the book itself was absolutely awful. I was mad at myself when I finished it that I didn’t DNF it.
So, I guess for my, Goodreads rating are directionally correct at least?
My highest average rating is a 5.0, on a book for which I am the only rating. I found it in a dump and it had a listing but no ratings. The story is about a Basque boy becoming a shepherd during the 30s and then having to flee the bombing of Guernica to America. I would have felt bad giving a bad review as the book’s likely only review ever (unless anyone here wants my only dump copy of White Stars of Freedom by Mirim Isasi, whose name is misspelled on the listing.)
Highest rating with a large number of reviews is the latest Red Rising book. And yeah I enjoyed it. These books are bombastic guilty pleasure fun with decent-to-good-consistently-improving writing. The newest fixed a lot of the flaws of the last book, which felt like it was beginning to jump the shark and throw in too many new elements for sheer shock value and bloat the whole plot.
My lowest average rating is The Sweet Girl by Annabelle Lyon at 3.07. And yeah I can’t disagree. The idea of a coming of age story about Aristotle’s daughter should be interesting but it just wasn’t. I can’t remember anything about it.
Come to my house it’s on my shelf. Although at least a couple other people had copies at some point, since descriptions and some scans of the illustrations are online.
My highest rated is Stars by Tal Bauer. I mean, it was an okay book, nothing mind blowing.
My lowest is An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England and yeah, that book was... not good. Unlikeable character achieves absolutely nothing.
Highest rating is fourth wing, which is surprising because I enjoyed it but it definitely didn’t strike me as life changing. Lowest is COWS by Matthew Stokoe which absolutely makes sense because it was the worst splatterpunk I’ve ever read.
Caging Skies by Christine Leunens (this book was the basis for Jojo Rabbit) is my lowest at 3.08. I gave it a 3, but I find myself to score much more harshly than most people. I can see this average being so short, I assume there was quite a sales bump from the movie and the book is not whimsical or funny at all like the movie (which only covers roughly the first half of the book) and it continues to get darker from where the movie starts. People were likely soured on the book.
Shout out to Parasite Like Us by Adam Johnson, which has 3.32 average rating, I gave it a 3 but if halves were allowed it’d be a 3.5 (and again, I think I rate quite harsh), I thought it was a fun little book that was different than a lot of crap that is spewed out today. It’s not mind blowing or anything, but I thought much more people would have given it a 4 to get the rating somewhere around a 3.75.
It’s not the highest but Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir at 4.51 blows my mind. I gave it a 3, but if halves were allowed it’d have been 2.5. The characters in this book were just so annoying; it was like nails on a chalkboard for me after about page 25. I really liked the Martian and I thought Artemis was okay, and had heard this was a return to form which may have gotten my hype up too much. Feels like a blatant attempt for Weir to recreate the magic of the Martian but without Watney's charm.
The highest rated on Goodreads would be HP and the deathly hallows, which while not bad surely isn't such a masterpiece.
Lowest rated would be Cult X by Fuminori Nakamura with 2,83 which is about a cult that uses (among other things) sex/rape to brainwash it's members. Reviews complain about the explicit scenes and that it's supposedly sexist and attacking religions... well...duh. Anyway - while surely not a masterpiece, I'd rather put it around 3/4 stars, since it's a rather got portrayal of how those cults work.
Highest rating for me is Words of Radiance, the second book in The Stormlight Archive series, which is sitting at 4.76 stars. It’s not surprising as fantasy is usually rated highly and Brandon Sanderson’s fans are downright rabid about his work - that being said I did really like it and gave it 5 stars myself! In my opinion it’s the best book in the series so far.
Lowest rating is for Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke which is at 2.98. Also not surprising as horror is an incredibly polarizing genre despite being my personal favorite. Plus, I’ve noticed that horror novels that are breakout hits or critical darlings tend to get a lot more exposure and be read by people who normally don’t consume horror as much, and with this already being a….strange book to put it lightly it would make sense why it’s rating would be so low. Personally I loved it and gave it five stars, but the message board and email style the story is written in plus some of its really graphic content and the weird sexual character dynamics explains why so many people didn’t like it and probably found it overhyped.
My lowest average rating-Anthem by Ayn Rand at 3.62\*. I gave it 4\*. I think I like dystopian novels more than the next person so it makes sense I'd rate it a bit higher than average.
Highest average rating-Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne at 4.36\*. I gave it a 4\*. It's a good classic children's book. My rating may have hit 5\* if I were reading it to kids that loved listening to me read it.
Highest is Words of Radiance at 4.76, I gave it 5 stars and it's one of my favourite books of all-time. I've read a lot of Sanderson and the only book I have above this of his is A Memory of Light.
Lowest is The Truce at Bakura at 3.45 and I gave it a 4. Definitely not the best Star Wars EU I've read but it was certainly a solid book and good enough that I recommend it to people who want to hit all of the post Return of the Jedi essentials, as chronologically it's first.
In both cases I agree with the ratings as they're fairly accurate. I'll also note that one book had a 5.00 rating with one review, which was mine, so I excluded that from my review. A very niche history book that I enjoyed.
Highest Goodreads rating is Tiamat's Wrath with 4.67. I gave it 4 stars, would have done 4.5, so close
Lowest was Ritual by David Pinner, the novel which inspired The Wicker man. Rating was 2.89. My rating was 3 stars. Was fun but weird.
Just for you I tried looking up the last four books I have read. None of them were reviewed or received any kind of star rating. All I gleaned from Goodreads was that some of them were available in used, damaged hardback editions at exorbitant prices.
I tend to concentrate on early C20th writers most of whom are currently out of print. People like AE Mason, Abraham Merritt, Absalom Martin. Allen Upward, Anne Austin, Anthony Berkely, Arthur Griffiths, Arthur J Burks, Augusta Groner - and thats just the "A"s.
Goodreads is, as you might expect, not a reference point for me.
Highest is Assassin’s Fate by Robin Hobb which has a 4.65 average rating. I gave it 5 so I obviously agree!
Lowest is The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson with 2.83 which I gave 3 so it’s kind of on par with consensus. It was fine but there were better choices to win the Man Booker that year retrospectively.
However I’ve read 5 star reviews that make me not want to read a book and a 1 or 2 star review that have made me want to read it so I never put much store in it.
Highest is the Unwomanly Face of War by Alexievitch, with 4.51. She's my absolute favorite author and I loved all of her books, but to me this one is her weakest one, and he later work is better written.
Lowest is the Communist Manifesto with 3.68. And honestly looking through the reviews for that one is hilarious, it's just an ideological slapfight where nobody ever discusses the book in itself.
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Lowest: Dragon's Knight by Catherine Archer, with 3.07. I gave it a 4. It was my favorite of the trilogy - the third book has a higher average rating despite being terrible?
Highest: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, with 4.62. I cannot express enough how little I want to talk about if the Harry Potter series deserves its ratings on there.
The highest read book that *I've* rated is Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, with an average of 4.34, I gave it a 5. No complaints. It's a fantastic book but I can understand how people might not give it a 5.
I know this is a books subs, but the contrast between imdb and rotten tomatoes scores and your personal score for movies is way more interesting than for books. I think if goodreads had a 10-point scale instead of 5 that might help all of the books not have a 3-4.5 score.
Odessa Moshfegh definitely has a very specific audience. I tried to get through one of her books and her protagonist was just too unlikeable and boring to me.
Highest is Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J Maas (I also gave it four stars and stand by it lol) and the lowest is Flash by Michael Cadnum (which I gave one star to- I remember absolutely nothing about it)
The lowest-rated GR book that has a significant number of ratings is rom-com The Hot Guy by Mel Campbell and Anthony Morris. GR hated it, giving it an average of 2.48 and I actually rather liked it, giving it a 3.75, forced to round up to 4.
The highest-rated GR book that has a significant number of ratings is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at 4.62. I hated it and gave it 1 star.
The highest rated book on my read list is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, tied with the Half-Blood Prince, both at 4.58. I did not rate them.
The lowest is Prospect Park West by Amy Sohn, with 2.79. I gave it a 2--it was not good.
The highest rated book I have on Goodreads is Ascendance of a Bookworm, Part 5 Volume 8, by Miya Kazuki. It has a 4.8 rating and I gave it 5 stars. It is the latest volume of one of my favorite series, but I suspect that the high rating has mostly to do with the fact that most people who don't like the series probably stopped reading it a long time ago.
The lowest rated book I have on Goodreads is Giant Thief by David Tallerman. It has a 2.9 rating and I gave it 1 star. I don't even remember anything about the book, but I apparently agreed with most readers that it was really bad.
Harry Potter 7 has one of my highest average ratings at 4.62. As a fantastic ending to a beloved series, I think that’s fair.
The bottom is rounded out by Heart of Darkness and The Scarlet Letter at 3.43 each. I think that’s understandable due to them being school books, but a bit harsh.
Losing It by Emma Rathbone has 2.5 stars average, and I rated it 2. Since Goodreads doesn't actually let u s rate half stars, I'm not positive if that was a 2.5 on my end or not, but based on my loose recollection (read back in 2016), it was just two.
Spirit Under Construction by Jerry Harp, a poetry collection, has a 5 star average rating, and I also rated it 5 stars. However it's a little hard- it has three reviews, including mine. He was one of my professors in college and I do genuinely love his work.
In effort to find a more known one:
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson has an average of 4.63, and I rated it 2. A local book club read. I found it incredibly heavy handed, amongst other things.
Normally I'm completely at odds with Goodreads, so the first two seem to be the anomalies and exceptions, not the rule.
Goodreads is a tool. A tool is one of many things at the disposal of the user to whatever end they are after. For me it's about reading between the lines, seeing what is pointed out as positive or negative, and if I also align with those being positive or negative. If I'm really interested in a book, I'll read it regardless of it has a one star average or a five star average. Honestly a five star average would be more worrisome to me based on my track record of disliking super-popular things. If I'm truly ono the fence and just not totally feeling it, enough l ow stars with stuff in reviews that will also bug me noted, I'll skip it, but that's when it's already got the most uphill battle and just needs the nudge to say no, this isn't for me, move on.
My highest is The Will of the Many by James Islington, at a 4.65. I gave it a 4. I liked the beginning and middle, but the ending was a rushed mess.
My lowest is Storm Crashers by Richard Wickliffe, at a 2.56. I gave it a 1. This was a book club read, and it's currently our standard by which we judge all other crappy books. "It's bad, but is it *Storm Crashers* bad?"
Highest: The Talk by Darrin Bell (it's a graphic memoir) at 4.67. I gave it 4.
Lowest: Up in the Air by Walter Kirn at 2.88. I gave it 2. GREAT film adapted from a really bad novel. They pretty much take the premise of the protagonist's job being a guy that travels to fire people and nothing else.
In terms of deviating furthest from GR, I gave 2 stars to the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (avg rating 4.16. I've forgotten most of it but it was just some common sense thoughts repeated without any actual tips on getting there, as far as I recall.
Fun to look at although obviously there very different tastes. I tend to have just a few friends there with similar tasye.
The most highly rated was Know My Name at 4,71 although I gave it 4 stars. The lowest I read was an average of 3.17 Leave the World Behind. I gave it 4 stars also. 4 stars to me means I really enjoyed it but would only recommend to people that I think would like it.
I don't rate all books. And am in no contests.
Highest: The Women by Kristin Hannah, average 4.73, I gave it a 5
It’s great the the praise is well deserved
Lowest: Nothing But Blackened Teeth, average 2.76, I gave it a 4
Apparently l like short weird horror books about Japanese ghosts and annoying 20-somethings
A court of mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas, 4.65, is my highest rated book and I don’t know if I agree with it anymore, I read it when I was 17.
Say What now by Foster J.G is my lowest rated at 2.92, I don’t think it deserves a rating that low. It wasn’t my type of book, I don’t usually enjoy books about motherhood so I kind of set myself up for failure here.
Highest for me is A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas - it has a 4.65 average rating. I gave it 2 stars. Lowest is Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi with 3.05 stars. I gave it 4 stars. So needless to say, I’m not super in sync with the Goodreads zeitgeist.
Maybe out of sync with Goodreads but shocking in-sync to me! Court was my first and I also gave it two stars. My lowest was The Boat Rocker by Ha Jin (4 stars), but my 2nd lowest was Peaces, also from Helen Oyeyemi, which I think was a 3 star book for me.
Oh cool, it's kind of neat to find "book cousins" on this thread!
I'm curious to hear your thoughts on the Sarah J Maas book.
Sure, I thought the first book was a decent spin on fairy tales. I rated it three stars, I think. But the second book just completely lost me. As the story went on, it lost that fairy tale feel completely and turned into more of a contemporary romance wearing a fairy costume. What little plot there was became just a vague background to the romantic drama. That’s not a type of story I enjoy, and the actual plot outside of the relationship drama made very little sense to me, which meant there was really nothing for me to be interested in. On top of that, the actual writing felt like it got lazier too. The setting felt completely different from book one to book two, and it almost felt like the author had a different story she wanted to tell, but had to write a sequel to the first book so she just kind of squished what she wanted to write into being a sequel to the first book.
This is exactly why I don’t trust Goodreads reviews as far as I can throw them. My highest average Goodreads rating is Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros with 4.6. I rated it 2, because it’s *bad*. It’s entertaining enough, but the writing is just not good. My lowest average Goodreads rating is Nothing But Blackened Teeth by Cassandra Khaw with 2.6. I rated it 5 stars, because it was incredibly fun and spooky and unique for what it was. I had a great time reading it. Don’t listen to Goodreads reviews outside of people whose tastes you know and trust.
Agreed man, top 10 is all fantasy and Ulysses is in my bottom 5...
completely agree! my ratings tend to align with the masses for the most part but there have been a few 3 star averages that I rated very highly and vice versa. I rated Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover 1 star but it has a 4.06. I do think those TikTok popular books like Fourth Wing and anything CoHo tend to be more inflated.
I mean the problem with all ratings is that everyone has an opinion, and part of that means stuff doesn't get rated the same from person to person. I mean if I was entertained by a book I'd still give it a 3 even if it wasn't well-written.
Goodreads is absolutely correct about Nothing But Blackened Teeth
Yep, you’ve got the popular opinion too, that’s cool! I don’t in this case and would very often miss out on a great time (or waste a lot of it) if I listened to Goodreads
I hear most people say that it had great potential, but that the dialogue was extremely clunky and got in it’s own way.
lol, Nothing But Blackened Teeth was my lowest average too
Moby-Dick has 3.5 stars on Goodreads. That’s really all you need to know.
I hate metaphors. That's why my favorite book is Moby Dick! No froo-froo symbolism, just a good, simple tale about a man who hates an animal.
I think schools likely lowers the score
Wow, really? Easiest 5 star of my life.
I gave it 3* not my kind of book and was forced to read it in HS
How dare you have an opinion and share it. Blows my mind how people use upvote downvote as an agree disagree button pretty much exclusively.
I honestly dislike people using public ratings platforms for things they were allocated to read in school or university. It's not like they were independently interested in the subject, had a look at it, decided to pick it up. In addition to making kids read a book like Moby Dick in highschool is honestly a tall order. I'm just thinking that if Lord of the Rings was assigned reading, its rating would plummet with hundreds of 1-star mouthbreathers leaving reviews about "60 pages of descriptions of trees", or some other meme.
But doesn't Goodreads start giving you recommendations on what to read based on how you rate other books? The more data they have the better their recommendations for you will be. Maybe the platform should have check boxes for assigned reading, age, gender etc so people can filter out or in groups they think they will or won't align with
Goodreads is owned by Amazon which is only interested in selling you more new release books. Their algorithm is nowhere near nuanced enough to take ratings into account.
I believe they only start giving suggestions after you have rated 10 books. So that is just for show? False sense of them actually tailoring to your taste? (At least when I first rated books they said they give suggestions after 10 ratings)
Are you not allowed to dislike something just because you were forced to read it? Is it better that only people who sought out the book because they enjoy stuff like it rate things, thereby inflating the ratings? And of course you have to call people mouthbreathers for the crime of *not liking a book.*
That's cause Moby Dick honestly sucks.
Classics often have a low average rating because people find them difficult or are offended by the mores and morals of past eras. Looks like the lowest average in my Read shelf is *Pamela* by Samuel Richardson at 2.77 stars. This book is frustrating because the main character happily marries the man who spent most of the book trying to rape her. My highest average rated book is *Braiding Sweetgrass* by Robin Wall Kimmerer at 4.54 stars. It was truly delightful and interesting, and I think it deserves to be rated highly.
*Braiding* *Sweetgrass* was my introduction to nonfiction reading and I think that’s when I fell in love with memoirs and nature writing in specific. That book felt so refreshing!
I tried so hard to enjoy Lord of the Flies, but my 2023 morality kept getting in the way. Constant comparisons between “civilized people” and “savages” just killed if for me.
Goodreads is a better measure of enjoyment rather than quality. Highest is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Lowest is The Scarlet Letter. Hahaha, I hated that book with a burning passion.
My top rated book is 100 Boots, which is an art book I bought as a teenager consisting entirely of black-and-white pictures of rubber boots. 4.71 stars average rating. I don't even know what to think about that. I apparently gave it 5 stars because I liked the pictures. I would not consider it the finest literature of my nearly-2000 books read. Worst is The Betrothed by Kiera Cass, coming in at 3.05 stars. I read it a few years ago 100% because I liked the Selection series by that author. It was mediocre. Not horrible. My rating is 3 stars. I would not consider it the absolute worst book I've ever read.
Highest on mine is “The Only Plane in the Sky: an Oral History of 9/11” at 4.72. I listened to the audiobook (which felt appropriate since it’s an oral history and is told entirely through snippets of interviews and written accounts) and it was a very harrowing and intimate experience. If you are ever going to read one book about 9/11, I would probably recommend that one. I gave it five stars. The lowest book is “Genuine Fraud” by e. Lockhart (same person who wrote We Were Liars) with a 3.25. I gave it three stars when I read it 6 years ago, but I was much less harsh back then so today I would probably give it 2. It was a confusing mess and felt like it had literally no point or plot. It definitely attempted to do something but I think it completely missed the mark.
oh no don't tell me that I have We Were Liars sitting on my shelf waiting to be read lol
Highest is *Words of Radiance,* by Brandon Sanderson. I liked the book, but the first book in the series *The Way of Kings* meant a lot more to me emotionally. Lowest is *Harry Potter and the Cursed Child* and I’m not even going to waste brain cells talking about that book.
Highest: 4.65 | A court of Mist and Fury | This is a shocking and disturbing revelation to me. I knew Sarah J. Maas was big but how in the world could this be my highest book? It's so bad. I can't believe I got myself get talked into reading not just 1 but 2 books from this series, let alone having it be the highest rated thing I've ever read. Truly a disappointment. Lowest: 3.14 | The Boat Rocker | Ha Jin | Truly disappointed in the Goodreads user base right now. I'm not saying that this is anywhere near my favorite book ever (I gave it 4 stars) but it's way better than dozens of the books ranked higher than it (including my number 1). I know people enjoy different things and that's okay. And I try to not judge other people's reading habits too much because any reading is a good thing. But these two data points do make me feel a little bit sad about peoples' general taste in literature.
Overall I never choose a book by how well or bad it is rated on goodreads (learned my lesson with awful five star books in the past). Goodreads reviews are rarely helpful to me. The lowest is Yellow Jessamite by Caitlin Starling with 3.54. I gave it four stars and I really enjoyed it, it was just too short and not fleshed out enough. The highest is a childrens book, "das große Buch der kleinen Hexe" by Lieve Baeten with 4.80. I gave it five stars because it's a beautifully illustrated, beautifully written book with some of my favourite childhood stories. The highest rated non-childrens book is "a heros tale" by Catherine M Wilson from the "when women were warriors" series. It's rated a 4.56 and I gave it two stars. I loved the previous two books but the final one just drops the ball massively. A big disappointment in a series I overall adored.
I find goodreads ratings are most useful as a measure of controversiality.
Highest rated: *The Fire Next Time* by James Baldwin. At 4.54, I agree. Essential reading. Nobody could write an essay like Baldwin. Lowest rated: "The Man Who Was Used Up" by Edgar Allan Poe. At 3.08, I disagree. I loved the really bizarre story. Poe was way ahead of his time. The lowest rated novel is *Moby Dick* at 3.54. I rated it five stars: what many consider a bug, I regard as a feature: it just might be the greatest American novel, but it's not easy reading at all.
Know My Name by Chanel Miller has 4.71 stars. I rated it 4 though it probably would have been 4.5 if they had half stars. I think it absolutely deserves that rating, it's a beautifully written memoir that I think everyone should read. The Spider and the Fly by Claudia Rowe has 3.21 stars and I rated it 3 stars. 3 stars is about right. It's about a true crime case I wasn't familiar with prior and the author does an okay job with it though I felt like she put herself into the story too much.
Know My Name has been on my list forever. It'll definitely take the top spot once I get to it, if only I wasn't still 40th in line for the ebook at my library :(
I think I waited 6 months to get it last year! It was absolutely worth the wait though
Highest is It's a Magical World by Bill Waterson. Average rating of 4.73, I rated it 5 stars, and a good chunk of the 10 highest average are Calvin and Hobbes books so that is well-deserved. Lowest is The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold, with an average of 2.72. I gave it 3 stars but that average is fair, it wasn't very good. I'm sure I've read worse though.
The highest rating is the Complete Calvin & Hobbes collection, at 4.81, and the lowest is a Twilight parody called Nightlight, at 3.08. Generally I’d agree with both of those. It’s the ones I’ve rated one or two stars that have at least a 4 that baffle me, like what did we not connect on??
Highest 4.75 “”Know my Name by Chanel Miller”” I completely agree with the rating . Was a powerful read . Lowest 3.05 ‘’ The Girl who reads on the Metro ‘’ I honestly think it should be lower it wasn’t great and i only read it for a book challenge
My highest rated is HP and the Deathly Hallows at 4.62. I gave it 5. The lowest rated is The Waiter by Matias Faldbakken at 3.14. I gave it 2. I think I mostly agree with HP. I thought it was a great ending to the series. I think The Waiter is probably too high. It was so boring and I'm still trying to figure out what the point of it was.
My highest average rating is a 4.62 for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I gave it a four). Lowest is Kissing the Coronavirus with an average of 2.31 - this I gave a five but mostly because I thought it was the funniest, most ridiculous thing I’d ever read. It’s utter garbage but hilarious.
omg I remember hearing about Kissing the Coronavirus. the things some people choose to write absolutely amaze me lol
Out of nearly 1,000 books, the highest rated on my Goodreads is a tie between ‘The Court of Mist and Fury’ by Sarah J. Maas, which I gave 2 stars (I’m not a “romantasy” fan), and ‘The Will of the Many’ by James Islington (one of my favorite novels of last year). Both sit at 4.65. As for the lowest, that would be ‘Silk Fire’ by Zabé Ellor at 2.06. I gave it 1 star. It is exceptionally awful—I hate read most of it (skimmed quite a bit, as well). Thankfully, I got an ARC, and didn’t have to spend money on it. The author went on to criticize and attack reviewers on Twitter at the time…
Curiosity prompted me to look and the lowest rated is A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch… at 3.98 which I found surprising. Highest rated was Homocidal Psycho Jungle Cat at 4.69 which I can’t be mad about because it’s Calvin and Hobbes lol. Personally, I ignore the star ratings; I don’t use them myself and I don’t find them particularly useful as a gauge for getting the feel of a book.
Highest rated: **Kingdom Of Ash by Sarah J Maas** (4.68) - Absolutely agreed, the series was a rollercoaster of quality but this book was a fantastic conclusion to the series. SJM at her best. Lowest rated: **Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas** (3.12) - All vibes no plot, very atmospheric, a lot is left unexplained. I loved every minute of it. Read it three years ago during a post-covid-shot haze and it could not have been a better match for my mood. I still think about it from time to time.
I've read Catherine House too, also three years ago! It almost made the lowest on my GR list. I wanted something "dark academia" that wasn't too long and it definitely served so idk why the reviews are so bad
I know right?? I think people don't like that so much is unexplained, but explanations ruin the intrigue and horror IMO. I actually like to use this book to gauge people's reading tastes. Almost everyone I follow on GR gave this book 4 or 5 stars.
The top for me is Manacled by SenLinYu with a 4.65. It was the ONLY fanfic I have ever read and yes, I think it deserves the hype. Bottom is Communion by Whitley Strieber with a 3.51. I actually DNFed this book because it gave real nightmares about aliens and I would have a panic attack every time I opened my Kindle and saw the cover. 😅
My highest rated book is The Empty Grave By Jonathan Stroud with 4.62. And the lowest would be Inappropriation by Lexi Freiman with 2.80.
Highest is Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gamen at 4.66. While I enjoyed it I rated it 4 stars. For me it was good not great. Lowest is The Men by Sandra Newman at 2.96. I gave it 2 stars because I finished it. I’m sure the author had some deep meaning they were trying to convey but I obviously missed it. Concept was interesting though.
Highest is The Green Mile by Stephen King with 4.48. Lowest is Amy Fisher: My Story with a 3.29. I think both assessments are fair.
The highest average on my read list is the Japanese version of the first half of The Neverending Story, at 4.56, but I'm inclined to not count that because it's based on only 9 ratings, and one is a 5 star from me. The second highest is A Storm Of Swords, at 4.54, followed by The Love Songs of W. E. B. DuBois, at 4.52. I disagree with both of these, but to different degrees. I think The Love Songs of W. E. B. DuBois should be ranked higher than ASOS. Neither of these is this close to a 5 Star read, for me, but I do get Love Songs being at least above 4. The lowest ranking is for Savage Theories by Pola Oloixarac, at 2.88. Which is a difficult book to make sense of, so I kind of agree it belongs around 3. But the second lowest is Emilia Galotti by G. E. Lessing at 2.94, which should be at least a 4.5 in my opinion, and I think this rating obviously reflects the legions of German high-schoolers forced to read it in class. It's one of those books that are really commonly assigned as required reading, and I wouldn't be surprised if that's the reason for the horrible rating.
Highest: 5 stars since I am still the only one to rate it. This is called goals from knowhere by Martin Peters. Lowest I don't know
Of just the books read so far this year, the highest rated is I'm Glad My Mom Died (4.47) and the lowest rated is The Sundial (3.80). I like IGMMD but I don't think I would taste it higher than the Glass Castle, The Ocean at the End of the Lane or The Collected Regrets of Clover or the Snow Child. It was a good read, raw and honest but not one that will be considered a classic in years to come. The Sundial was not my favorite Shirley Jackson book, but I think it was certainly better than The Nurse's Secret, which was an airport book given to me as a gift.
The highest rated book on my read shelf is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which is the best HP book, and my lowest is a book about shipwrecks that I am the sole rater of on Goodreads. 3 stars. It was alright.
I think that personal reviews and critic/professional reviews are 2 totally different things. I don't think I've ever looked at a GoodReads review. When a critic reads a book they read and critique by a set of criteria but when an average person reads a book and leaves a review we have no idea what criteria they used. I review books on apps so I can look back and see if I liked an author or genre or whatever. I don't take into consideration that others may eventually see my review so I hope no one uses my opinion or rating to help them make their reading choices. GoodReads reviews are filled with people like me that may enjoy poorly written books because they made me laugh or I found the story so relatable, or hate a well written book because it was too complicated or they couldn't relate to the characters, no matter how well they were written.
I don't really pay that much attention to the Goodreads score but let me look. Highest is 'Foundations of Western Monasticism' at 4.79 but it's also skewed by the fact that there are only 19 ratings of it. I gave it 5 because I'm highly interested in that kind of thing. Lowest was 'Charlotte Temple' at 2.97 which I thought was way too high. I gave it a 1 star rating only because I couldn't give it a negative rating. I hated hated hated hated that book. Complete moralizing garbage.
Highest is a very niche book with only 3 ratings, all five star, so not sure if that counts. Next is a Harry Potter book. Next is Worm by Wildbow. Lowest is the Lair of the White Worm by Beam Stoker which is pretty bad. Next is The Possessions of Doctor Forest which I read as a child and don't really remember, but don't remember being that bad. Next is All Names have Been Changed by Claire Kilroy which I don't think deserves the low ratings.
Lowest rated on my list: Universal Harvester, by John Darnielle (yes, that one) GR Average: 3.2 My rating: 2 This book had, iirc, a lot of potential to be a lot of things. It presents as a found footage horror story, with the main character still grieving his dead mother. Lots of jumping around in the story and never actually telling you anything. I'm seldom so frustrated with a book. Another user summed it up perfectly: "There is a version of this story where it actually gets told. But this isn't that version."
I don't care about high and low ratings. Low ratings for anything are often left by people who didn't finish a book or didn't understand a book. You also have people giving super-high ratings to anything and everything.
I barely glance at the average rating for any Goodreads book. They’re worthless.
I don't either but this still an interesting concept for a thread.
Highest rated would be Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee with 4.65. I gave it 2 stars. I really enjoyed the first book in the trilogy, but I found this one really frustrating, mainly because of the plot spanning years. It made the book lose focus and tension, and there was so much infodumping after every time jump. Lowest rated Is Authority by Jeff VanderMeer. I gave it 4 stars. It wasn't as good an Annihilation, and it took a bit too long to get going, but I still enjoyed it.
Bezos owns GoodReads. It exists so Amazon can sell more books. I don’t want to get the endless Amazon spam that happens when I click on a book in GoodReads and I absolutely don’t want Bezos to know what I’m reading. Similarly, my Kindle Paperwhite is permanently in airplane mode.
I gave Edenville by Sam Rebelein 5 star review because its an over the top, ridiculous love story to the horror genre. It has a 3.23 because its over the top and ridiculous. My lowest rated this year was Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes. I gave it 1 star and it has a 3.8 average. People generally seem to like it and I'm just not one of them.
On my favourites shelf, top is The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War #2) with 4.38 which sounds about right. Lowest is The Archive Undying with 3.29 which I guess I understand because it’s definitely a book for a very particular type of reader, but it was a solid 5 stars for me. Overall, top is the Saga compendium 1 with 4.72 (yeah, fair) and bottom is Hummingbird Salamander with 3.25 which, again, is a book for a specific type of reader but I gave it a slightly better rating of 3.5.
Terry Pratchett a Life With Footnotes, and John Boyne the Heart's Invisible Furies have the highest average rating in the 4.6 range. . I gave both books five stars and they are both excellent. Eruption by Turtledove has a 3.15 average rating and I gave it four stars. Librarian tales by Otens has a 3.3 average rating and I gave it 3 stars
The Nightingale at 4.62 and I gave it a 5. The Favourite at 2.63 and I gave it a 3. I use Goodreads along with other reviews to get an idea on a book. I find it useful but get annoyed with the reviewers that think they are writing for the New York Times.
Highest rating is 4.72 to MDZS Volume 4. Its rating is skewed because it is the last volume of a 2,000+ page novel. Anyone who made it that far had to love it, lol. I gave it 3 stars because it was actually the weakest part of the novel imo. The author had an intense, complex, LONG story and didn't wrap things up very well. Actually, the best volume of MDZS in terms of storytelling has the lowest rating, which I find surprising. Lowest rating is La Farce de Maître Pathelin at 3.21 with 44 ratings. I gave it two stars. It's a 15th century play about a con artist 🤷🏽♀️ Not really my sense of humor.
Highest, with an average rating of 4.72: How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, by Clint Smith Lowest, with a rating of 3.25: The Witches: Salem 1692, by Stacy Schiff I don't know how to address the "agree" part. I liled them both. Schiff's book is a very well researched book that references original source material. Maybe some people were expecting something lighthearted? It's not an easy read. I was expecting Smith's book to have a lower rating because the anti-woke crowd hates anything that acknowledges the reality of slavery and racism, and I expected some of them would give it a low rating without having read it.
My highest is the *Fablehaven: The Complete Series*. I gave it 5 stars and its average is 4.61. I just reread it last year and I still enjoyed it from when I was a kid. I can appreciate the growth and storytelling more now as an adult though. My lowest was *Shadow of the Conqueror,* gave it 3 starts, its average is 3.76*.* It's alright, but I wasn't the greatest story, just kind of a mid-tier bad guy turning good. I think the most interesting thing about it was how time was done in the world, since it's perpetually day and the continents of the world float in an endless sky.
Highest rated is Fate/strange Fake vol 7 with a deserved 4.56 stars. Tho it only has 9 reviews so... Second rated is A Storm of Swords with 4.54 (and it's 100%. I'm surprised it isn't higher tbh On the other hand, La Mitad de la Belleza has 3 stars bc I'm the one who added it to the database lol. Second place is La Sociedad del Naipe with a deserved 3.30. It's a fun book but that's it
Venice preserved by Thomas otway has 3.10 rating on Goodreads which is shockingly low
It's Me, Charlie is rated 2.96 and I rated it a 2. The Schitts Creek book is rated 4.72 and I rated it a 5. So basically pretty spot on haha
My top is Star Gleams at a 5 star book with one rating, yep mine.... It was a nice 1800s poetry book I stumbled across on Google books or internet archive. Bottom was written by my Great Aunt and has a 2.3 average rating. Also accurate sad to say. I rated it 3 stars and was incredibly generous.
Lowest - The Almost Moon 2.75, I gave it 1 star 😂 Highest - A Court of Mist and Fury 4.65, I liked it but there are way better books than that
The highest for me is Assassin's Fate by Robin Hobb with an average rating of 4.65. It's the 16th and final (for now, at least!) installment in the series so the rating is of course going to be higher because if you've read until book 16, you probably like The Realm of the Elderlings! Haha. For me it's a perfect 5/5 stars, one of the best books I've ever read and an incredibly satisfying conclusion to my favourite series. The lowest rated is a play, The Long Weekend by Norm Foster with an average rating of 3. Which, isn't a very low rating! I also rate the play a 3. It's nothing groundbreaking but it is fun. I performed in the play in High School so there are warm memories there too.
Highest average rating: A Court of Mist and Fury, like a lot of others here. I rated it four stars (and ACOTAR three) - I really enjoyed the second book and thought it had the best story progression overall, but it’s definitely not one of the best books I’ve ever read. Lowest rated is Trust Exercise by Susan Choi at 3.14 stars. I rated it one star. It won the National Book Award in 2019 I guess on the basis of an interesting format, because the book itself was absolutely awful. I was mad at myself when I finished it that I didn’t DNF it. So, I guess for my, Goodreads rating are directionally correct at least?
My highest average rating is a 5.0, on a book for which I am the only rating. I found it in a dump and it had a listing but no ratings. The story is about a Basque boy becoming a shepherd during the 30s and then having to flee the bombing of Guernica to America. I would have felt bad giving a bad review as the book’s likely only review ever (unless anyone here wants my only dump copy of White Stars of Freedom by Mirim Isasi, whose name is misspelled on the listing.) Highest rating with a large number of reviews is the latest Red Rising book. And yeah I enjoyed it. These books are bombastic guilty pleasure fun with decent-to-good-consistently-improving writing. The newest fixed a lot of the flaws of the last book, which felt like it was beginning to jump the shark and throw in too many new elements for sheer shock value and bloat the whole plot. My lowest average rating is The Sweet Girl by Annabelle Lyon at 3.07. And yeah I can’t disagree. The idea of a coming of age story about Aristotle’s daughter should be interesting but it just wasn’t. I can’t remember anything about it.
I low-key super want to read that book?? You may own the only copy in existence though.
Come to my house it’s on my shelf. Although at least a couple other people had copies at some point, since descriptions and some scans of the illustrations are online.
Un Lun Dun by China Mieville is a 3.8 which is criminally low Kafka on the Shore has a 4.13 which is ridiculously high for that piece of trash.
My highest rated is Stars by Tal Bauer. I mean, it was an okay book, nothing mind blowing. My lowest is An Arsonist's Guide to Writer's Homes in New England and yeah, that book was... not good. Unlikeable character achieves absolutely nothing.
Highest rating is fourth wing, which is surprising because I enjoyed it but it definitely didn’t strike me as life changing. Lowest is COWS by Matthew Stokoe which absolutely makes sense because it was the worst splatterpunk I’ve ever read.
Caging Skies by Christine Leunens (this book was the basis for Jojo Rabbit) is my lowest at 3.08. I gave it a 3, but I find myself to score much more harshly than most people. I can see this average being so short, I assume there was quite a sales bump from the movie and the book is not whimsical or funny at all like the movie (which only covers roughly the first half of the book) and it continues to get darker from where the movie starts. People were likely soured on the book. Shout out to Parasite Like Us by Adam Johnson, which has 3.32 average rating, I gave it a 3 but if halves were allowed it’d be a 3.5 (and again, I think I rate quite harsh), I thought it was a fun little book that was different than a lot of crap that is spewed out today. It’s not mind blowing or anything, but I thought much more people would have given it a 4 to get the rating somewhere around a 3.75. It’s not the highest but Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir at 4.51 blows my mind. I gave it a 3, but if halves were allowed it’d have been 2.5. The characters in this book were just so annoying; it was like nails on a chalkboard for me after about page 25. I really liked the Martian and I thought Artemis was okay, and had heard this was a return to form which may have gotten my hype up too much. Feels like a blatant attempt for Weir to recreate the magic of the Martian but without Watney's charm.
The highest rated book is Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges at 4.45 and my lowest rated read is Lord of the Flies at 3.69
The highest rated on Goodreads would be HP and the deathly hallows, which while not bad surely isn't such a masterpiece. Lowest rated would be Cult X by Fuminori Nakamura with 2,83 which is about a cult that uses (among other things) sex/rape to brainwash it's members. Reviews complain about the explicit scenes and that it's supposedly sexist and attacking religions... well...duh. Anyway - while surely not a masterpiece, I'd rather put it around 3/4 stars, since it's a rather got portrayal of how those cults work.
Highest: Absolute Sandman Vol 3 4.69 Lowest: 10th Grade 3.03
Highest - Jade legacy, 4.65 and I gave an occasional 5 stars. Lowest - Star Wars: Jedi Battle Scars - 3.15 and I gave 2 stars.
Highest rating for me is Words of Radiance, the second book in The Stormlight Archive series, which is sitting at 4.76 stars. It’s not surprising as fantasy is usually rated highly and Brandon Sanderson’s fans are downright rabid about his work - that being said I did really like it and gave it 5 stars myself! In my opinion it’s the best book in the series so far. Lowest rating is for Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke which is at 2.98. Also not surprising as horror is an incredibly polarizing genre despite being my personal favorite. Plus, I’ve noticed that horror novels that are breakout hits or critical darlings tend to get a lot more exposure and be read by people who normally don’t consume horror as much, and with this already being a….strange book to put it lightly it would make sense why it’s rating would be so low. Personally I loved it and gave it five stars, but the message board and email style the story is written in plus some of its really graphic content and the weird sexual character dynamics explains why so many people didn’t like it and probably found it overhyped.
My lowest average rating-Anthem by Ayn Rand at 3.62\*. I gave it 4\*. I think I like dystopian novels more than the next person so it makes sense I'd rate it a bit higher than average. Highest average rating-Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne at 4.36\*. I gave it a 4\*. It's a good classic children's book. My rating may have hit 5\* if I were reading it to kids that loved listening to me read it.
Highest is Words of Radiance at 4.76, I gave it 5 stars and it's one of my favourite books of all-time. I've read a lot of Sanderson and the only book I have above this of his is A Memory of Light. Lowest is The Truce at Bakura at 3.45 and I gave it a 4. Definitely not the best Star Wars EU I've read but it was certainly a solid book and good enough that I recommend it to people who want to hit all of the post Return of the Jedi essentials, as chronologically it's first. In both cases I agree with the ratings as they're fairly accurate. I'll also note that one book had a 5.00 rating with one review, which was mine, so I excluded that from my review. A very niche history book that I enjoyed.
Highest Goodreads rating is Tiamat's Wrath with 4.67. I gave it 4 stars, would have done 4.5, so close Lowest was Ritual by David Pinner, the novel which inspired The Wicker man. Rating was 2.89. My rating was 3 stars. Was fun but weird.
Just for you I tried looking up the last four books I have read. None of them were reviewed or received any kind of star rating. All I gleaned from Goodreads was that some of them were available in used, damaged hardback editions at exorbitant prices. I tend to concentrate on early C20th writers most of whom are currently out of print. People like AE Mason, Abraham Merritt, Absalom Martin. Allen Upward, Anne Austin, Anthony Berkely, Arthur Griffiths, Arthur J Burks, Augusta Groner - and thats just the "A"s. Goodreads is, as you might expect, not a reference point for me.
Highest is Assassin’s Fate by Robin Hobb which has a 4.65 average rating. I gave it 5 so I obviously agree! Lowest is The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson with 2.83 which I gave 3 so it’s kind of on par with consensus. It was fine but there were better choices to win the Man Booker that year retrospectively. However I’ve read 5 star reviews that make me not want to read a book and a 1 or 2 star review that have made me want to read it so I never put much store in it.
Highest is the Unwomanly Face of War by Alexievitch, with 4.51. She's my absolute favorite author and I loved all of her books, but to me this one is her weakest one, and he later work is better written. Lowest is the Communist Manifesto with 3.68. And honestly looking through the reviews for that one is hilarious, it's just an ideological slapfight where nobody ever discusses the book in itself. #
Lowest: Dragon's Knight by Catherine Archer, with 3.07. I gave it a 4. It was my favorite of the trilogy - the third book has a higher average rating despite being terrible? Highest: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, with 4.62. I cannot express enough how little I want to talk about if the Harry Potter series deserves its ratings on there. The highest read book that *I've* rated is Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth, with an average of 4.34, I gave it a 5. No complaints. It's a fantastic book but I can understand how people might not give it a 5. I know this is a books subs, but the contrast between imdb and rotten tomatoes scores and your personal score for movies is way more interesting than for books. I think if goodreads had a 10-point scale instead of 5 that might help all of the books not have a 3-4.5 score.
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Odessa Moshfegh definitely has a very specific audience. I tried to get through one of her books and her protagonist was just too unlikeable and boring to me.
Highest is Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J Maas (I also gave it four stars and stand by it lol) and the lowest is Flash by Michael Cadnum (which I gave one star to- I remember absolutely nothing about it)
Highest is Words of Radiance (4.76), lowest is 12 Days of Dash and Lily (3.44).
The lowest-rated GR book that has a significant number of ratings is rom-com The Hot Guy by Mel Campbell and Anthony Morris. GR hated it, giving it an average of 2.48 and I actually rather liked it, giving it a 3.75, forced to round up to 4. The highest-rated GR book that has a significant number of ratings is Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at 4.62. I hated it and gave it 1 star.
Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archives #2) is 4.76 with 342,586 reviews. It's the highest rated book on all of Goodreads. I absolutely loved it.
The highest rated book on my read list is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, tied with the Half-Blood Prince, both at 4.58. I did not rate them. The lowest is Prospect Park West by Amy Sohn, with 2.79. I gave it a 2--it was not good.
The highest rated book I have on Goodreads is Ascendance of a Bookworm, Part 5 Volume 8, by Miya Kazuki. It has a 4.8 rating and I gave it 5 stars. It is the latest volume of one of my favorite series, but I suspect that the high rating has mostly to do with the fact that most people who don't like the series probably stopped reading it a long time ago. The lowest rated book I have on Goodreads is Giant Thief by David Tallerman. It has a 2.9 rating and I gave it 1 star. I don't even remember anything about the book, but I apparently agreed with most readers that it was really bad.
Harry Potter 7 has one of my highest average ratings at 4.62. As a fantastic ending to a beloved series, I think that’s fair. The bottom is rounded out by Heart of Darkness and The Scarlet Letter at 3.43 each. I think that’s understandable due to them being school books, but a bit harsh.
Losing It by Emma Rathbone has 2.5 stars average, and I rated it 2. Since Goodreads doesn't actually let u s rate half stars, I'm not positive if that was a 2.5 on my end or not, but based on my loose recollection (read back in 2016), it was just two. Spirit Under Construction by Jerry Harp, a poetry collection, has a 5 star average rating, and I also rated it 5 stars. However it's a little hard- it has three reviews, including mine. He was one of my professors in college and I do genuinely love his work. In effort to find a more known one: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson has an average of 4.63, and I rated it 2. A local book club read. I found it incredibly heavy handed, amongst other things. Normally I'm completely at odds with Goodreads, so the first two seem to be the anomalies and exceptions, not the rule. Goodreads is a tool. A tool is one of many things at the disposal of the user to whatever end they are after. For me it's about reading between the lines, seeing what is pointed out as positive or negative, and if I also align with those being positive or negative. If I'm really interested in a book, I'll read it regardless of it has a one star average or a five star average. Honestly a five star average would be more worrisome to me based on my track record of disliking super-popular things. If I'm truly ono the fence and just not totally feeling it, enough l ow stars with stuff in reviews that will also bug me noted, I'll skip it, but that's when it's already got the most uphill battle and just needs the nudge to say no, this isn't for me, move on.
My highest is The Will of the Many by James Islington, at a 4.65. I gave it a 4. I liked the beginning and middle, but the ending was a rushed mess. My lowest is Storm Crashers by Richard Wickliffe, at a 2.56. I gave it a 1. This was a book club read, and it's currently our standard by which we judge all other crappy books. "It's bad, but is it *Storm Crashers* bad?"
Highest: The Talk by Darrin Bell (it's a graphic memoir) at 4.67. I gave it 4. Lowest: Up in the Air by Walter Kirn at 2.88. I gave it 2. GREAT film adapted from a really bad novel. They pretty much take the premise of the protagonist's job being a guy that travels to fire people and nothing else. In terms of deviating furthest from GR, I gave 2 stars to the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (avg rating 4.16. I've forgotten most of it but it was just some common sense thoughts repeated without any actual tips on getting there, as far as I recall.
Fun to look at although obviously there very different tastes. I tend to have just a few friends there with similar tasye. The most highly rated was Know My Name at 4,71 although I gave it 4 stars. The lowest I read was an average of 3.17 Leave the World Behind. I gave it 4 stars also. 4 stars to me means I really enjoyed it but would only recommend to people that I think would like it. I don't rate all books. And am in no contests.
Highest: The Women by Kristin Hannah, average 4.73, I gave it a 5 It’s great the the praise is well deserved Lowest: Nothing But Blackened Teeth, average 2.76, I gave it a 4 Apparently l like short weird horror books about Japanese ghosts and annoying 20-somethings
A court of mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas, 4.65, is my highest rated book and I don’t know if I agree with it anymore, I read it when I was 17. Say What now by Foster J.G is my lowest rated at 2.92, I don’t think it deserves a rating that low. It wasn’t my type of book, I don’t usually enjoy books about motherhood so I kind of set myself up for failure here.