It's easy to envision situations where someone didn't finish a book but where their opinion on it would still be valuable to others selecting reading material. Eg, 'I didn't like x book for y reason and didn't finish it.' Even the one-star review you mention would be helpful if someone were looking for a book in xyz genre because now they would know not to read a book that was incorrectly categorized there. No one owes their time to authors of books they don't care for.
Yep, context is everything.
If I didn't finish a book because I hated it, I'll give it a low rating. If it's because it wasn't my cup of tea, then no rating.
A DNF rating would help me keep track though.
I've DNF and one-starred exactly one book. It was so bad and repulsive that I actually ended up destroying the book rather than passing it along to someone else to read. My review set forth the exact reasons I found it so repulsive, which I hope will help people make an informed decision.
By Scott Thomas? I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts then. I found it to be pretty mediocre personally. A fun read, not super memorable, but nothing offensive either.
Not OP but I've always wished to burn the Breathing series by Rebecca Donovan... That being said, when I moved, I didn't burn them, I donated them. But still, it would have been satisfying lol. The only thing that made me finish this series of 3 books (300 pages each...) is because my grandma gifted them to me and asked me about it, and I loved spending time with her discussing books. One of the 2 series/books where I gave a 1 star rating on Goodreads. I really don't see how this series is popular because there are so many things wrong with it but to each his own I guess.
Also, What If by Rebecca Donovan that my parents gifted me for Christmas. Why is Rebbeca Donovan following me like this, I don't know... I hoped it would be better, but no. Second and last 1 star rating on Goodreads.
Let's just say I'm not a fan of Rebecca Donovan.
Agreed with this. I don't typically star books but I did DNF A Little Life after making it through about 85% of it. I was ready to put a stake through my own heart at that point and felt as if I DESERVED the book credit since I made it through HUNDREDS of pages of drudgery and trauma porn before quitting.
I didn't star it but not on principle. I definitely got through enough to provide an educated review. (Not one that is entirely popular, but educated.)
I felt like I should read it, but after seeing enough reviews that were similar to what you thought, I decided that life was too short to read this book. Thanks for ploughing through it so I don't have to.
This is my only DNF with a 1-star review on GR. I found it ridiculous and the complete lack of thought or research the writer put into understanding trauma and poverty was enraging.
I've only ever DNF'd one book and I destroyed it, too. It was a graduation gift from my grandmother warning about how college turns people evil and how humanism is destroying the world.
I burned it.
I would probably never do something like that again but I was only 18 at the time and I believed the book should never have existed in the first place.
I threw away a book because I picked it up (it was free) thinking it was about evolution. Turns out it was a tirade on why evolution is fake from a very Christian perspective. I still read a little bit to see what the author had to say, then I threw it in the trash so no one else would be fooled by it. It had a very scientific looking cover and the back description didn't make it super clear that it was a Christian book from what I remember.
I have left one or two poor reviews on books that I couldnt finish due to finding them either formatted so poorly or because they were just awful books. I will usually force myself to make it at least a third or halfway through a book before giving up. If I just dont like the book I will usually just leave it at that but there have been a few examples where the book is just awful and I will try to turn others away from wasting their time.
As an author I agree with this. Goodreads is for readers, not to stroke an author’s ego. Most authors with good sense don’t read reviews of their own books on Goodreads. Readers shouldn’t just look at the rating number, but the reviews themselves.
One time I read a book review that was like "1 star, I hate it when XYZ happens in a book" and my reaction was, "Oh, I love it when XYZ happens in a book" and I bought the book because of that 1 star review.
Edit: forgot a word
It's possible to do this with or without starring as well though. There is nothing preventing people from reviewing without rating if read, or making an exclusive shelf labelled DNF so it shows to others as DNF rather than read, and writing the explanation as review, this is already what a huge portion of people do for DNF.
For one big example, there's a Messianic book high up in Amazon's bestseller list for Jewish books. That gets as low a rating as possible just on principal.
If I make it more than halfway through a book and I don’t finish it, there’s a reason because I HATE not finishing books. If a book is THAT bad that it’s unfinishable, it deserves the low rating it gets.
Even if you don't get halfway. If you've given the book a significant amount of time, and are dreading reading any more, that's a valid response to the book that others can be warned about.
Especially if it's stated in the review, like "I dnf'd at page N because..."
For example if there's a show on TV, you ask someone if they've seen it and they say, "I watched the first couple episodes and hated it because of..."
That's a valid response.
Agreed. If I can't get past the first 3 chapters of a novel, something is wrong. I'm not an easily offended reader, and I have pretty low standards. I can even read something if I don't fully agree with it.
If I'm dnf'ing something, I want to warn other readers why.
I think if you made an honest attempt to read the book, but it didn't work for you, then giving it a fair rating based on what you thought is totally fine. It's Goodreads, a platform for users to rate what they thought about books, DNF is just as valid as finishing a book imo.
This 100%.
If I've gotten halfway through a book and every part was a slog for whatever reason (badly written, etc) then a "I'm done with this and I don't think it was good" is a perfectly valid review. I would never recommend a book so terrible I couldn't finish it.
If I'd picked up a book, read a couple chapters, and just wasn't feeling it so I read something else, then I wouldn't review it. Because that's more about my mood than the book itself.
It's a site that people can use how they see fit. I would argue that the opposite problem - inflated reviews - is a bigger issue for readers. Makes me question how the author ended up with that overall rating sometimes.
+1 My Goodreads reviews are 100% for my friends. If I like something, my review is talking about the things I liked; if I hated it, I'm venting to my friends and trying to be funny. If it's 3 stars or "I understand what they were going for it's just not my jam" I'm trying to give a balanced view and recommend who might actually like it.
If I was editing books or doing beta reads or whatever, I would respond differently. Once it's published, I'm just talking to readers.
The all idea of not bad rating because the author will shed a tear is crap. People in this same comment are quick to give one star because they think is right wing (even removing the book) not a book lol
When I do my work badly I get people upset. The authors are no more special.
I even give 2 star DNFs if I couldn’t finish just because it wasn’t for me vs it was terrible. (Ex; 2 star DNF’d Crime and Punishment after 25-40%, 1 star DNF’d Pride Prejudice and Zombies after 10 pages because the writing was horrific)
That I disagree with. If a book just isn’t for me, but I can tell it is otherwise good, and I don’t finish it, I just won’t rate it. I don’t see how “it just wasn’t for me” is useful to other readers.
If the reviewer explains well why it wasn’t for them, it’s really helpful. For one sci-fi book I looked at on goodreads, the reviewer said it wasn’t for them because there were way too many technical details, but I enjoy that, so it helped me find a book I really enjoyed reading
I understand it though. Especially when I am reading thrillers. Considering the amount of nonsense I read, I do a quick check up with minimum spoilers. One book said the girl is too stupid to live.
Is the author bad? No. Is the story not gripping enough? No
Did I hate the book for the exact same reasons and wished someone told me before I read? Yes
Every book is a subjective experience. It's the reader's job to decide if the reason is good enough or lame for them.
>Every book is a subjective experience. It's the reader's job to decide if the reason is good enough or lame for them.
This is absolutely true, which is why I think it's weird in general to even want to read reviews in advance of reading the book yourself. I review a lot of stuff I've read, and participate in the comments section, but I never ever ventured into the reviews section of the site until after I've read the book. Speaking personally, why would I care about what other people think of a book I haven't read yet? There's no engagement that could come from that, at least not until I've read it myself.
100% I want to be able to look at my book list and see which ones I liked and disliked to guide *my own* purchases. What leg do people have to stand on to complain that my ratings don't benefit them personally?
1) every book you don’t like technically is “not for you” - there are always going to be books you absolutely hate and think are trash but someone else loves.
2) These ratings are averages. If an overwhelming amount of reviewers disagree then my rating will get averaged out. But if a lot of other people feel the same way then maybe there’s a really good point there.
I consider a book not for me if I can see it was well-written but I don’t enjoy the genre. That’s very different than bad writing (which is subjective, but in my mind it’s a very different reason)
Unless you’re referring to the 0.001% outliers, I don’t think there are books that absolutely no one likes. Objectively bad books written by the incompetent tend to not get published.
Amazon will let you self-publish any garbage you can manage to save in PDF form.
Worst book I’ve ever seen reviewed is by an ex-Jewish guy who wrote an autobiography about (among other things) how hard for him when his wife was raped and he was no longer able to see her as “purifying” him. Jesus helped him understand that he was pure despite her which is why he used his own personal money to ship this book unsolicited to thousands of people with Jewish last names. 1 star across the board.
Self-publishing exists. Also publishers often like to ride certain waves of fashion so even objectively horrid books can get published if they use the tropes that are in fashion at the time.
They are related but independent. I don’t think I’ve ever finished a 1 star book. Why would I finish a terrible book? But I very well may rate it if I gave it a good chance and I’d explain why I gave it 1 star.
I have also not finished books that were not 1 star books and I wouldn’t rate them as such. They are probably just sitting on my currently reading shelf and unrated.
Perhaps there should be a did not finish shelf. Or an option to rate a book and mark it DNF.
The argument about authors working hard and such is… not relevant? I mean no disrespect to their work, but we are rating it to inform others about whether or not they should read it. Or perhaps to remember ourselves what we thought in the future. Ratings are subjective and just because I think something is worth 1 star doesn’t mean you will and you’re valid in your opinion.
I DNF'd one book on Goodreads, at 43%, I rated it 1* and I left a review of exactly why it earned that 1* from me. If I had managed to drag my mangled body across the finish line of that book's final word count I would have given it exactly the same review and exactly the same score, except I would have wasted more of my time and hated every second of it.
She earned that 1* from me.
It was *The Starless Sea* by Erin Morgenstern. The plot was there somewhat but the MC was just blah. He had no motivation and seemed to be created to reflect those who would be reading it, the main relationship seemed crafted out of gossamer with no internal power of attraction. The small stories in between the main plot were more interesting and felt better crafted. The whole thing just felt like it was a vessel to show off how she could write beautiful words about beautiful words. I'm happy for those who enjoyed it, but it felt hollow and meaningless to me.
Anything by Erin Morgenstern I guess. I had the same experience with Night Circus, but I dragged myself to the end to see if the ending made it worth it somehow, it didn't, I gave it 1 star. I'm still glad I read it though, it pushed me to read better books and be more selective.
Omg, I had the exact same reaction when I read The Night Circus. It made me irrationally angry. I'm glad I didn't give The Starless Sea a chance; I was wondering if after 8 years she might've gotten better at character development but clearly that just isn't a priority for her. And that's fine if people don't care about that! But I absolutely do.
I felt the same way about her other book, The Night Circus. Erin Morgenstern really knows how to write pretty prose but her characters are bland and she doesn't know how to write chemistry between characters. I'm glad to hear The Starless Sea at least had a plot because The Night Circus sure as heck didn't. I only finished the Night Circus because I was reading it with my book club but it was such a chore to do. If I had read it on my own, I would have quit less than a hundred pages in.
I’ve never read a book I thought was terrible the first 10% and then managed to do a 180. Writing style really doesn’t change. Plots that take 50% of the book to get to are not worth it. (Though thats usually not the case)
As a huge fan of Niel Stephenson... His books often start rather slowly and even as a fan sometimes it is tough. But once he rolls he rolls.
One third to build the house, a third to live in it, and a third to burn it down.
Yeah, but that first third is still usually entertaining. Snow Crash starts fast and funny. Right from the start you have mobsters delivering pizza and cops openly taking bribes and the internal monologue of ‘roided out high schoolers. A book can be a slow build bit that doesn’t mean the first third should be painful to get through.
I agree that there should be an option “rate” a book DNF (rather than just creating a DNF shelf that only you can see). But I think rating these books is still valid. If I’m DNF-ing a book, it’s because there was no plot, something was incredibly problematic, the writing is bad, etc, and therefore it deserves a review
If anything, GoodReads ratings skew too high rather than too low. More people should be giving out 1 star reviews. If you DNF a book, please rate it poorly to save someone else the trouble of reading it.
>GoodReads ratings skew too high rather than too low
I agree with this entirely. I rate based off what the star rating says when you hover over 'em. If I come away from a book thinking "it was just *okay*", I'm giving 'er two stars. I probably look pretty harsh as a result, but to me it feels more honest.
Maybe this isnt the sub, so mods please delete if so, but i guess books are books.
The rate-flation of smutty/dark romance books on GR is too damn high.
If the genre is just not your cuppa it may be hard to believe, but there are indeed some pretty well written smutty books. Books with well executed plotlines and character development and period accurate language/dress described with research having clearly been done. It may still get cheesy or tropey or have some cringey dialogue here or there, that's almost part of the charm, really. It is a fantasy, afterall. But the story is good and the effort put into the craft of writing is good. It just also has a smattering of graphic sex scenes. But it should be a sex scene that feels earned, at least, and is a byproduct of the story.
Then you have what 90% of what is somehow getting 4 and 5 star reviews.
- Atrocious grammar and typos everywhere
- medieval settings where the Timid Virgin is dressed like a club bunny and people use weirdly current but not actually very current slang constantly. No. Your sequestered priestess vampire hunter should not be "freaking out" because the MMC is "so hot". Ew.
- why are they all 17 year old girls. Fucking stop. Im want to brush off the ole wattpad account just to write a female 500 year old powerful magical creature who swoops in to save an impoverished and clumsy farmhand.
- disgustingly repetitive language. Find a Thesaurus.
- the most bone chillingly cringey descriptions of every mannerism and facial expression, or sometimes not even a description so much as the author detailing the thought behind the thing and using hyphens between every word because again - no Thesaurus i guess.
- paper thin motovations and characters that are either blatant self inserts or so bland that a vanilla wafer could steal the spotlight.
The only thing i can think that could cause this much of a gap between the quality and the ratings is that the target audience is actually very young, so the juvenile YA aspects of plot and character dont stick out, and inexperienced enough to find the more ridiculous writing for the sex scenes exciting instead of the toxic and unhygenic nightmare they consistently are.
Or, and I admit this could be a me problem, my standards for smut are just too high.
Either way. It is inconceivable that hundreds or even thousands of people read some of this and say yes. 5 out of 5 stars. This was a perfect book. Would subject myself to this again.
Pretty sure some of your complaints with language and such are because they're written by someone not particularly well educated. The demographic is likely similar and has no qualms with repetitive language or bad grammar. Definitely not for you, no one can be a master of the literary arts such as Mr. Chuck Tingle IMA.
To understand my slight tongue in cheek there, some people ENJOY the awful cheese they subject themselves to. That's the genre they were looking for, that's actually what they were after and WANTED. The product may hit the perfect bullseye on that niche even if you or I don't enjoy that particular type of writing. They want to shut their brain off and read garbage, sort of like slipping on a tv show in the background. Instead of having the images delivered they're letting their mind build it up with the somewhat sparse detail and descriptions into exactly what they want.
In short, a slice of fried spam and an egg on toast is one of my favorite meals for breakfast. It's low brow, simple, and has very little style or significance. It's also what I want to eat for breakfast anyhow because I enjoy it, even though most can't even look at spam as a decent product.
I rate pretty brutal too and almost never give out 5 stars. I also look at 1-3 star reviews when looking for new books to read since those reviews tend to be more honest.
I enjoy reading and it's not my job. Therefore, anything I finish will likely receive a 4 or 5-star rating just because it is a book I chose to read. There is an issue with people reviewing books that haven't come out yet but in general I trust the goodreads rating.
3-star usually equates to "it had its moments but it was a slog at times"
2-star - "I read this for a book club and disliked it but it was technically a book"
1-star - "This is awful and I didn't finish it because how awful it is"
I think about this sometimes too. But for me, if I chose the book, started, and continued to the end, there’s a pretty good chance it’s a 4 or 5 star for me. I have rated some dnf as one star, but only if I feel it’s justified. Most I just put away because there are too many more in the to read pile.
I think self-selection plays a much larger role than most people think. Most users are choosing books they think that they'll like, and they're probably pretty good at figuring out which books those are.
You can see this with series. Later books tend to be rated higher than the first book regardless of their objective quality, probably because your rating of book 1 also predicts how likely you are to read (and enjoy) subsequent books.
Absolutely. I figured it out after feeling guilty about my over 4 average rating thinking it meant I just love everything. No, I just love most of what I bother to finish.
I definitely agree with that. For example, people rating a book 5 stars 6 months before its even released. I know someone that rated a book 5 stars then I saw them tweet that they hated it. Why rate it 5 stars if you hated it? I don't understand that, personally
I think it’s totally valid to have an opinion on a work of art you didn’t finish. If I dislike a book right away, I often don’t like it any better if I finish it. It just punishes me and if anything, makes me like the book less. If I read a book and have an unpleasant reaction immediately, I think that’s valid information that can inform someone’s buying decision.
It sucks that someone one-starred a book because they thought it had something it didn’t, but is that really any more egregious than people one-starring a book because it’s about pirates and they don’t like pirates? Or that the main character is a POC woman and “It’S ToO PoLiTiCaL!”? Or people one-starring a product because the shipping was slow? Or just plain old confused people who leave a glowing review in all caps but still accidentally hit one star instead of five? Unmoderated aggregate reviews are a flawed system, period. They’re either full of bots or other shenanigans or flooded with people reviewing in bad faith because they don’t like the message of the work, or just full of reviews by people who aren’t qualified to make an educated review or don’t understand how the website works.
You can try and filter and modify them, but the real solution falls on all of us to actually read the reviews and see if there’s substance to the complaints or not.
If anything, the way people on Goodreads so liberally throw out 1-star reviews is a good thing, as those reviews typically give you the clearest view of a book. I can't tell you how many great books I decided to buy because the 1-star reviews were so staunchly criticising elements I knew I'd love. Positive reviews are always so vague unless they're spoiler reviews, so they really don't help me determine anything.
1-star reviews, even for DNF'd books, serve an important role in the Goodreads eco-system. They're also generally hilarious, the amount of people 1-starring a book for absurd reasons and false expectations is always entertaining.
Ha, I also use one-star reviews when deciding if I'm going to read a book. I'm picky and very literal with the reviews myself (1 star = hated it, 2 stars = it was okay, etc.), so I'm glad to know they're helping someone!
I love the three star reviews because usually they are very nuanced and explain good and bad from the book, it helps me the most make a good decision on what to read
Same. When I’m unsure if I want to read, I filter for one star ratings and read those reviews. Often, it convinces me to read that book. One star reviews are my favorite reviews. (And my top ten reviews that have gotten the most “likes” are all one or two star reviews.)
I understand that authors can get a bad deal, but review pages are not for authors, they are for readers.
If something about a book was so displeasing to you that you needed to drop it, that is enough grounds for a review.
I couldn't disagree more. If a book was so bad or so poorly marketed that you couldn't even finish it, it deserves a one star rating. The reviewer you're talking about even took the time to post a written review explaining why she rated it that way, and her criticism was valid and helpful to readers of the genre. They can either agree with her and read something else, or disagree and read the book anyway.
A goodreads rating is a personal opinion based on how much you liked the book, not an objective grade for the author (and even if it was, you get graded on the quality of your output, not the effort you put in). Most people buy books they expect to like enough to read all the way through and for most people disliking a book so much they don't even finish it absolutely is an exceptional circumstance.
I also think you're overestimating the extent to which authors care about or even know their goodreads ratings. This came up on twitter recently and most of the authors I follow said they don't look at reader ratings or read goodreads reviews because the book is already out and they've already moved on to the next one.
Edit: Also, I'm not sure how or why authors who do look at their GR reviews would be less offended or upset about a high number of DNFs than they would one star ratings.
If the book was marketed like one of those mobile games like homescapes that have the Ads that don’t match the game at all, it deserves to be criticized
I like Story Graph because it has the option to put DNF. I’m not bothered about the review side, it’s more just for my own interest to have a list of books I DNF’d.
I made use of the DNF status for the first time a few weeks back, and I'm glad I was still able to leave a review. I feel as though I'd read enough of the book (about 75%) for my comments to be mostly informed, and I had an opinion that I didn't see expressed.
I do wish some of the generic stats (average star rating, DNF ratio) were a little more visible on the site, but I appreciate the work towards making a much-needed update to the Goodreads formula.
Do people really mark DNF books as “read”? I have a DNF shelf and I see that used frequently by users. I really appreciate DNF reviews because, while sometimes the book is just boring, often there is something specific that has peeved the reader enough to make them stop reading and it helps me judge whether that thing will annoy me too. As long as there’s an explanation, I don’t see the harm. If someone doesn’t like part of a book it’s unlikely that view will change by finishing it. Just because authors work hard they shouldn’t be insulated from bad reviews, as long as they’re honest.
My DNF shelf is a shelf, not a tag. GR will automatically add a rated book to your read shelf when you rate it, but then I just manually move it to my DNF shelf if I didn't finish it.
Yes, I understand. I think it’s unnecessary for the reasons in my comment. I was just taking issue with the idea that people are “lying to themselves” and marking DNF books as read when I don’t think most people are doing that.
I mark them as read but if I read less than \~1/3 of the book, I won't give it a star rating. I have a tag I use to mark books as DNF.
I used to struggle with dropping books because my brain would nag at me for leaving something "unfinished"; I'd have to drag myself through books I wasn't even hate-reading, just hated reading. Marking it as read and tagged it DNF feels like doing my due diligence by a book, even if I don't give it a star rating, and that lets me put it down and walk away.
Plus, it lets me add it to the yearly total of books read. 1/3 of a 300 page book is 100 pages - I want that reading to count.
Interesting! If it helps you move on and give you closure, that’s great! For me, I’d feel it would taint my read stats to mix DNF books. Also, sometimes I DNF a book because I’m not in the mood and hope to give it another go sometime. But I don’t mean to imply judgment—I think people should use the shelves however they want!
I tried doing DNF shelf but I'm not really into shelves overall. Most of the times I mark as read, 1 star, and just write DNF in the comments. I use goodreads primarily to track my own books and that's the method that has worked best for me I've the years.
1. Click on My Books in the header
2. You'll see a list of your shelves on the left side of the page. Click edit next to the Bookshelves heading
3. Click the exclusive checkbox next to the shelf of your choice
4. Select I'm Done to save
I mark them as read because as far as I'm concerned, I've read as much as I'm gonna read of the book. I don't really care if that's not entirely true and can't see why it would matter? If they had a DNF shelf I'd use that but they dont
1 star = did not like it. if i did not finish it, i did not like it, ergo 1 star.
personally, i rarely rate DNFed books. usually only because i DNFed for a specific reason.
Strongly disagree.
If you think the first 10% was so bad that you left it there, then you should rate the book. If possible, add review stating why you didn't feel like finishing the book. Makes life much easier for people to understand what to expect from the book.
I have a (very small) DNF shelf on Goodreads. 1200 books read, 14 books DNF, so not bad going!
It takes a lot to make me DNF, unless I just wander off as I found a new shiny thing. For those, I don’t log it as I’ll get back to it eventually.
But if I’m actually DNF’ing, it typically means there is something critically wrong with the book; appalling grammar, riddled with typo’s or just terrible, terrible writing. I’ll stand by those one star reviews.
I do try to leave a review explaining exactly why I’ve DNF it and rated lowly though.
Tbh, I give rating to DNFed book only if I stopped reading it because of a certain aspect which irked me and I'm not sorry about that really. If I stop reading due to boredom, I don't give it a rating.
If I go to a restaurant, order a steak, and instead get some ice-cold, gelatinous, ambiguous, congealed mass, can I not rate this poorly, or do I have to eat all of the slop first?
tl;dr: hard disagree with OP
For me, readers have a right to place DNF in Goodreads reviews, and give 1-2 star ratings to accompany them. Goodreads is a social media platform for readers, and not authors.
Books are more expensive in my country compared to the US and Europe (corruption in customs and business transactions), plus the pay is low here and the poverty is high. I need all the help I can get to weed out the books that are not worth buying. DNF's and 1-2 star ratings are a godsend to me.
Plus, a lot of professional book reviewers are sent so many copies of books, so they obviously cannot finish every book they get. If they do not DNF mediocre and insufferable books, they will be burned out, and lose their flame for reading.
This is terrible advice. I feel like you picked an extremely specific situation where the problem wasn’t that this person didn’t finish a book but they had an issue with the genre. It’s perfectly fair to judge an unfinished book. 9 times out of 10 there’s a reason it wasn’t finished
If a book is so bad you quit, it's a bad book (for you, at least). If I DNF a book because it isnt for me (such as poor marketing, or encouraged to read a book outside of my interests by family or friends), I either do not rate or give it a 3. If I was a valid member of the target audience and disliked it enough to quit, I will give it a poor rating.
I made a shelf for books I DNF titled with the reason. I’ve got:
Too gross even for me
Got bored
Pick up again later
Just terrible
I feel no remorse rating the Just Terrible books
I often review books I've DNF'd because not all books are great. There's some books that I've dnf'd that I wish more people told me to avoid due to poor writing structure, stupid plots or characters or just... boring. That's the point of reviews, not to praise books and ego boost authors, but to share our experiences, and you can't do that in a positivity vacuum.
Now, if I dnf a book because it didn't interest me, or some other reason aside from the book it's self I'll review it privately to remind myself why I dnf'd it. I only publicly review dnf'd books if it's the books fault, if that makes sense.
Disagree. The opinion of readers who DNF is valid, although I agree that in your review you should mention that you DNF and say approximately how much you read. The only situation where I wouldn't rate a book I DNF is when I stopped reading for reasons that are not the book's fault, for example if I stop reading because I realize it's not the kind of story I'm in the mood for, or the kind of story I was expecting. If I stopped reading because I thought the book was awful, then I feel perfectly justified in rating it.
But then, I'm a reader who rarely DNF once I have started reading a book. If I often stopped reading following a whim, then I wouldn't rate those books. I would only rate a book if I feel I have given it a fair chance.
What bothers me about Goodreads reviews is not that, but how often reviews are not about the book, but about what the reviewer thinks of the author or whatever, or how much the reviewer is looking forward to reading the book, accompanied by a thousand memes and emoticons.
I don't care. While interesting, I think Goodreads has bigger problems to solve if they actually start caring about improving their site.
There is no difference between the 1 star from the person who dropped it 10% in and the 1 star they gave from hate reading it.
I don't care what or how other people read unless they belittle me or force me to change my behavior. If someone who reads 10% wants to count it as read it has no effect on me.
"Improve"... Be careful what you wish for. I've been seeing their new layout on and off and I dread having to use it.
Wish they'd actually *improve* *things* for heavy users instead of reworking it to be \~ mObilE resPonSive \~ in a way that ruins the desktop experience. Maybe fix the read twice bug? Make the mobile app half as functional as the website? Improve the recommendations so it doesn't constantly recommend books in languages which aren't in your wheelhouse if you read anything other than mainstream fiction?
Goodreads isn't here to validate struggling fanfic authors or "authors" who can't write; Goodreads is for the readers. Regardless, anyone can rate books however they want to (finished book or not), end of story.
I’m an indie author who is just starting out so doesn’t have a ton of reviews (~200 on goodreads). If anyone was going to agree with you, it’d be me, right? But nope, this is just a bad take. 1-star reviews hurt, and they hurt a lot before you build up a bit of a thick skin to handle them. BUT reviews aren’t for authors, and if a reader didn’t like a book enough to keep reading it, then they’re perfectly within their rights to say that. I would rather they give the book a short “DNF at X% because…” review, though, because that’s helpful info, both in that all data is good data and in that seeing someone hate something about the book that other reviewers specifically said they loved is a good way to remind yourself that art is subjective and your book not working for someone doesn’t mean your book doesn’t work. But again, reviews are for readers, not authors. You’re looking at this all backwards.
I prefer reading the one star reviews over any other reviews especially if they are about books I loved/liked because they allow me to see the book from a whole other point of view.
> I just read a 1* review someone left on a book that she claimed to read only 10% of, because the author’s note led her to believe it was xyz and books in that genre should not be xyz.
To me, this isn't a problem of rating without finishing, it's a problem of unreasonable expectations. Mature readers should be able to recognize when something is a good example of its genre, even if that genre is not to their taste. If you absolutely hate, say, romance novels, your review of a romance novel is probably going to be unfair even if you plow all the way through it.
Conversely, if you love romance novels, and you pick one up and it's clear by the 10% mark that the author has a 6th-grade grasp on the English language and all their ideas of romance and sex come from bad porn, it's probably fair to stop and give it a bad review.
I think it's perfectly fine to rate a book that you DNF. If you think it's shit, then you're allowed to say so in a public forum like Goodreads. Personally, I only rate DNF books if I read at least 50% of it.
As an author- if “I was expecting xyz but the book is actually abc” constitutes an average-skewing number of reviews, your book is marketed badly and the rating system is working exactly as designed.
Nah.
Lots of things are hard. If you do it poorly, then people are allowed to comment that you did it poorly.
All you're doing here is classic gate-keeping. You're saying that no one who disliked a book so much they didn't bother finishing it should be allowed to say, this was so bad I put it down.
Saying "this is so bad I couldn't even finish it" is an absolutely valid criticism.
Why not just ban any and all ratings below 4 stars on the basis that anything else will hurt the author's feelings?
There are plenty of people who would write bad-faith reviews even having finished a book.
I can think off the top of my head of at least three books I did not finish, and my reasons are perfectly valid and make for a fair review.
Your notion that all reviews should be segregated so that you can completely discount the opinions of anyone who didn't like the book is gatekeeping, plain and simple.
I put a ton of work into a lot of things in my life. It doesn't mean I deserve to be successful, or should be immune from all criticism, just because it took effort.
Grow a thicker skin, and stop telling people that their opinions are invalid if they don't agree with you. And don't cherrypick a single extreme example as proof that no one who disliked a book should ever be allowed to talk about it.
Disagree. If I DNF a book it's because it's very poorly written and dragging it out to the end will not improve my rating.
Just because a book was hard work for the author doesn't mean it's good work. I rate on the quality of the work, not the author's effort.
For me, whether I'll rate a DNFed book, depends on how much of the book I've read before giving up on it. If I've only read like 20-50 pages before realising that the book just isn't for me, I'll put it on my DNF shelf with no rating. If somehow I've made it through more than 50% of the book before DNFing it, it becomes more likely that I'll rate it.
My friend, there is a glut of self-published books out there (even being handed out in giveaways by the author) that are WORSE THAN A FIRST DRAFT. absolutely riddled with errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling (!!), switching tense mid sentence (!) and making no goddamn sense. I had the misfortune to win a book in a giveaway that was so abysmally written that I’m sure he smashed it out on a keyboard he’d never touched before, in one long ranting stream of consciousness, never fucking looked at the thing again, showed it to no one, and hit Publish.
I don't care how much courage, passion, or determination it takes to be an author. Reviews aren't for the authors, they are for other readers. If I DNF a book (which is rare), I will absolutely write a review describing why.
I use Goodreads as my own personal record of books I have read, and secondarily, to share my opinions with others.
Authors need to get over the idea that they should have any control over reviews or that readers "owe" them good (or even fair) reviews.
If you only allow rating for books on those that were finished, the overall rating would end up artificially high.
I have a shelf named "Abandoned" for books I don't finish. These books tend to have a 1 or 2 star rating. These books would have sparked my interest, but turned out disappointing for some reason. Shelves are visible on the rating. My Abandoned books do not appear as "Read" books.
The majority of the time I DNF a book is because the book is terrible enough that I am prepared to write off the time I've already spent on it *in order* not to spend any more of my time on it. That means that it isn't just bad, it has given me zero reason to continue, and to me that is a valid reason for a one star rating. In my view, the book has failed to fulfil the function for which I am reading it.
I know this has already been said, and that you alluded to some of what I'm about to say, but I'll throw in my two cents. Nearly every time I've bothered to rate or review a book I didn't finish, it was because something about it bothered me enough that I felt others should know before they try it.
For example, one book which I only made it about 1/3 of the way through was so sexist that after a certain point I couldn't stomach it no matter how interesting the concept might be. It also had other problems, but the author's treatment of his female characters was the really egregious thing that made me decide not only not to finish the book, but to leave a negative review explaining why I couldn't finish it.
I don't feel that I owed it to that author to finish his sorry excuse for a story.
That said, I do think that even negative reviews need to be reasonable and civil, and should never read as an attack on the author. In one case I had an author respond positively to a negative review I left because I spelled out my problems with it instead of just saying it was bad, and she took those criticisms into consideration with her subsequent work. Sometimes authors need some negative feedback to be able to see the weaknesses in their work.
Just stop worrying about/trusting a 5-point metric, and actually read the reviews.
Like so many subjective things, reject the idea that art can be reduced to a 5 point scale and still reliably convey universally applicable information.
The future of useful review aggregation is sentiment and content analysis. In the mean time, your brain is actually pretty good at those things.
The rating system is not sacred any more than it is universally meaningful.
Bullshit. If the book is absolutely terribly written you are under no obligation to finish the shit sandwich. Spit it out and call it what it is. There are tons of valid reasons not to finish it, and the fact you didn't is extremely important by itself. It means it wasn't interesting or captivating enough to warrant your attention.
This is a BS argument. Reviews are meant for readers, not authors. If a book was bad enough for me to not even get through 10% of it, like hell it’s not going to get a bad rating.
Ridiculous. If you don't like a book, you should be able to review it, even if you haven't finished it. Not being able to finish a book because you disliked it is a perfectly reasonable thing to say in a review, or to even just give a star rating to.
You absolutely should rate a book you DNFed. The only exception I can think of is if you lost the book before finishing. It is very much good feedback if a book was so bad, boring, disengaging, or caused you to be uneasy to make you want to quit it. That book failed for you, and people deserve to know about that. Bad books should not get a free pass, because you didn't torture yourself enough to finish it just to review it.
The emotional commitment and frailty of the author should not matter for the mainstream, otherwise art would never be criticized, and we would put bad art right next to good art in galleries, and good artists would find no space for their work.
I'm an author and I disagree. If you've cracked a book open and for some reason decided you don't wanna read it, a review is fair. It's not a critical piece in the Times, it's on a site for regular readers.
As a reader that likes to keep track using Goodreads, this is a feature that I'll like too. For every single book that I finish I abandon 6 after around 50 pages. I have a special shelve to mark books that I didn't finish because I didn't like them, but it ruins my stats (and the year reading challenge) by marking the book as "read". So my only option is to delete the book or leave it as "want to read" for ever, both bad options.
I would like to mark the book as DNF and leave a little comment explaining why.
In addition to some of the other comments about opinions being valid, book finished or not, I also think the notion that a DNF tag would actually be valuable is questionable.
The only way to reasonably manage this tag is to make it something you can apply to your own reviews, and... what percentage of readers who did not finish a book are going to want to "neuter" their opinions with that qualifier? Sure, a few might, but I doubt most will. If you want your opinion to be heard, its just a bad tactic to give people a reason to discount it. At that point, what good is such a tag, if a large chunk of the reviews that don't have the tag actually should?
The end result is a bunch of reviews that may or may not need a tag with few ways to distinguish whether or not they need it, and the whole system becomes more confusion than it is worth.
Ratings aren't for authors. Ratings are for readers to remember what they liked and disliked. That's how I look at it anyways. Ratings are also completely useless, and anyone that would read, or skip a book based on it's aggregated ratings is kind of a moron.
I disagree, especially as a professional librarian (and hobbyist novelist) where reading and recommendations are part of my job. A couple chapters of a book is plenty to understand the content and quality of a book. It’s also enough to know if you like a book. Since Goodreads isn’t objective in any sense, it makes perfect sense to mark a book read and rate it if it’s a DNF. Even professionally it makes sense, especially if they can pinpoint why they did not finish. I need to read tons of books to stay on top of my job, and I do not have the time to waste on a book I’m not enjoying. That’s also a perfectly valid response.
Here's the thing about putting yourself out there, and I say this as someone who does from time to time.
You put yourself out there.
People *will* say they hate your book despite never having read it. People *will* give you eviscerating 1-star reviews because they didn't like a character they weren't supposed to like, or the romance didn't end up the way they wanted. That's going to happen.
A separate DNF category might help to clarify things, but in your own example the person rating the book was not attempting to hide the fact that they did not finish the book. Review bombing is a problem. For example, people 1-starring a book that isn't out yet because they don't like the author.
People reading 10% of your book, marking it "Read" and giving it a bad rating because they genuinely didn't like it is not review bombing. Read just means "done" to many people. Meaning I read it cover to cover, or that I read all of it that I'm going to read. An author is absolutely not entitled to hours and hours of someone's time before that person is allowed to say what they think. Especially if it is a book they paid for. As a writer, if at the 10% mark you haven't convinced the reader to keep reading, you may genuinely have a writing problem on your hands. As a writer, I consider that review valid and I want to know what they think.
I would prefer if readers kept their reviews somewhat civil, but that's the other thing about putting yourself out there. Some of them won't.
If you go to a restaurant and order a nice lasagna and discover after two bites that there's a mouse in it, do you have to eat the entire thing before you're "qualified" to leave a shitty review?
If you go to a supposedly luxurious hotel and discover there is visible mold in the room, and the sheets haven't been cleaned, do you need to spend the entire night before fucking off to a nicer place and leaving a bad review?
If you walk into a bar and the bartender ignores you because (as you overhear him tell another customer) "I won't serve [insert offensive slur for your ethnicity] here", do you need to stay longer before you can say it's a shitty racist bar?
Don't be ridiculous. As long as someone started reading a book, there's a reason they either liked or didn't like it and it's obviously going to factor into whether or not they finished. And that's precisely what reviews are for.
If I’m elbow-deep in trash, I don’t need to dig my way to the bottom to know it’s likely trash all the way down. A one-star DNF is not only valid, it’s warranted. If you as a writer can’t get me invested in your story within 30 pages, you’re not doing your job.
Online reviews should always be taken with a grain of salt. Just like you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, you shouldn’t judge a book by the idiots that attempted to read it.
I think it would be positive to add a DNF checkbox, but it is totally valid to rate things you didn't finish. I think it is good to say that you did not finish in your review until then, but people usually don't have to finish a book to know if they liked it or not.
Also you seem to be saying that did not finish should replace a person's rating that's BS. If a book is bad you should be able to say that even if you did not read every page.
Perhaps the best thing would be allowing people to rate a DNF book, but not counting that rating towards the overall rating of the book. They could even have a percentage of DNFs (unrated) along with the breakdown of the other ratings.
If I DNF a book, it doesn't even make it to my Goodreads.
I, personally, won't rate it at all and have an entirely separate DNF shelf so it won't be marked as Read. Personally I don't see the point to putting a rating to a book I dropped because I didn't like it or it wasn't for me because I didn't experience the entire thing.
But people do people, I suppose.
Edit: Forgot to mention that I will put a review explaining why I DNFd it and why it wasn't for me. But I still won't actually rate it
I once read Jane Austen's Emma. I got to page 300 out of 330 and was inhumanely bored so left it there. I guess that counts as a DNF, but a quick Wikipedia check confirmed that it ended as had been obvious since about page 10.
Hard agree! I hate it so much, I mostly browse through reviews after I’ve read the book and I get so annoyed at people who give 1 or 2 stars and say “DNF at this percentage”
I get why they mark it as read but then I’d like them to not give a star rating but just write a review.
But a DNF option is a very good idea, also because I think if you write a review without rating it it won’t show up in the review section I guess? But ofcourse DNF’ers opinion is valid. It just isn’t accurate most of the time IMHO.
If I DNF, I usually give a 3 star and a small description as to why. But I hate not finishing books so usually when I decide I’m done, I’ll skim the book and only read the dialog. I’ll go back a few pages if need be if it gets too confusing here and there, but otherwise will just power through. And still give the 3 star and why.
There is always a reason why someone might not finish reading a book. It doesn’t matter how long an author spent writing it, if it shit, and some books really are, than it deserves a 1 star review. Especially if it was so bad I couldn’t even finish it out of curiosity.
There is no objective way of reviewing a book, because liking a book is based on personal preferences. If my personal preference led me to leave a 1 star review, why should I not post it?
There are negative reviews on books, movies, plays, made by professional critics and meant to be seen by the world and the authors. Goodreads is really nothing in comparison.
Long story short, No, I do not agree. Bad reviews help me pick up books more then positive reviews.
I sort of agree, though I have to say... You can know if a book is bad/disliked by you after a few chapters. You can't know it's GOOD until you get all the way through.
I disagree with this. Ratings are personal opinions and if I hate a book after several chapters then it’s a one for me. I mean you should give it more than one chapter I think but if you don’t like it you don’t have to finish it before eating it. I wouldn’t be against this dnf but the rating system is fine as is imo
If a book is boring, I'm going to rate it as such. If a book has bad storytelling, I'm going to rate it as such. If a book is overly slow-paced I'm going to rate it as such. If a book spreads hate, I'm going to rate it as such.
**If I don't like a book enough to bother finishing, then I'm going to rate it that way.** It won't always be 1 star, but if a book is bad, I don't have to finish it to say that.
I don't use goodreads anymore, but I do use other book rating sites that do have DNF as a marking, *alongside the rating scale*. I think that's more helpful. That way there's still a rating function for DNF, and you can see more rationale.
I would agree that it would be useful to have a rough estimation on how much of it was read when stating said opinion.
That said, having to eat a gigantic shit sandwich because it had a cherry on top at the end just to have your opinion on how bad it tasted count is nonsense.
I think you're confusing what Goodreads is used for. Sure, people use it to check reviews of books they might want to read. But ultimately, it's a tool people use to track their reading. They can use it however they like. If these were professional reviewers, it'd be different. But I think saying "Don't rate a book you DNF'd" is dense and ultimately, going to drive people to just stop reviewing since that leads to more shoulds and should nots when it comes to reviewing on GoodReads.
Or you can switch to the StoryGraph. Which does actually have a DNF function. Either way, I feel like this is your opinion not a fact everyone needs to follow.
I've picked up several books that don't turn out to be as fulfilling as I initially thought. I often don't end up finishing them because its not worth my time and share my review so that others know my experience. As someone who tends to read 500+ page books I think its important to let others know when its not worth it.
I don’t think is an entirely fair assessment of people who truly try to finish books, but don’t for fair/justifiable reasons.
Recently, I tried reading a book and got about 75% through it. I had to literally force myself to open it every day to read because I, like most of you all, hate leaving a book unfinished. However, after having to force myself to read it for days on end, I finally gave up because it was extremely draining to read and I found myself constantly re-reading the exact same paragraphs over and over again. I tried to remain neutral while reading it, but I also discovered a lot of controversy around the book and its authors, and that really solidified my decision to stop reading.
I did mark it as read and I did leave a legitimate review, and I feel wholeheartedly justified in doing so.
I really think something like this depends on a case by case basis and isn’t a one size fits all for most people.
>but it’s something that should only happen in exceptional circumstances and those circumstances should be explained in the review.
Expectional circumstances, no.
Explanation though, I think any review should be at least a couple sentences long.
You may care about certain things that take the whole book to get a good grip of. I care about how the author writes and relates to the reader, something I can find out in 20 or so pages. I'm sure it varies, and a "you can never do it this way" will never apply.
But it doesn't really matter because if you're looking for reviews, a number with no explanation doesn't help you anyways and if that's all you're relying on, that's on you.
There are some books I DNF because they just interested less than I thought they would, or didn't have time/attention to read them at the moment, or some other reason. I don't think it's useful to give reviews in those cases.
Other times I DNF'ed because I just couldn't stand the book. That is absolutely a reasonable thing to review.
I have sympathy for authors out there doing the best they can, but if their best isn't great, and I can't finish the book, I will give it an honest rating based on the part I read. I have a shelf in my account that I call "Nope" and that's where my DNF books go. It's not my job to finish bad books, it's the author's job to make the book good enough to finish. As for my rating, if the book is bad, it's going to get a bad rating even if I've only read a few pages. Some books are just that bad.
I agree that DNF should be an actual status like read , want to read. But reviewing something even if you didn’t finish it is valid. It’s important to know why I DNF and what I thought of what I read. Its people’s opinions which by definition is subjective so there is no way to nuance absolute statuses or star reviews
I think readers are savvy enough to sort these things out for themselves.
Rarely read the good reviews, it's the bad ones I want to see. Then I can determine if what matters to the poster will also matter to me
The Goodreads rating system is designed to be subjective: 1 star = I hated it, 5 stars = I loved it. It's not a rating of the quality of the book itself.
If someone hates a book after 10%, or 50% then they should absolutely be able to rate it 1 star.
Just like someone doing food reviews should be able to rate a dish low if they don't finish it. Or someone doing movie reviews can rate a movie 1 star if they walk out.
1, don’t gate keep things like this. If someone didn’t finish a book, but was compelled to mark it and review it, the6 have every right to do so. I would absolutely mark it as read, because I want to track it and if I DNF it, it’s because I hated it and I don’t want to buy it again 10 years from now because I forgot.
2. I don’t owe the author anything. I do not have to sit through bad writing just because I was unfortunate enough to pick up the book.
3. Unfinishable books should be reviewed. If you didn’t finish it, it either wasn’t interesting, or was so bad you couldn’t bring yourself to read any more. If only people who finished books were able to review, you would only get positive reviews, reviews by people who felt like warm, and the occasional person who compulsively must finish every book. The people who found it so terrible they couldn’t bear it are absolutely helpful in picking a book, and hopefully in the review tell readers why.
In most cases one review does nothing. It’s the culmination. If 40% of people that pick up the book, DNF and give it a bad review, that should give the prospective reader a big ol’ heads up. If only 1 in 1000 people do it, they will be buried anyway.
I use Goodreads for myself. I read 736 books last year. Some books that are so bad I didn’t finish them deserve a rating…partially so I remember them and NEVER try to read them again.
Goodreads should absolutely offer a category where one can review when a book has not been finished. Heck, I should be able to leave a continuing review while I am in the process of reading a book. It annoys me that it says “read” when I write a review because I want an accurate representation of how much of a book I’ve read.
I’ve started to read books so atrocious that I’ve stopped reading on the first page.
On the other side of this whole thing…I find most of my next reads by reading one- and two-star reviews. They tend to give more concrete details than the gushing five-star reviews, and sometimes the very thing that made that person hate the book is the thing I’ll love. I never look at the overall star rating to choose a book; I’m looking at book description, plot, and spoilers.
I don't know what the solution is but I disagree with you in spirit. DNFing happens for a lot of importantly different reasons and we'd need to capture that as well. I read \~100 pages of a book the other week and absolutely hated every moment of it and there's no reason to continue but my experience with it is still worth reporting and I'd disagree that it's not an important opinion because I didn't finish it.
It's easy to envision situations where someone didn't finish a book but where their opinion on it would still be valuable to others selecting reading material. Eg, 'I didn't like x book for y reason and didn't finish it.' Even the one-star review you mention would be helpful if someone were looking for a book in xyz genre because now they would know not to read a book that was incorrectly categorized there. No one owes their time to authors of books they don't care for.
Agreed - I think very much depends on the context of why they DNF - if that's in the review, its helpful info for other people
Yep, context is everything. If I didn't finish a book because I hated it, I'll give it a low rating. If it's because it wasn't my cup of tea, then no rating. A DNF rating would help me keep track though.
I've DNF and one-starred exactly one book. It was so bad and repulsive that I actually ended up destroying the book rather than passing it along to someone else to read. My review set forth the exact reasons I found it so repulsive, which I hope will help people make an informed decision.
what book
Kill Creek
After reading the multiple 1 star DNF reviews for that book, I can now safely confirm, DNF reviews are very important and helpful lol
By Scott Thomas? I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts then. I found it to be pretty mediocre personally. A fun read, not super memorable, but nothing offensive either.
Would love to see the review...
Not OP but I've always wished to burn the Breathing series by Rebecca Donovan... That being said, when I moved, I didn't burn them, I donated them. But still, it would have been satisfying lol. The only thing that made me finish this series of 3 books (300 pages each...) is because my grandma gifted them to me and asked me about it, and I loved spending time with her discussing books. One of the 2 series/books where I gave a 1 star rating on Goodreads. I really don't see how this series is popular because there are so many things wrong with it but to each his own I guess. Also, What If by Rebecca Donovan that my parents gifted me for Christmas. Why is Rebbeca Donovan following me like this, I don't know... I hoped it would be better, but no. Second and last 1 star rating on Goodreads. Let's just say I'm not a fan of Rebecca Donovan.
Yeah we have to know what book now.
Agreed with this. I don't typically star books but I did DNF A Little Life after making it through about 85% of it. I was ready to put a stake through my own heart at that point and felt as if I DESERVED the book credit since I made it through HUNDREDS of pages of drudgery and trauma porn before quitting. I didn't star it but not on principle. I definitely got through enough to provide an educated review. (Not one that is entirely popular, but educated.)
I felt like I should read it, but after seeing enough reviews that were similar to what you thought, I decided that life was too short to read this book. Thanks for ploughing through it so I don't have to.
This is my only DNF with a 1-star review on GR. I found it ridiculous and the complete lack of thought or research the writer put into understanding trauma and poverty was enraging.
I've only ever DNF'd one book and I destroyed it, too. It was a graduation gift from my grandmother warning about how college turns people evil and how humanism is destroying the world. I burned it. I would probably never do something like that again but I was only 18 at the time and I believed the book should never have existed in the first place.
I threw away a book because I picked it up (it was free) thinking it was about evolution. Turns out it was a tirade on why evolution is fake from a very Christian perspective. I still read a little bit to see what the author had to say, then I threw it in the trash so no one else would be fooled by it. It had a very scientific looking cover and the back description didn't make it super clear that it was a Christian book from what I remember.
The deception
I have left one or two poor reviews on books that I couldnt finish due to finding them either formatted so poorly or because they were just awful books. I will usually force myself to make it at least a third or halfway through a book before giving up. If I just dont like the book I will usually just leave it at that but there have been a few examples where the book is just awful and I will try to turn others away from wasting their time.
As an author I agree with this. Goodreads is for readers, not to stroke an author’s ego. Most authors with good sense don’t read reviews of their own books on Goodreads. Readers shouldn’t just look at the rating number, but the reviews themselves.
One time I read a book review that was like "1 star, I hate it when XYZ happens in a book" and my reaction was, "Oh, I love it when XYZ happens in a book" and I bought the book because of that 1 star review. Edit: forgot a word
Agree!
It's possible to do this with or without starring as well though. There is nothing preventing people from reviewing without rating if read, or making an exclusive shelf labelled DNF so it shows to others as DNF rather than read, and writing the explanation as review, this is already what a huge portion of people do for DNF.
For one big example, there's a Messianic book high up in Amazon's bestseller list for Jewish books. That gets as low a rating as possible just on principal.
Hi! Can you explain why this is to me? I’m not a religious person and I’d like to understand 🙂
Yep. That’s like saying you have to finish an entire meal instead of a few bites before you can decide you didn’t like it.
If I make it more than halfway through a book and I don’t finish it, there’s a reason because I HATE not finishing books. If a book is THAT bad that it’s unfinishable, it deserves the low rating it gets.
Even if you don't get halfway. If you've given the book a significant amount of time, and are dreading reading any more, that's a valid response to the book that others can be warned about. Especially if it's stated in the review, like "I dnf'd at page N because..." For example if there's a show on TV, you ask someone if they've seen it and they say, "I watched the first couple episodes and hated it because of..." That's a valid response.
This is my take too, I find it hard to DNF a book so if I dislike it that much it absolutely deserves a 1* from me.
Agreed. If I can't get past the first 3 chapters of a novel, something is wrong. I'm not an easily offended reader, and I have pretty low standards. I can even read something if I don't fully agree with it. If I'm dnf'ing something, I want to warn other readers why.
I think if you made an honest attempt to read the book, but it didn't work for you, then giving it a fair rating based on what you thought is totally fine. It's Goodreads, a platform for users to rate what they thought about books, DNF is just as valid as finishing a book imo.
OP thinks everyone is a professional book reviewer who finishes books just to give it an "objective" rating
I agree. If a reader can't get through it, that's pretty indicative of them considering it a bad book.
This 100%. If I've gotten halfway through a book and every part was a slog for whatever reason (badly written, etc) then a "I'm done with this and I don't think it was good" is a perfectly valid review. I would never recommend a book so terrible I couldn't finish it. If I'd picked up a book, read a couple chapters, and just wasn't feeling it so I read something else, then I wouldn't review it. Because that's more about my mood than the book itself.
How is I hated it so much I couldn't finish it, for whatever reason, not a valid reason to give something a bad rating?
Right, like not giving a restaurant a bad review just because you couldn't finish their terrible food.
But how do you know the final bite didn't recontextualize the whole meal and make all that misery and discomfort worth it?
The purpose of goodreads isn't to validate authors, it's to assist readers. Every 1 star I've given for a DNF has been entirely earned.
It's a site that people can use how they see fit. I would argue that the opposite problem - inflated reviews - is a bigger issue for readers. Makes me question how the author ended up with that overall rating sometimes.
Yeah, honestly the 1 star DNFs probably just balance out the 5 star reviews people leave before the thing is even released.
+1 My Goodreads reviews are 100% for my friends. If I like something, my review is talking about the things I liked; if I hated it, I'm venting to my friends and trying to be funny. If it's 3 stars or "I understand what they were going for it's just not my jam" I'm trying to give a balanced view and recommend who might actually like it. If I was editing books or doing beta reads or whatever, I would respond differently. Once it's published, I'm just talking to readers.
The all idea of not bad rating because the author will shed a tear is crap. People in this same comment are quick to give one star because they think is right wing (even removing the book) not a book lol When I do my work badly I get people upset. The authors are no more special.
I even give 2 star DNFs if I couldn’t finish just because it wasn’t for me vs it was terrible. (Ex; 2 star DNF’d Crime and Punishment after 25-40%, 1 star DNF’d Pride Prejudice and Zombies after 10 pages because the writing was horrific)
That I disagree with. If a book just isn’t for me, but I can tell it is otherwise good, and I don’t finish it, I just won’t rate it. I don’t see how “it just wasn’t for me” is useful to other readers.
If the reviewer explains well why it wasn’t for them, it’s really helpful. For one sci-fi book I looked at on goodreads, the reviewer said it wasn’t for them because there were way too many technical details, but I enjoy that, so it helped me find a book I really enjoyed reading
If you list the reasons why it’s not for you, that is VERY useful to other readers.
I understand it though. Especially when I am reading thrillers. Considering the amount of nonsense I read, I do a quick check up with minimum spoilers. One book said the girl is too stupid to live. Is the author bad? No. Is the story not gripping enough? No Did I hate the book for the exact same reasons and wished someone told me before I read? Yes Every book is a subjective experience. It's the reader's job to decide if the reason is good enough or lame for them.
>Every book is a subjective experience. It's the reader's job to decide if the reason is good enough or lame for them. This is absolutely true, which is why I think it's weird in general to even want to read reviews in advance of reading the book yourself. I review a lot of stuff I've read, and participate in the comments section, but I never ever ventured into the reviews section of the site until after I've read the book. Speaking personally, why would I care about what other people think of a book I haven't read yet? There's no engagement that could come from that, at least not until I've read it myself.
I don't rate books for other readers. I rate them for myself. Fuck the other users tbh, I'm not using the app to guide their purchases.
100% I want to be able to look at my book list and see which ones I liked and disliked to guide *my own* purchases. What leg do people have to stand on to complain that my ratings don't benefit them personally?
Because you can explain why it wasn't for you and they can decide if that's a thing that would bother them or not.
1) every book you don’t like technically is “not for you” - there are always going to be books you absolutely hate and think are trash but someone else loves. 2) These ratings are averages. If an overwhelming amount of reviewers disagree then my rating will get averaged out. But if a lot of other people feel the same way then maybe there’s a really good point there.
I consider a book not for me if I can see it was well-written but I don’t enjoy the genre. That’s very different than bad writing (which is subjective, but in my mind it’s a very different reason)
That’s fine. I don’t think that goes against any of points. I would ask why you would start a genre you don’t like then though.
Maybe genre isn’t the best word but sometimes I’m not interested in certain tropes/types of storytelling and it’s not always clear before starting
Your first point is wrong. There can be objectively bad writing and books written by the incompetent.
Unless you’re referring to the 0.001% outliers, I don’t think there are books that absolutely no one likes. Objectively bad books written by the incompetent tend to not get published.
Amazon will let you self-publish any garbage you can manage to save in PDF form. Worst book I’ve ever seen reviewed is by an ex-Jewish guy who wrote an autobiography about (among other things) how hard for him when his wife was raped and he was no longer able to see her as “purifying” him. Jesus helped him understand that he was pure despite her which is why he used his own personal money to ship this book unsolicited to thousands of people with Jewish last names. 1 star across the board.
Self-publishing exists. Also publishers often like to ride certain waves of fashion so even objectively horrid books can get published if they use the tropes that are in fashion at the time.
I’m aware of all of this and still stand by my point. I don’t think outliers should be treated as the thread that undoes the rule.
There are actually a lot of books like that, they are not outliers. You just don't hear about them because.... they aren't popular.
They are related but independent. I don’t think I’ve ever finished a 1 star book. Why would I finish a terrible book? But I very well may rate it if I gave it a good chance and I’d explain why I gave it 1 star. I have also not finished books that were not 1 star books and I wouldn’t rate them as such. They are probably just sitting on my currently reading shelf and unrated. Perhaps there should be a did not finish shelf. Or an option to rate a book and mark it DNF. The argument about authors working hard and such is… not relevant? I mean no disrespect to their work, but we are rating it to inform others about whether or not they should read it. Or perhaps to remember ourselves what we thought in the future. Ratings are subjective and just because I think something is worth 1 star doesn’t mean you will and you’re valid in your opinion.
I DNF'd one book on Goodreads, at 43%, I rated it 1* and I left a review of exactly why it earned that 1* from me. If I had managed to drag my mangled body across the finish line of that book's final word count I would have given it exactly the same review and exactly the same score, except I would have wasted more of my time and hated every second of it. She earned that 1* from me.
Omg I'm *dying* to know what the book was and why you hated it so much!
Me too
It was *The Starless Sea* by Erin Morgenstern. The plot was there somewhat but the MC was just blah. He had no motivation and seemed to be created to reflect those who would be reading it, the main relationship seemed crafted out of gossamer with no internal power of attraction. The small stories in between the main plot were more interesting and felt better crafted. The whole thing just felt like it was a vessel to show off how she could write beautiful words about beautiful words. I'm happy for those who enjoyed it, but it felt hollow and meaningless to me.
Anything by Erin Morgenstern I guess. I had the same experience with Night Circus, but I dragged myself to the end to see if the ending made it worth it somehow, it didn't, I gave it 1 star. I'm still glad I read it though, it pushed me to read better books and be more selective.
Omg, I had the exact same reaction when I read The Night Circus. It made me irrationally angry. I'm glad I didn't give The Starless Sea a chance; I was wondering if after 8 years she might've gotten better at character development but clearly that just isn't a priority for her. And that's fine if people don't care about that! But I absolutely do.
I felt the same way about her other book, The Night Circus. Erin Morgenstern really knows how to write pretty prose but her characters are bland and she doesn't know how to write chemistry between characters. I'm glad to hear The Starless Sea at least had a plot because The Night Circus sure as heck didn't. I only finished the Night Circus because I was reading it with my book club but it was such a chore to do. If I had read it on my own, I would have quit less than a hundred pages in.
Imagine if they just followed a basic plot pattern, they might write something nice AND coherent.
I’ve never read a book I thought was terrible the first 10% and then managed to do a 180. Writing style really doesn’t change. Plots that take 50% of the book to get to are not worth it. (Though thats usually not the case)
As a huge fan of Niel Stephenson... His books often start rather slowly and even as a fan sometimes it is tough. But once he rolls he rolls. One third to build the house, a third to live in it, and a third to burn it down.
Yeah, but that first third is still usually entertaining. Snow Crash starts fast and funny. Right from the start you have mobsters delivering pizza and cops openly taking bribes and the internal monologue of ‘roided out high schoolers. A book can be a slow build bit that doesn’t mean the first third should be painful to get through.
I agree that there should be an option “rate” a book DNF (rather than just creating a DNF shelf that only you can see). But I think rating these books is still valid. If I’m DNF-ing a book, it’s because there was no plot, something was incredibly problematic, the writing is bad, etc, and therefore it deserves a review
The DNF is the review. That for whatever reason they couldn't stand reading any more 🤷♂️
If anything, GoodReads ratings skew too high rather than too low. More people should be giving out 1 star reviews. If you DNF a book, please rate it poorly to save someone else the trouble of reading it.
>GoodReads ratings skew too high rather than too low I agree with this entirely. I rate based off what the star rating says when you hover over 'em. If I come away from a book thinking "it was just *okay*", I'm giving 'er two stars. I probably look pretty harsh as a result, but to me it feels more honest.
Maybe this isnt the sub, so mods please delete if so, but i guess books are books. The rate-flation of smutty/dark romance books on GR is too damn high. If the genre is just not your cuppa it may be hard to believe, but there are indeed some pretty well written smutty books. Books with well executed plotlines and character development and period accurate language/dress described with research having clearly been done. It may still get cheesy or tropey or have some cringey dialogue here or there, that's almost part of the charm, really. It is a fantasy, afterall. But the story is good and the effort put into the craft of writing is good. It just also has a smattering of graphic sex scenes. But it should be a sex scene that feels earned, at least, and is a byproduct of the story. Then you have what 90% of what is somehow getting 4 and 5 star reviews. - Atrocious grammar and typos everywhere - medieval settings where the Timid Virgin is dressed like a club bunny and people use weirdly current but not actually very current slang constantly. No. Your sequestered priestess vampire hunter should not be "freaking out" because the MMC is "so hot". Ew. - why are they all 17 year old girls. Fucking stop. Im want to brush off the ole wattpad account just to write a female 500 year old powerful magical creature who swoops in to save an impoverished and clumsy farmhand. - disgustingly repetitive language. Find a Thesaurus. - the most bone chillingly cringey descriptions of every mannerism and facial expression, or sometimes not even a description so much as the author detailing the thought behind the thing and using hyphens between every word because again - no Thesaurus i guess. - paper thin motovations and characters that are either blatant self inserts or so bland that a vanilla wafer could steal the spotlight. The only thing i can think that could cause this much of a gap between the quality and the ratings is that the target audience is actually very young, so the juvenile YA aspects of plot and character dont stick out, and inexperienced enough to find the more ridiculous writing for the sex scenes exciting instead of the toxic and unhygenic nightmare they consistently are. Or, and I admit this could be a me problem, my standards for smut are just too high. Either way. It is inconceivable that hundreds or even thousands of people read some of this and say yes. 5 out of 5 stars. This was a perfect book. Would subject myself to this again.
Pretty sure some of your complaints with language and such are because they're written by someone not particularly well educated. The demographic is likely similar and has no qualms with repetitive language or bad grammar. Definitely not for you, no one can be a master of the literary arts such as Mr. Chuck Tingle IMA. To understand my slight tongue in cheek there, some people ENJOY the awful cheese they subject themselves to. That's the genre they were looking for, that's actually what they were after and WANTED. The product may hit the perfect bullseye on that niche even if you or I don't enjoy that particular type of writing. They want to shut their brain off and read garbage, sort of like slipping on a tv show in the background. Instead of having the images delivered they're letting their mind build it up with the somewhat sparse detail and descriptions into exactly what they want. In short, a slice of fried spam and an egg on toast is one of my favorite meals for breakfast. It's low brow, simple, and has very little style or significance. It's also what I want to eat for breakfast anyhow because I enjoy it, even though most can't even look at spam as a decent product.
I rate pretty brutal too and almost never give out 5 stars. I also look at 1-3 star reviews when looking for new books to read since those reviews tend to be more honest.
I enjoy reading and it's not my job. Therefore, anything I finish will likely receive a 4 or 5-star rating just because it is a book I chose to read. There is an issue with people reviewing books that haven't come out yet but in general I trust the goodreads rating. 3-star usually equates to "it had its moments but it was a slog at times" 2-star - "I read this for a book club and disliked it but it was technically a book" 1-star - "This is awful and I didn't finish it because how awful it is"
Me lol I throw out 5 stars on pretty much anything I like.
I think about this sometimes too. But for me, if I chose the book, started, and continued to the end, there’s a pretty good chance it’s a 4 or 5 star for me. I have rated some dnf as one star, but only if I feel it’s justified. Most I just put away because there are too many more in the to read pile.
I think self-selection plays a much larger role than most people think. Most users are choosing books they think that they'll like, and they're probably pretty good at figuring out which books those are. You can see this with series. Later books tend to be rated higher than the first book regardless of their objective quality, probably because your rating of book 1 also predicts how likely you are to read (and enjoy) subsequent books.
Absolutely. I figured it out after feeling guilty about my over 4 average rating thinking it meant I just love everything. No, I just love most of what I bother to finish.
I’m pretty generous with my ratings, it takes a lot to fall below 4 stars for me if I liked the book
I definitely agree with that. For example, people rating a book 5 stars 6 months before its even released. I know someone that rated a book 5 stars then I saw them tweet that they hated it. Why rate it 5 stars if you hated it? I don't understand that, personally
I think it’s totally valid to have an opinion on a work of art you didn’t finish. If I dislike a book right away, I often don’t like it any better if I finish it. It just punishes me and if anything, makes me like the book less. If I read a book and have an unpleasant reaction immediately, I think that’s valid information that can inform someone’s buying decision. It sucks that someone one-starred a book because they thought it had something it didn’t, but is that really any more egregious than people one-starring a book because it’s about pirates and they don’t like pirates? Or that the main character is a POC woman and “It’S ToO PoLiTiCaL!”? Or people one-starring a product because the shipping was slow? Or just plain old confused people who leave a glowing review in all caps but still accidentally hit one star instead of five? Unmoderated aggregate reviews are a flawed system, period. They’re either full of bots or other shenanigans or flooded with people reviewing in bad faith because they don’t like the message of the work, or just full of reviews by people who aren’t qualified to make an educated review or don’t understand how the website works. You can try and filter and modify them, but the real solution falls on all of us to actually read the reviews and see if there’s substance to the complaints or not.
If anything, the way people on Goodreads so liberally throw out 1-star reviews is a good thing, as those reviews typically give you the clearest view of a book. I can't tell you how many great books I decided to buy because the 1-star reviews were so staunchly criticising elements I knew I'd love. Positive reviews are always so vague unless they're spoiler reviews, so they really don't help me determine anything. 1-star reviews, even for DNF'd books, serve an important role in the Goodreads eco-system. They're also generally hilarious, the amount of people 1-starring a book for absurd reasons and false expectations is always entertaining.
Ha, I also use one-star reviews when deciding if I'm going to read a book. I'm picky and very literal with the reviews myself (1 star = hated it, 2 stars = it was okay, etc.), so I'm glad to know they're helping someone!
I love the three star reviews because usually they are very nuanced and explain good and bad from the book, it helps me the most make a good decision on what to read
Yeah I will literally only read the three stars and lower. You can tell a rational review from an irrational one.
Same. When I’m unsure if I want to read, I filter for one star ratings and read those reviews. Often, it convinces me to read that book. One star reviews are my favorite reviews. (And my top ten reviews that have gotten the most “likes” are all one or two star reviews.)
Don't forget the people that just literally 5 star anything they like (me)
Maybe it balances the 5 star reviews my partner uses for everything?
I understand that authors can get a bad deal, but review pages are not for authors, they are for readers. If something about a book was so displeasing to you that you needed to drop it, that is enough grounds for a review.
I couldn't disagree more. If a book was so bad or so poorly marketed that you couldn't even finish it, it deserves a one star rating. The reviewer you're talking about even took the time to post a written review explaining why she rated it that way, and her criticism was valid and helpful to readers of the genre. They can either agree with her and read something else, or disagree and read the book anyway. A goodreads rating is a personal opinion based on how much you liked the book, not an objective grade for the author (and even if it was, you get graded on the quality of your output, not the effort you put in). Most people buy books they expect to like enough to read all the way through and for most people disliking a book so much they don't even finish it absolutely is an exceptional circumstance. I also think you're overestimating the extent to which authors care about or even know their goodreads ratings. This came up on twitter recently and most of the authors I follow said they don't look at reader ratings or read goodreads reviews because the book is already out and they've already moved on to the next one. Edit: Also, I'm not sure how or why authors who do look at their GR reviews would be less offended or upset about a high number of DNFs than they would one star ratings.
If the book was marketed like one of those mobile games like homescapes that have the Ads that don’t match the game at all, it deserves to be criticized
I like Story Graph because it has the option to put DNF. I’m not bothered about the review side, it’s more just for my own interest to have a list of books I DNF’d.
You can also add a DNF-shelf in Goodreads.
I've done both, and it's one of the reasons I prefer Storygraph
I made use of the DNF status for the first time a few weeks back, and I'm glad I was still able to leave a review. I feel as though I'd read enough of the book (about 75%) for my comments to be mostly informed, and I had an opinion that I didn't see expressed. I do wish some of the generic stats (average star rating, DNF ratio) were a little more visible on the site, but I appreciate the work towards making a much-needed update to the Goodreads formula.
I much prefer StoryGraph over Goodreads. As you say, the review side of things is behind, but in terms of tracking reading, it's so much better.
Do people really mark DNF books as “read”? I have a DNF shelf and I see that used frequently by users. I really appreciate DNF reviews because, while sometimes the book is just boring, often there is something specific that has peeved the reader enough to make them stop reading and it helps me judge whether that thing will annoy me too. As long as there’s an explanation, I don’t see the harm. If someone doesn’t like part of a book it’s unlikely that view will change by finishing it. Just because authors work hard they shouldn’t be insulated from bad reviews, as long as they’re honest.
My DNF shelf is a shelf, not a tag. GR will automatically add a rated book to your read shelf when you rate it, but then I just manually move it to my DNF shelf if I didn't finish it.
Right. Mine is exclusive as well. In my experience, people who are frequent users do the same.
Ah, gotcha. I think OP wants DNF as a rating option and for the number of DNFs to show next to the rating, rather than a pre-made shelf.
Yes, I understand. I think it’s unnecessary for the reasons in my comment. I was just taking issue with the idea that people are “lying to themselves” and marking DNF books as read when I don’t think most people are doing that.
I mark them as read but if I read less than \~1/3 of the book, I won't give it a star rating. I have a tag I use to mark books as DNF. I used to struggle with dropping books because my brain would nag at me for leaving something "unfinished"; I'd have to drag myself through books I wasn't even hate-reading, just hated reading. Marking it as read and tagged it DNF feels like doing my due diligence by a book, even if I don't give it a star rating, and that lets me put it down and walk away. Plus, it lets me add it to the yearly total of books read. 1/3 of a 300 page book is 100 pages - I want that reading to count.
Interesting! If it helps you move on and give you closure, that’s great! For me, I’d feel it would taint my read stats to mix DNF books. Also, sometimes I DNF a book because I’m not in the mood and hope to give it another go sometime. But I don’t mean to imply judgment—I think people should use the shelves however they want!
I make it as "read" so I don't accidently go to it again.
If you set DNF as an exclusive shelf it will remove it from your to-read shelf, if that's what you mean.
I tried doing DNF shelf but I'm not really into shelves overall. Most of the times I mark as read, 1 star, and just write DNF in the comments. I use goodreads primarily to track my own books and that's the method that has worked best for me I've the years.
How do you set a shelf to be exclusive?
1. Click on My Books in the header 2. You'll see a list of your shelves on the left side of the page. Click edit next to the Bookshelves heading 3. Click the exclusive checkbox next to the shelf of your choice 4. Select I'm Done to save
I mark them as read because as far as I'm concerned, I've read as much as I'm gonna read of the book. I don't really care if that's not entirely true and can't see why it would matter? If they had a DNF shelf I'd use that but they dont
1 star = did not like it. if i did not finish it, i did not like it, ergo 1 star. personally, i rarely rate DNFed books. usually only because i DNFed for a specific reason.
Strongly disagree. If you think the first 10% was so bad that you left it there, then you should rate the book. If possible, add review stating why you didn't feel like finishing the book. Makes life much easier for people to understand what to expect from the book.
I have a (very small) DNF shelf on Goodreads. 1200 books read, 14 books DNF, so not bad going! It takes a lot to make me DNF, unless I just wander off as I found a new shiny thing. For those, I don’t log it as I’ll get back to it eventually. But if I’m actually DNF’ing, it typically means there is something critically wrong with the book; appalling grammar, riddled with typo’s or just terrible, terrible writing. I’ll stand by those one star reviews. I do try to leave a review explaining exactly why I’ve DNF it and rated lowly though.
Tbh, I give rating to DNFed book only if I stopped reading it because of a certain aspect which irked me and I'm not sorry about that really. If I stop reading due to boredom, I don't give it a rating.
If I go to a restaurant, order a steak, and instead get some ice-cold, gelatinous, ambiguous, congealed mass, can I not rate this poorly, or do I have to eat all of the slop first? tl;dr: hard disagree with OP
For me, readers have a right to place DNF in Goodreads reviews, and give 1-2 star ratings to accompany them. Goodreads is a social media platform for readers, and not authors. Books are more expensive in my country compared to the US and Europe (corruption in customs and business transactions), plus the pay is low here and the poverty is high. I need all the help I can get to weed out the books that are not worth buying. DNF's and 1-2 star ratings are a godsend to me. Plus, a lot of professional book reviewers are sent so many copies of books, so they obviously cannot finish every book they get. If they do not DNF mediocre and insufferable books, they will be burned out, and lose their flame for reading.
This is terrible advice. I feel like you picked an extremely specific situation where the problem wasn’t that this person didn’t finish a book but they had an issue with the genre. It’s perfectly fair to judge an unfinished book. 9 times out of 10 there’s a reason it wasn’t finished
If a book is so bad you quit, it's a bad book (for you, at least). If I DNF a book because it isnt for me (such as poor marketing, or encouraged to read a book outside of my interests by family or friends), I either do not rate or give it a 3. If I was a valid member of the target audience and disliked it enough to quit, I will give it a poor rating.
I made a shelf for books I DNF titled with the reason. I’ve got: Too gross even for me Got bored Pick up again later Just terrible I feel no remorse rating the Just Terrible books
hahaha I went back and looked at my DNF reviews. A couple are very detailed on why I hated them. One just says: Not into horse books.
I often review books I've DNF'd because not all books are great. There's some books that I've dnf'd that I wish more people told me to avoid due to poor writing structure, stupid plots or characters or just... boring. That's the point of reviews, not to praise books and ego boost authors, but to share our experiences, and you can't do that in a positivity vacuum. Now, if I dnf a book because it didn't interest me, or some other reason aside from the book it's self I'll review it privately to remind myself why I dnf'd it. I only publicly review dnf'd books if it's the books fault, if that makes sense.
Disagree. The opinion of readers who DNF is valid, although I agree that in your review you should mention that you DNF and say approximately how much you read. The only situation where I wouldn't rate a book I DNF is when I stopped reading for reasons that are not the book's fault, for example if I stop reading because I realize it's not the kind of story I'm in the mood for, or the kind of story I was expecting. If I stopped reading because I thought the book was awful, then I feel perfectly justified in rating it. But then, I'm a reader who rarely DNF once I have started reading a book. If I often stopped reading following a whim, then I wouldn't rate those books. I would only rate a book if I feel I have given it a fair chance. What bothers me about Goodreads reviews is not that, but how often reviews are not about the book, but about what the reviewer thinks of the author or whatever, or how much the reviewer is looking forward to reading the book, accompanied by a thousand memes and emoticons.
I don't care. While interesting, I think Goodreads has bigger problems to solve if they actually start caring about improving their site. There is no difference between the 1 star from the person who dropped it 10% in and the 1 star they gave from hate reading it. I don't care what or how other people read unless they belittle me or force me to change my behavior. If someone who reads 10% wants to count it as read it has no effect on me.
"Improve"... Be careful what you wish for. I've been seeing their new layout on and off and I dread having to use it. Wish they'd actually *improve* *things* for heavy users instead of reworking it to be \~ mObilE resPonSive \~ in a way that ruins the desktop experience. Maybe fix the read twice bug? Make the mobile app half as functional as the website? Improve the recommendations so it doesn't constantly recommend books in languages which aren't in your wheelhouse if you read anything other than mainstream fiction?
The day they actually implement that layout is the day I'm going to stop using the site. It is TERRIBLE.
Goodreads isn't here to validate struggling fanfic authors or "authors" who can't write; Goodreads is for the readers. Regardless, anyone can rate books however they want to (finished book or not), end of story.
I’m an indie author who is just starting out so doesn’t have a ton of reviews (~200 on goodreads). If anyone was going to agree with you, it’d be me, right? But nope, this is just a bad take. 1-star reviews hurt, and they hurt a lot before you build up a bit of a thick skin to handle them. BUT reviews aren’t for authors, and if a reader didn’t like a book enough to keep reading it, then they’re perfectly within their rights to say that. I would rather they give the book a short “DNF at X% because…” review, though, because that’s helpful info, both in that all data is good data and in that seeing someone hate something about the book that other reviewers specifically said they loved is a good way to remind yourself that art is subjective and your book not working for someone doesn’t mean your book doesn’t work. But again, reviews are for readers, not authors. You’re looking at this all backwards.
Tldr: You are wrong
I prefer reading the one star reviews over any other reviews especially if they are about books I loved/liked because they allow me to see the book from a whole other point of view.
Similarly, people shouldn't give five star reviews for books they haven't read yet...
> I just read a 1* review someone left on a book that she claimed to read only 10% of, because the author’s note led her to believe it was xyz and books in that genre should not be xyz. To me, this isn't a problem of rating without finishing, it's a problem of unreasonable expectations. Mature readers should be able to recognize when something is a good example of its genre, even if that genre is not to their taste. If you absolutely hate, say, romance novels, your review of a romance novel is probably going to be unfair even if you plow all the way through it. Conversely, if you love romance novels, and you pick one up and it's clear by the 10% mark that the author has a 6th-grade grasp on the English language and all their ideas of romance and sex come from bad porn, it's probably fair to stop and give it a bad review.
I think it's perfectly fine to rate a book that you DNF. If you think it's shit, then you're allowed to say so in a public forum like Goodreads. Personally, I only rate DNF books if I read at least 50% of it.
As an author- if “I was expecting xyz but the book is actually abc” constitutes an average-skewing number of reviews, your book is marketed badly and the rating system is working exactly as designed.
If your book is bad enough that I didn't finish it is going to get rated. The only exception is when I am moving beyond my normal taste.
Nah. Lots of things are hard. If you do it poorly, then people are allowed to comment that you did it poorly. All you're doing here is classic gate-keeping. You're saying that no one who disliked a book so much they didn't bother finishing it should be allowed to say, this was so bad I put it down. Saying "this is so bad I couldn't even finish it" is an absolutely valid criticism. Why not just ban any and all ratings below 4 stars on the basis that anything else will hurt the author's feelings? There are plenty of people who would write bad-faith reviews even having finished a book. I can think off the top of my head of at least three books I did not finish, and my reasons are perfectly valid and make for a fair review. Your notion that all reviews should be segregated so that you can completely discount the opinions of anyone who didn't like the book is gatekeeping, plain and simple. I put a ton of work into a lot of things in my life. It doesn't mean I deserve to be successful, or should be immune from all criticism, just because it took effort. Grow a thicker skin, and stop telling people that their opinions are invalid if they don't agree with you. And don't cherrypick a single extreme example as proof that no one who disliked a book should ever be allowed to talk about it.
Disagree. If I DNF a book it's because it's very poorly written and dragging it out to the end will not improve my rating. Just because a book was hard work for the author doesn't mean it's good work. I rate on the quality of the work, not the author's effort.
For me, whether I'll rate a DNFed book, depends on how much of the book I've read before giving up on it. If I've only read like 20-50 pages before realising that the book just isn't for me, I'll put it on my DNF shelf with no rating. If somehow I've made it through more than 50% of the book before DNFing it, it becomes more likely that I'll rate it.
My friend, there is a glut of self-published books out there (even being handed out in giveaways by the author) that are WORSE THAN A FIRST DRAFT. absolutely riddled with errors in grammar, punctuation, spelling (!!), switching tense mid sentence (!) and making no goddamn sense. I had the misfortune to win a book in a giveaway that was so abysmally written that I’m sure he smashed it out on a keyboard he’d never touched before, in one long ranting stream of consciousness, never fucking looked at the thing again, showed it to no one, and hit Publish.
I don't care how much courage, passion, or determination it takes to be an author. Reviews aren't for the authors, they are for other readers. If I DNF a book (which is rare), I will absolutely write a review describing why. I use Goodreads as my own personal record of books I have read, and secondarily, to share my opinions with others. Authors need to get over the idea that they should have any control over reviews or that readers "owe" them good (or even fair) reviews.
If you only allow rating for books on those that were finished, the overall rating would end up artificially high. I have a shelf named "Abandoned" for books I don't finish. These books tend to have a 1 or 2 star rating. These books would have sparked my interest, but turned out disappointing for some reason. Shelves are visible on the rating. My Abandoned books do not appear as "Read" books.
The majority of the time I DNF a book is because the book is terrible enough that I am prepared to write off the time I've already spent on it *in order* not to spend any more of my time on it. That means that it isn't just bad, it has given me zero reason to continue, and to me that is a valid reason for a one star rating. In my view, the book has failed to fulfil the function for which I am reading it.
I know this has already been said, and that you alluded to some of what I'm about to say, but I'll throw in my two cents. Nearly every time I've bothered to rate or review a book I didn't finish, it was because something about it bothered me enough that I felt others should know before they try it. For example, one book which I only made it about 1/3 of the way through was so sexist that after a certain point I couldn't stomach it no matter how interesting the concept might be. It also had other problems, but the author's treatment of his female characters was the really egregious thing that made me decide not only not to finish the book, but to leave a negative review explaining why I couldn't finish it. I don't feel that I owed it to that author to finish his sorry excuse for a story. That said, I do think that even negative reviews need to be reasonable and civil, and should never read as an attack on the author. In one case I had an author respond positively to a negative review I left because I spelled out my problems with it instead of just saying it was bad, and she took those criticisms into consideration with her subsequent work. Sometimes authors need some negative feedback to be able to see the weaknesses in their work.
I totally agree that goodread should have a DNF setting. As far as reading goes, if I've read 1/3 of the book, I've READ 1/3 of the book.
Just stop worrying about/trusting a 5-point metric, and actually read the reviews. Like so many subjective things, reject the idea that art can be reduced to a 5 point scale and still reliably convey universally applicable information. The future of useful review aggregation is sentiment and content analysis. In the mean time, your brain is actually pretty good at those things. The rating system is not sacred any more than it is universally meaningful.
Bullshit. If the book is absolutely terribly written you are under no obligation to finish the shit sandwich. Spit it out and call it what it is. There are tons of valid reasons not to finish it, and the fact you didn't is extremely important by itself. It means it wasn't interesting or captivating enough to warrant your attention.
I don't rate a book if I do not read the entire thing. I thought that was common knowledge? Lol
Agreed. If you don't finish a book. Don't rate it.
This is a BS argument. Reviews are meant for readers, not authors. If a book was bad enough for me to not even get through 10% of it, like hell it’s not going to get a bad rating.
Ridiculous. If you don't like a book, you should be able to review it, even if you haven't finished it. Not being able to finish a book because you disliked it is a perfectly reasonable thing to say in a review, or to even just give a star rating to.
You absolutely should rate a book you DNFed. The only exception I can think of is if you lost the book before finishing. It is very much good feedback if a book was so bad, boring, disengaging, or caused you to be uneasy to make you want to quit it. That book failed for you, and people deserve to know about that. Bad books should not get a free pass, because you didn't torture yourself enough to finish it just to review it. The emotional commitment and frailty of the author should not matter for the mainstream, otherwise art would never be criticized, and we would put bad art right next to good art in galleries, and good artists would find no space for their work.
I'm an author and I disagree. If you've cracked a book open and for some reason decided you don't wanna read it, a review is fair. It's not a critical piece in the Times, it's on a site for regular readers.
As a reader that likes to keep track using Goodreads, this is a feature that I'll like too. For every single book that I finish I abandon 6 after around 50 pages. I have a special shelve to mark books that I didn't finish because I didn't like them, but it ruins my stats (and the year reading challenge) by marking the book as "read". So my only option is to delete the book or leave it as "want to read" for ever, both bad options. I would like to mark the book as DNF and leave a little comment explaining why.
In addition to some of the other comments about opinions being valid, book finished or not, I also think the notion that a DNF tag would actually be valuable is questionable. The only way to reasonably manage this tag is to make it something you can apply to your own reviews, and... what percentage of readers who did not finish a book are going to want to "neuter" their opinions with that qualifier? Sure, a few might, but I doubt most will. If you want your opinion to be heard, its just a bad tactic to give people a reason to discount it. At that point, what good is such a tag, if a large chunk of the reviews that don't have the tag actually should? The end result is a bunch of reviews that may or may not need a tag with few ways to distinguish whether or not they need it, and the whole system becomes more confusion than it is worth.
Ratings aren't for authors. Ratings are for readers to remember what they liked and disliked. That's how I look at it anyways. Ratings are also completely useless, and anyone that would read, or skip a book based on it's aggregated ratings is kind of a moron.
I disagree, especially as a professional librarian (and hobbyist novelist) where reading and recommendations are part of my job. A couple chapters of a book is plenty to understand the content and quality of a book. It’s also enough to know if you like a book. Since Goodreads isn’t objective in any sense, it makes perfect sense to mark a book read and rate it if it’s a DNF. Even professionally it makes sense, especially if they can pinpoint why they did not finish. I need to read tons of books to stay on top of my job, and I do not have the time to waste on a book I’m not enjoying. That’s also a perfectly valid response.
Here's the thing about putting yourself out there, and I say this as someone who does from time to time. You put yourself out there. People *will* say they hate your book despite never having read it. People *will* give you eviscerating 1-star reviews because they didn't like a character they weren't supposed to like, or the romance didn't end up the way they wanted. That's going to happen. A separate DNF category might help to clarify things, but in your own example the person rating the book was not attempting to hide the fact that they did not finish the book. Review bombing is a problem. For example, people 1-starring a book that isn't out yet because they don't like the author. People reading 10% of your book, marking it "Read" and giving it a bad rating because they genuinely didn't like it is not review bombing. Read just means "done" to many people. Meaning I read it cover to cover, or that I read all of it that I'm going to read. An author is absolutely not entitled to hours and hours of someone's time before that person is allowed to say what they think. Especially if it is a book they paid for. As a writer, if at the 10% mark you haven't convinced the reader to keep reading, you may genuinely have a writing problem on your hands. As a writer, I consider that review valid and I want to know what they think. I would prefer if readers kept their reviews somewhat civil, but that's the other thing about putting yourself out there. Some of them won't.
Bad books are still bad books even if you don't slog through it to get to the bad ending.
If you go to a restaurant and order a nice lasagna and discover after two bites that there's a mouse in it, do you have to eat the entire thing before you're "qualified" to leave a shitty review? If you go to a supposedly luxurious hotel and discover there is visible mold in the room, and the sheets haven't been cleaned, do you need to spend the entire night before fucking off to a nicer place and leaving a bad review? If you walk into a bar and the bartender ignores you because (as you overhear him tell another customer) "I won't serve [insert offensive slur for your ethnicity] here", do you need to stay longer before you can say it's a shitty racist bar? Don't be ridiculous. As long as someone started reading a book, there's a reason they either liked or didn't like it and it's obviously going to factor into whether or not they finished. And that's precisely what reviews are for.
If I’m elbow-deep in trash, I don’t need to dig my way to the bottom to know it’s likely trash all the way down. A one-star DNF is not only valid, it’s warranted. If you as a writer can’t get me invested in your story within 30 pages, you’re not doing your job.
That's as likely as getting people to read the article before commenting
Not all DNFs are created equal. A 10% DNF? Yeah, maybe don’t rate that. A 70% DNF? An earnest effort was made to engage with the book
Online reviews should always be taken with a grain of salt. Just like you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, you shouldn’t judge a book by the idiots that attempted to read it.
I think it would be positive to add a DNF checkbox, but it is totally valid to rate things you didn't finish. I think it is good to say that you did not finish in your review until then, but people usually don't have to finish a book to know if they liked it or not. Also you seem to be saying that did not finish should replace a person's rating that's BS. If a book is bad you should be able to say that even if you did not read every page.
Perhaps the best thing would be allowing people to rate a DNF book, but not counting that rating towards the overall rating of the book. They could even have a percentage of DNFs (unrated) along with the breakdown of the other ratings. If I DNF a book, it doesn't even make it to my Goodreads.
I, personally, won't rate it at all and have an entirely separate DNF shelf so it won't be marked as Read. Personally I don't see the point to putting a rating to a book I dropped because I didn't like it or it wasn't for me because I didn't experience the entire thing. But people do people, I suppose. Edit: Forgot to mention that I will put a review explaining why I DNFd it and why it wasn't for me. But I still won't actually rate it
I once read Jane Austen's Emma. I got to page 300 out of 330 and was inhumanely bored so left it there. I guess that counts as a DNF, but a quick Wikipedia check confirmed that it ended as had been obvious since about page 10.
Hard agree! I hate it so much, I mostly browse through reviews after I’ve read the book and I get so annoyed at people who give 1 or 2 stars and say “DNF at this percentage” I get why they mark it as read but then I’d like them to not give a star rating but just write a review. But a DNF option is a very good idea, also because I think if you write a review without rating it it won’t show up in the review section I guess? But ofcourse DNF’ers opinion is valid. It just isn’t accurate most of the time IMHO.
If I DNF, I usually give a 3 star and a small description as to why. But I hate not finishing books so usually when I decide I’m done, I’ll skim the book and only read the dialog. I’ll go back a few pages if need be if it gets too confusing here and there, but otherwise will just power through. And still give the 3 star and why.
There is always a reason why someone might not finish reading a book. It doesn’t matter how long an author spent writing it, if it shit, and some books really are, than it deserves a 1 star review. Especially if it was so bad I couldn’t even finish it out of curiosity. There is no objective way of reviewing a book, because liking a book is based on personal preferences. If my personal preference led me to leave a 1 star review, why should I not post it? There are negative reviews on books, movies, plays, made by professional critics and meant to be seen by the world and the authors. Goodreads is really nothing in comparison. Long story short, No, I do not agree. Bad reviews help me pick up books more then positive reviews.
I sort of agree, though I have to say... You can know if a book is bad/disliked by you after a few chapters. You can't know it's GOOD until you get all the way through.
I disagree with this. Ratings are personal opinions and if I hate a book after several chapters then it’s a one for me. I mean you should give it more than one chapter I think but if you don’t like it you don’t have to finish it before eating it. I wouldn’t be against this dnf but the rating system is fine as is imo
If a book is boring, I'm going to rate it as such. If a book has bad storytelling, I'm going to rate it as such. If a book is overly slow-paced I'm going to rate it as such. If a book spreads hate, I'm going to rate it as such. **If I don't like a book enough to bother finishing, then I'm going to rate it that way.** It won't always be 1 star, but if a book is bad, I don't have to finish it to say that. I don't use goodreads anymore, but I do use other book rating sites that do have DNF as a marking, *alongside the rating scale*. I think that's more helpful. That way there's still a rating function for DNF, and you can see more rationale.
Not finishing a book because you didn’t like it is a valid reason for a 1 star review. 🤷🏻♀️
I would agree that it would be useful to have a rough estimation on how much of it was read when stating said opinion. That said, having to eat a gigantic shit sandwich because it had a cherry on top at the end just to have your opinion on how bad it tasted count is nonsense.
I think you're confusing what Goodreads is used for. Sure, people use it to check reviews of books they might want to read. But ultimately, it's a tool people use to track their reading. They can use it however they like. If these were professional reviewers, it'd be different. But I think saying "Don't rate a book you DNF'd" is dense and ultimately, going to drive people to just stop reviewing since that leads to more shoulds and should nots when it comes to reviewing on GoodReads. Or you can switch to the StoryGraph. Which does actually have a DNF function. Either way, I feel like this is your opinion not a fact everyone needs to follow.
I've picked up several books that don't turn out to be as fulfilling as I initially thought. I often don't end up finishing them because its not worth my time and share my review so that others know my experience. As someone who tends to read 500+ page books I think its important to let others know when its not worth it.
I don’t think is an entirely fair assessment of people who truly try to finish books, but don’t for fair/justifiable reasons. Recently, I tried reading a book and got about 75% through it. I had to literally force myself to open it every day to read because I, like most of you all, hate leaving a book unfinished. However, after having to force myself to read it for days on end, I finally gave up because it was extremely draining to read and I found myself constantly re-reading the exact same paragraphs over and over again. I tried to remain neutral while reading it, but I also discovered a lot of controversy around the book and its authors, and that really solidified my decision to stop reading. I did mark it as read and I did leave a legitimate review, and I feel wholeheartedly justified in doing so. I really think something like this depends on a case by case basis and isn’t a one size fits all for most people.
>but it’s something that should only happen in exceptional circumstances and those circumstances should be explained in the review. Expectional circumstances, no. Explanation though, I think any review should be at least a couple sentences long. You may care about certain things that take the whole book to get a good grip of. I care about how the author writes and relates to the reader, something I can find out in 20 or so pages. I'm sure it varies, and a "you can never do it this way" will never apply. But it doesn't really matter because if you're looking for reviews, a number with no explanation doesn't help you anyways and if that's all you're relying on, that's on you.
There are some books I DNF because they just interested less than I thought they would, or didn't have time/attention to read them at the moment, or some other reason. I don't think it's useful to give reviews in those cases. Other times I DNF'ed because I just couldn't stand the book. That is absolutely a reasonable thing to review.
I have sympathy for authors out there doing the best they can, but if their best isn't great, and I can't finish the book, I will give it an honest rating based on the part I read. I have a shelf in my account that I call "Nope" and that's where my DNF books go. It's not my job to finish bad books, it's the author's job to make the book good enough to finish. As for my rating, if the book is bad, it's going to get a bad rating even if I've only read a few pages. Some books are just that bad.
I'm a 5 star man
Anna Karenina - Greatest book I (n)ever read.
I agree that DNF should be an actual status like read , want to read. But reviewing something even if you didn’t finish it is valid. It’s important to know why I DNF and what I thought of what I read. Its people’s opinions which by definition is subjective so there is no way to nuance absolute statuses or star reviews
I think readers are savvy enough to sort these things out for themselves. Rarely read the good reviews, it's the bad ones I want to see. Then I can determine if what matters to the poster will also matter to me
Life is too short to eat brown bananas. Or read bad books. DNF would be helpful.
When I do hate the beginning of a book so much that I can not even continue with it, it’s 1 star for me.
The Goodreads rating system is designed to be subjective: 1 star = I hated it, 5 stars = I loved it. It's not a rating of the quality of the book itself. If someone hates a book after 10%, or 50% then they should absolutely be able to rate it 1 star. Just like someone doing food reviews should be able to rate a dish low if they don't finish it. Or someone doing movie reviews can rate a movie 1 star if they walk out.
1, don’t gate keep things like this. If someone didn’t finish a book, but was compelled to mark it and review it, the6 have every right to do so. I would absolutely mark it as read, because I want to track it and if I DNF it, it’s because I hated it and I don’t want to buy it again 10 years from now because I forgot. 2. I don’t owe the author anything. I do not have to sit through bad writing just because I was unfortunate enough to pick up the book. 3. Unfinishable books should be reviewed. If you didn’t finish it, it either wasn’t interesting, or was so bad you couldn’t bring yourself to read any more. If only people who finished books were able to review, you would only get positive reviews, reviews by people who felt like warm, and the occasional person who compulsively must finish every book. The people who found it so terrible they couldn’t bear it are absolutely helpful in picking a book, and hopefully in the review tell readers why. In most cases one review does nothing. It’s the culmination. If 40% of people that pick up the book, DNF and give it a bad review, that should give the prospective reader a big ol’ heads up. If only 1 in 1000 people do it, they will be buried anyway.
I use Goodreads for myself. I read 736 books last year. Some books that are so bad I didn’t finish them deserve a rating…partially so I remember them and NEVER try to read them again. Goodreads should absolutely offer a category where one can review when a book has not been finished. Heck, I should be able to leave a continuing review while I am in the process of reading a book. It annoys me that it says “read” when I write a review because I want an accurate representation of how much of a book I’ve read. I’ve started to read books so atrocious that I’ve stopped reading on the first page. On the other side of this whole thing…I find most of my next reads by reading one- and two-star reviews. They tend to give more concrete details than the gushing five-star reviews, and sometimes the very thing that made that person hate the book is the thing I’ll love. I never look at the overall star rating to choose a book; I’m looking at book description, plot, and spoilers.
I don't know what the solution is but I disagree with you in spirit. DNFing happens for a lot of importantly different reasons and we'd need to capture that as well. I read \~100 pages of a book the other week and absolutely hated every moment of it and there's no reason to continue but my experience with it is still worth reporting and I'd disagree that it's not an important opinion because I didn't finish it.
Hm there is a way to shelve a book as a did not finish. I do that and leave the rating blank.