Alli the Book Giraffe

Hello readers! It’s time for Let’s Talk Bookish. You may have noticed I didn’t post a tag yesterday. I was unexpectedly summoned and then picked for jury duty.

Two weeks ago, I was summoned for jury duty, but it got canceled. It did say at the bottom of my paper that I could be called again in the same month if it was canceled, which I was.

I had never been called for jury duty in my life, so I didn’t expect to be picked. I also had no idea that once you’re picked, it starts then and there. So, that took up both all of Tuesday and Wednesday.

Has anyone here ever served jury duty? I can’t believe that I’ve never been summoned before, but also that I was picked my very first time ever being summoned.

I honestly did not want to do it when I was there, but I’m also now glad that I have the experience. It was a drug-related case. It would’ve been much harder if it were murder or something. But I am happy with how everything turned out.

Check out my Let’s Talk Bookish Masterlist for every post I’ve done.

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originated by Eternity Books and is currently hosted by Book Nook Bits and Dinipandareads. The accompanying thumbnail was also designed by Book Nook Bits. Each Friday, bloggers craft posts where they engage in discussions centered around the designated topic for the week.

Prompts: This topic is inspired by Krysta @ Pages Unbound, who posted about it earlier this year. How do you read star ratings from other bloggers/readers? Do you consider star ratings seen on a book blog, Bookstagram, or BookTok differently from ratings on sites like Goodreads? How much does a star rating affect your decision to purchase/borrow/read a book, and does it depend on who/where the star rating comes from?

I did a post called How I Rate Books about 6 months ago, if you are interested in that.

I personally try to find a post somewhere where the blogger has said how they rate books. I used to have it on my Goodreads, but now I have a post for it. This really helps me understand their perspective.

Everyone seems to have a different rating system in their head, which is okay. Ratings are subjective. Some people save 5 stars for only their favorite books of all time. Some people don’t like to give a book lower than 3 stars. Everyone really is different.

If they don’t have a breakdown of their ratings somewhere I can find, I just look at what they said over the star rating.

I believe looking past a star rating is so important. Looking at the rating can be very helpful if you’re just curious about a snapshot of what someone thinks. But they can give a book four stars, but still have a problem with it.

Also, because all of us are so different and have different preferences, it’s important to look at why they are giving that rating. Maybe I look at a rating, and the person writing the review loves a trope or element that I really don’t.

For me, a person’s rating is affected by who they are. I really don’t read or watch anybody’s content based on whether or not we have similar reading tastes, but I will take the recommendations into consideration based on their reading taste versus mine.

A really good example of this is a booktuber called Books and Lala. I’ve watched her content for many years now. I really like how much she analyzes books. However, she loves books that I tend to absolutely hate. She loves open endings, she loves weird books without explanation, she loves nonsensical things. I really don’t. If she loves a book, I know I probably won’t like it.

However that doesn’t make it unvaluable to me. I read a lot of reviews on here, on Goodreads, and watch them on TikTok and YouTube. I like seeing different perspectives because all of us are different and see different things.

If I’m being 100% honest, though, I don’t typically look at reviews outside of Goodreads before I’ve read a book. I prefer to look at reviews after I’ve read a book. Especially if it’s a book that I have a lot of different feelings about.

I also just find 2-star reviews the most helpful. I will sometimes seek out 2-star reviews on Goodreads to generally see what problems people had with the book. Sometimes it’ll be something I don’t care about, so I’ll read it anyhow.

In conclusion, I try my best to look at what the review says over the rating itself. This is because ratings are so different, and because we are all different in taste, they can still mean different things.

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Happy blogging and bookish adventures! 📚🦒✨

This post was created by Allison Wolfe for www.allithebookgiraffe.com and is not permitted to be posted anywhere else.

Where to find me: https://linktr.ee/Allithebookgiraffe

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