My Process of Qualifying Book Reviews
Since altering a bit of my reviews throughout my website, several people have inquired the reasoning behind so many 5/5 ratings. My process for reviewing books here takes several things into consideration:
First and foremost is the intended audience. Many of the books I read are geared to a specific audience (designer, programmer) or skill level (beginner, intermediate, advanced, professional). Though I may consider myself professional in some topics (while intermediate in others), it would be unfair of me to rate a book from my skill level (especially after an author clearly stated otherwise).
Second is context. For instance, I recently had this discussion on a review of Bulletproof AJAX on the Vitamin website by Gareth Rushgrove. His review was a great review of the book, with a rating of 3/5. I questioned why he rated it a 3, yet gave it an excellent review. His response was:
I guess the problem with any scoring is it needs to be relative to something. In this case I’m just being a harsh scorer! The book fully deserves the innevitable 5 star treatment on Amazon for instance. While reviewing a small number of the best recent books on Vitamin so far I’ve been sticking around the middle of the road just to establish a benchmark.
His response makes perfect sense, but also shows a struggle of giving proper credit to a book. He is doing reviews relative to other reviews on the Vitamin website. It seems as though he has effectively changed a 3/5 to be a 5/5 for the sake of other reviews on the website. Again, this is not bad and many take this approach.
When I am reviewing a book, it must be taken into context even when I am comparing it to other books. It would be unfair of me to rate one book a 3/5, simply because I didn’t like it as much as another book that received a 5/5. I can’t expect that someone reading my reviews has read the same books that I have read—which would effectively render my comparison useless. I may point it out—or suggest a path of reading if they chose to read the other books—but this never plays into my final rating of a book.
Finally is publication date. There are some books that have an older publication date but are still quality resources or relevant to certain topics. It would be unfair of me to review a book that was published 5 years ago and give it a poor review because it didn’t meet todays standards. Some books are classics, others are timeless, and still others are books that are recommended by other professionals that I would like to check out. So, I may reference some of the dated materials and caution about new techniques—but this does not play into the final rating that I give to the book.
These are just a few of the things that I take into consideration when I am reviewing a book. I simply won’t change my rating system to avoid giving a 5/5 for a book. I don’t feel that this is unfair, and I hope that people can find quality from my reviews and opinions. Note that there are some other books that I have yet to post reviews on—some of which won’t receive a 5 rating because I felt that there was too much ‘fluff’ and not enough content (even against the above considerations).