Okay, fair enough! Just checking because when I looked the books up, two of them start out by referring to a dying main character. Leaving Time sounds like more of a mystery, but since the only book I’ve read by Picoult is My Sister’s Keeper, I wouldn’t have been surprised if that one wound up being about dying, too.
Yes, I was just thinking to myself as I read your post how different each of the three books sounded!
I kind of agree, but in practice I end up assigning ratings that are sort of analogous to letter grades, from *****=A to *=F. (Although I give very few one-star ratings, because if a book’s that bad, I’ll usually give up on it long before the end, in which case I don’t think it’s fair to rate it at all.)
Good to know. I liked his Bartimaeus trilogy and have had the first Lockwood book on my Kindle for awhile now, waiting for me to get around to it.
Anyway, here are my three—actually I’m going to cheat and list my most recent four, so as to get at least one fiction title in there:
The Road to Character by David Brooks
Reviving Old Scratch: Demons and the Devil for Doubters and the Disenchanted by Richard Beck
American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 by H.W. Brands (A good concise history of the USA in recent years, many of which I’ve lived through but hadn’t read about as history, since the history classes I had in school and books I’ve read didn’t get that far.)
The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold (One of the best fantasies I’ve read recently, well plotted and charactered.)
It’s a wonderful book. I liked the follow up even more, but I think I’m unusual in that (though I think it’s considered good by most).
Oh, I’ve read American Dreams! I remember I discovered it because someone on the Dope recommended it in a thread asking for good nonfiction book recommendations. Just checked to see what I rated the book, since I read it a while ago, and I gave it 4 stars.
Regarding the Goodreads rating system, I like their system just fine, although I’ve found that I use it differently than most people. I think a lot of people like to rate almost all books in the 3 star and 4 star range, with 5 stars reserved for the truly outstanding books and 2 and 1 stars reserved for the hellacious. I go by exactly what the rating says: 5 stars if I loved it, 4 stars if I really liked it, 3 stars if I liked it, 2 stars if it was ok, and 1 star if I didn’t like it. I am quick to DNF books that don’t capture my interest, and fine with marking them as 1 stars, since I plainly didn’t like them well enough to keep reading. 2 stars are typically for books where I skimmed chunks of it to get to the end: I liked it well enough to finish it, but not well enough to enjoy the whole experience of reading. And since I do love books, I’m not as stingy with 5 stars as some people. Though I will add that I rate books by how much I like them, and not by how “good” they actually are (i.e., not by how much literary merit I think they have).
Looking at my stats so far this year, I have rated six books 5 stars, sixteen books 4 stars, seventeen books 3 stars, eight books 2 stars, and seven books 1 star. I guess I’m a little more clustered around the 3 and 4 star mark than I thought I was!
I’ve read both of those. The first is very good; the second is excellent IMHO - in fact, it’s my all-time favorite sf book.
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose
Miracle Ball by Brian Biegel , his search for the Bobby Thomson HR ball from 1951
I’ll try your letter-grade system, Thudlow! I hope you like the Lockwood books.
Working my way through the Hugo nominees & liking:
Summer in Orcus - T. Kingfisher
Raven Stratagem - Yoon Ha Lee
Provenance - Ann Leckie
I don’t use rating systems and I can’t imagine myself ever saying “I absolutely loved this book,” but here are three books I’ve read in the past few years I thought were pretty good that I hadn’t read before:
Flora Segunda by Ysabeau S. Wilce
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Every Day by David Levithan
and here’s one that I thought was pretty good that I had read before:
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
I’m reviewing Goodreads and I think I was feeling more generous on the last few “5 star” books so I did some culling and here are the winners:
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman- this was deliciously awkward, didn’t care that much for the backstory/tragedy but I really liked Eleanor.
Saxon Stories #10 - The Flame Bearer by Bernard Cornwell- I never get tired of Uhtred.
Honorable Mention: American Gods by Neil Gaiman - this is a five star that I liked more than I expected to but it’s still not my kind of genre so it’s hard to say I loved it but it does deserve 5 stars.
Secondhand Times: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich: An accumulation of real-hand accounts from soviet citizens collected from just before the fall of the USSR to the the book’s publishing in the early 2010’s. Loosely themed on people reflecting on the transition, but often drifts to observations on their recent or distant past.
The Seventh Omni Book of Science Fiction edited by Ellen Datlow: Collection of short stories that appeared in Omni magazine. It tickled my love of short stories and being a surprise find at a book sale. Any stories I didn’t like are overshadowed by the ones I did.
The Third Bear by Jeff VanderMeer: Short story collection of an author who wears Weird like a badge of honor. Thankfully, I like oddities, and some of the ones in here have taken up residence in my dreams.
This is one more book that I liked a lot that I read for the first time in the past few years:
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Head On by John Scalzi
Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
Sourdough by Robin Sloan
Omg yes Dendarii Dame, Sourdough is a great book! Have you read … man, I can’t remember the name of it. Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore? It’s by Robin Sloan, too. I adore Sloan’s writing, and unfortunately, I haven’t found another author who’s a bit like him. Have you?
LvBoPeep, I gave Eleanor Oliphant five stars, too! But I gave American Gods 1 star. It was a huge disappointment, because I’ve read seven books by Gaiman and that’s the only one I didn’t like.
This is the first book I’ve read by Robin Sloan. (I picked it up off the “Librarians recommend” shelf at my library.) I’m planing on reading his other books.
One book that reminds me of Sourdough (although the subject is different) and that I highly recommend is Bellwether, by Connie Willis. Have you read that?
I have not. Thanks for the recommendation; I’ve added it to my to-read list!
Dreamland - The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones -Absolutely fascinating, and this is a subject I thought I knew a lot about. It would be my top recommend to anybody.
Since We Fell by Dennis Lehane - a twisty psychological thriller, a little slow starting but once it gained momentum, I couldn’t put it down.
American War by Omar El Akkad -a novel of the second civil war. I can’t even say I liked it - it was dark and bleak and hard to read at times - virtually everyone was broken and unsympathetic- but it was an incredibly powerful novel.
What If is definitely worth it if you have a curious / scientific mindset - I give this as gifts to sciencey / mathy folk I know who don’t know about xkcd yet (mostly older folk and/or immigrants).
For my three (and using a more generous and looser definition of “5 star” that basically means “the toppish three I’ve read in the last quarter”), I’ll go with:
Superforecasting, the Art and Science of Prediction, by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner. A very good book by the guy who showed that most “experts” perform at par with monkeys throwing darts when it comes to predictive ability, who digs into the qualities and practices that people who ACTUALLY predict better than other people engage in. These so-called “superforecasters” are an interesting bunch, and learning about their approach is well worth the read (and if you may be interested in seeing if you are/can be one, they point to resources online where they try to recruit them).
Unmentionable, by Therese Oneill - this was a hilarious romp through the minutiae of what it was like to be a woman in Victorian times compared to today. I was literally laughing out loud several times in this, as the author has great delivery and flow. A fun, quick read.
Behave, by Robert Sapolsky - the biology behind humans at their worst and best - healthy doses of neuroscience, sociology, and more, and interesting enough I checked it out from the Library twice.
That’s awesome, I just referenced Superforecasting in one of my posts last week! (https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21092681&postcount=32) Behave looks fascinating – I’ve added it to my to read list!
I really like Superforecasting too.