I noticed this blog post on Goodreads this morning:

https://www.goodreads.com/blog/show/3202-readers-1-request-half-and-quarter-star-ratings-are-here

You can now rate a book on Goodreads more precisely to your opinion, down to quarter-star increments! I absolutely love this. I’ve written in the recent past about being conflicted while reviewing and rating books. For Goodreads reviews at least, I can now update my standards.

I believe in being generous but genuine, rewarding the effort of writing a book but acknowledging when there are true faults in editing, misleading descriptions or serious story issues. There have been plenty of times when I couldn’t honestly give a book five stars but wished I could rate it higher than four.

Amazon does own Goodreads but their two systems are separate. I have my doubts whether Amazon will ever adopt the Goodreads system because they sell far more than books. For a dedicated book site like Goodreads, however, I think it makes total sense to give readers more precision.

What do you think?