Friday, September 15, 2023

Good Reads Ratings

I still keep track of the books I read on Good Reads. One day I might switch over to the fediverse, BookWyrm, but for now the process of switching seems like more work that I’m excited to put in. Good Reads is also home to several people who I really appreciate and I’m always glad to see what they’ve read and what they’ve rated what they’ve read.

Good Reads is updating its interface and the tool tips that share Good Reads rating system are going away, so I thought I’d briefly share what I’m thinking about when I rate a book.

Ratings on Good Reads are complicated. There’s a five start system and everyone is free to give how ever many stars as they want to anything they read (or haven’t read). I find knowing my friends on Good Reads, I understand a bit about a book depending on how different people rate it.

When you look at reviews, it’s evident that a lot of people are putting a lot of different rules together to determine how they rate books. Slightly in secret however, Good Reads has its own tags for what the stars mean and I’ve adopted and adapted that scale for my own ratings.

I should start by saying that my book ratings are totally subjective, and also that they change over time. I re-read the first two books of The Checquy Files this year and didn’t love them as much as I did before. In writing this post, I looked back at Becky Chambers’ books and was surprized at how few stars I gave them at the time.

Beyond that, though here are the five named star rating levels from Good Reads tool tips and how I think about them.

  • 1 Star - did not like it

    A row of five stars the left most gold and the others greyed out and the tool tip `did not like it`.

    This is a great place to start the stars scale. If I find a book totally unreadable, then I usually don’t finish and don’t give it a rating. This is for the books that weren’t great but had some element that made me keep going. Some of them have writing problems, but for me the books I don’t like tend to have a poorly articulated plot or wild mischaracterization.

    I haven’t given a book 1 Star this year, but the recent ones include The Murder Room and Nemesis and in both cases I think the authors were starting to go into decline. I also have Mr. Churchill’s Secretary here, which mostly did not jive with my understanding of mathematics and codebreaking and civil service during World War II and The Forever Peace which I can’t actually remember reading (or can’t differentiate from The Forever War at minimum).

  • 2 Stars - it was ok

    A row of five stars the two left  gold and the others greyed out and the tool tip `it was ok`

    Even if I don’t like a book, there’s usually something interesting to see in it. Sometimes there’s something specific and large that pushes me out, but often they’re books I just don’t really jive with. If I were to use the Sword and Laser scale, they’re mostly books I have to force myself to read rather than make excuses to read.

    The vast majority of Issac Asimov’s books have fallen in here for me. The foundation world building is always interesting, but having two men whose only distinguishing characteristic is that one of them has a beard argue each argument really doesn’t do it for me. The Oleander Sword is an example of a book not jiving, it’s very well written, but so bleak I struggled to read it.

  • 3 Stars - liked it

    A row of five stars the three left gold and the others greyed out and the tool tip `liked it`

    These are the books I’m happy to read. They were good. I liked them. They may not have made me fall in love with them, but when it was time to read (on the Sword and Laser scale) I was happy to be reading them.

    There are a whole bunch of books that come in here, recently most of the Charles Todd’s Rutladge books and the Illona Andrews Kate Daniels series. Just pretty good books that I like, but that don’t really sink their hooks into me.

  • 4 Stars - really liked it

    A row of five stars the four left gold and the others greyed out and the tool tip `really liked it`

    These are the books I make time to read. “You know, I should really go give the sink a wash so I can put the audiobook on and listen”.

    These are the books with something really compelling in them, usually the characters that make it easy to read. Sometimes the story, sometimes the writing and very occasionally the world building will be the thing that keeps me in.

    Patricia Brigg’s Mercy Thompson books go here for me, even though there are elements that I might not like I’m attached enough to Mercy and co. that I’m really happy to get to spend time in their world. Komi Can’t Communicate, seeing the characters live life, sometimes struggling and sometimes succeeding makes me happy. The Firekeeper’s Daughter also fit in here for me, written in a way that kept me wanting to read more, similarly with Moon of the Crusted Snow, where both the writing and the world building kept me interested through out.

  • 5 Stars - it was amazing

    A row of five stars all gold and the others greyed out and the tool tip `it was amazing`

    If a four star book helps get the chores done a five star book is so good that I get nothing done. These are the books I love, the characters or the worlds I’m compelled by and usually the books I don’t ever stop thinking about.

    This year, they are Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie and An Immense World by Ed Yong. Ancillary Justice is a fascinating read, with interesting characters, unusual perspectives, intricate world building and an exciting plot. It’s the book I’ve read the most as an adult, it inspires me to write and if you talk about enough things with me I will start telling you why you aught to read it.

    An Immense World is also fantastic. It breaks down your understanding of perception and beautifully illustrates how different animals in the same space experience the space based on their own umwelt which means a lot of that experience not only isn’t shared but is profoundly incomprehensible to each other.

    I also have a volume of Komi Can’t Communicate in there, and while I can’t remember specifically which one Volume 17 is, if it’s where I think it is, it’s a situation where the characters we’ve gotten to know for years now, reach a point in their growth where they fundamentally change and become better people for the growing.

So that’s what I’m thinking about when I rate a book on good reads. Obviously a five star rating system is silly, but it’s a convenient short hand and certainly when I see other people’s ratings, it gives me a feeling for what to expect from a book.

Now you might ask yourself whether this was just an excuse to talk about Ancillary Justice, An Immense World and Komi Can’t Communicate, and of course it was.

Monday, September 04, 2023

Games of August 2023

August is always a busy month and it's a transitional one for what I play and how. I tend to think about games for summer and games for fall and August always sits in the middle. My partner also traveled a bunch in August so, I didn't play much of Tears of the Kingdom, which she has mostly watched me play. Instead I picked up Final Fantasy XII, and also poked Pikmin 4. I also played a bit of Cursed Treasure 2 (remastered!) which has suggested to me that it's probably time to get my PC fixed up again so that I can do some medium screen gaming (also also maybe give some money to game makers that aren't Nintendo.

August was also not my greatest month for keeping things organized, so the data for the month is artificially reconstructed in places, but close enough for my purposes.


My top five games (by play time) for August were:

  1. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - I find that I like FFXII provided that I don't invest too heavily in it. Which, if you look at my earlier thoughts on the game matches that, half-hour a day model. If you try to rush it, or to push through, the game pushes back and you find yourself under-levelled and under-equipped. It needs to be played slowly and steadily and you get to advance the plot once or twice a week.
    Screenshot: Protagonists Vaan, Ashe and Balthier fight a (relatively small) Tyrannosaurus in a desert.
    There's enough fun in it, especially now that I'm focused on gear and organizing gambits that I keep playing, but I find it makes it really hard to invest in the game. It's done not badly for my audio book listening, and to my watch times for PlayFrame and Noah Gervais.

  2. Pikmin 4 - If I had a complaint about Pikmin 3 it's that there wasn't enough of it. Pikmin 4 is a brilliant answer to that problem in that a) it exists and b) there's quite a bit of it. As a bonus, c) it's an excellent improvement on all of the elements of all of the games. This is the best Pikmin game and it's really fun. I do wish it was a little better at tutorializing things (I know asking Nintendo for more tutorials is a dangerous game). I played like 10 hours not realising that you could switch to your dog co-captain (in addition to riding them and having them fight all your fights.)
    Screenshot, The Rescue Squad Rookie and Oatchi the dog direct glowing green pikmin to take start bits back to their nest in the dark of night.

  3. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I mostly didn't play ToTK this month, but did pick it up a couple of times when I was feeling low energy or down. One of the brilliant things about Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is how easy it is to jump in and find something interesting to do or find something interesting to see. I really appreciate that deeply absorbing nature.
    Screenshot: Link aims an arrow at a Moblin Boss and crew coming up a rise in a grassy field.


Here's my total play time for August:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




Sunday, September 03, 2023

Books of August 2023

Reading

Here is my updated infographic for the books I've read in 2023 - August Edition.

Stats in August - (Year to Date)

Reading Stats

Books Read - 10 (72)Pages Read - 3234 (24532)

Books Read

A Matter of Justice by Charles Todd The Red Door by Charles Todd
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews
Magic Breaks by Ilona Andrews Humble Pi: A Comedy of Maths Errors by Matt Parker
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

Collage of the covers of the 10 books listed above. August 2023 Covers

Authors - 8 (37)

Adrian Tchaikovsky - (1)Alexander McCall Smith - (2)
Angeline Boulley - (1)Hiromu Arakawa - (2)
Ann Leckie - (2)Becky Chambers - 1 (1)
Brandon Sanderson - (1)Carlene O'Connor - (1)
Charles Todd - 2 (8)Connie Willis - (2)
Dan Moren - (2)Daniel O'Malley - (2)
Ed Yong - (1)Elizabeth Bear - (1)
Elle Cosimano - (1)Elly Griffiths
Fatima Ali - (1)Ilona Andrews - 2 (6)
Isaac Asimov - (1)Jim Butcher - (1)
Louise Penny - (1)Martha Wells - (1)
Mary Robinette Kowal - 1 (1)Matt Parker - 1 (1)
Mur Lafferty - (1)N. K. Jemisin - (1)
Patrica Briggs - (4)Rick Riorden - (1)
Robin McKinley - (1)Stephen King - (1)
Tasha Suri - (2)Timothy Zhan - (1)
Tomohito Oda - (14)Ursula K. Le Guin - 1 (1)
Waubgeshig Rice - (1)Xiran Jay Zhao - 1 (1)
Yoshiki Tanaka - (3)

A word cloud of all the authors above with Tomohito Oda in the largest size.2023 Author Cloud - August Update

Publishing


Publication Range

Earliest Book - 1969 (1953)Most Recent Book - 2022 (2022)

Publications by Decades

2020s - 2 (32)2010s - 4 (20)
2000s - 3 (13)1990s - (4)
1980s - (1)1960s - 1 (1)
1950s - (1)

Books

Source

Borrowed From Public Library - 7 (45)Borrowed From Friends - (2)
My Audible Library - (3)My libro.fm Library - 3 (5)
My "Kindle" Library - (5)My Kobo Library - (13)

Formats

Audio Book - 5 (35)eBook - 5 (20)
eBook (Comic) - (16)Hardcover - (1)

Sunday, August 20, 2023

Video Games of July 2023

I felt a bit flat overall in July and mostly disappeared into the immense depths of Tears of the Kingdom. I poked a couple of other things, before switching over to Final Fantasy XII at the end of the month when my partner was out of town. 

I haven't been enjoying game tracking as much the last little while and I'm going to institute a cut off that if I didn't play an hour of the game I'm not going to write about it. (Unless I want to, it's my blog).


My top three games (by play time) for July were:

  1. Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom - I've really been plumbing the depths of the side stories and experiences in Tears of the Kingdom. Just like Breath of the Wild the amount of good things to go and do is hard to imagine. I have really distracted myself from the main story, so that's starting to feel a bit vague, but I'm sure once I pick it up again the game will snap back into focus.
    Screenshot: Link stands in a sun drenched golden forest looking at a stone platform.

  2. Mario Kart 8: Deluxe - Vroom vroom. Spent a bit of time working on time trials.
    Screenshot: Roselina races towards Toadstool Castle.

  3. Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age - I needed something to play that my partner wasn't too invested in. With Dan Floyd playing both FFXIV and FFXVI on Playframe I've been thinking about Final Fantasy more and figured it was a good time to pick this up on switch. Despite having played the first few hours not that long ago, it's interesting how much I've forgotten. I like the game but I can't say it's one of the most gripping, not from story or game play or style even.
    Screenshot: Vaan looks towards the camera, he seems to be whining and has been hit hard enough on the side of the face to leave a welt.


Here's my total play time for July:



And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:




The Books I Read - November 2024

November was a bit weird. The Hands of the Emperor is long, but excedingly good. I'm continuing to find Anna Lee Huber a very engagin...