It made me feel big emotions, lit a fire in my chest, made me believe in something. When a book possesses me and I can’t do anything but read it, that’s 5 stars.

12

Mine is: perfect for what it set out to be, nothing I would reasonably change

8

if i enjoyed reading it 😅

7

The story has to be extremely creative, any dialogue has to sound natural (characters in most books have a way of speaking entirely divorced from human speech that’s hard to describe without turning this into an even larger wall of text), and it should be smart without being condescending. Off the top of my head, this is my 5-Star shortlist btw: House of Leaves, Dune, Ring, 11/22/63, Innumeracy, Cat’s Cradle, John Dies at the End

4

Emotions. If it can make me cry and laugh and gasp, and if it can do that without grammatical errors and with interesting word play, 5 stars fs

4

If it’s a book I can’t stop thinking about for several weeks after reading.

4

For me it's books I loved and would reread or think are important and well written

3

It’s way too low

2

For me: 1: never touching/recommending to anyone again 2: not for me, but might still recommend it to others 3: good book 4: great book 5: stay up way too late, can’t put down. Compelling characters, gripping plot. I’m reminded why I love reading

2

authored by david foster wallace

1

Honestly I wish Goodreads was on the 1-10 scale. I’ve always found rating stuff on a 1-5 integer scale very hard.

1

Usually emotions/ if it wasn’t written super poorly

1