Tuesday, May 1, 2012
The grading experiment
I think I'm going to give up on grading the things I read and watch - or, at least, I think I'm going to give up on grading them publicly. I've assigned grades on 9 posts in a row. Sometimes it was easy, and sometimes it was really, really hard. When it was hard, I tended to agonize over the grade too much, and my posts started to take even longer than they usually take. Since I'm not sure the grades would do anyone any good, what with my difficulties writing something up that explains what the grades mean (other than "A 'C' is not a bad grade, just an average one"), I think I'll just go back to writing reviews but not assigning grades. I do like assigning grades privately, though - it'll make it easier to come up with my personal "Best" list at the end of the year.
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I've been thinking about doing the same thing because I think that too many people just focus on the grade rather than the review. I suspect that more people read the ones I grade as poor than anything else, and that seems counterproductive to me. All the big book sites require a number grade in order to post there, but I think I'll just drop the grades on my own blog. That's all I can control. Thanks for the nudge to finally make that change.
ReplyDelete"I suspect that more people read the ones I grade as poor than anything else, and that seems counterproductive to me."
DeleteI feel a little guilty admitting this, but I know that, unless the book has come to my attention in some other way as something I might be interested in, I tend to be more likely to look at reviews for lower-graded books on many blogs, just because those reviews tend to be more passionate and entertaining overall.
For what it's worth, though, the grades you've assigned haven't had as much effect on which posts I read as the grades given on some other blogs. You tend to read books so vastly different from what usually makes it onto my radar that the reviews alone are interesting enough.