Monday, January 22, 2024

Books good and bad

Elder Son has set himself the challenge of producing a weekly newsletter for a year. He likes his annual challenges and, indeed, writes about one of them in his latest newsletter. Last year he challenged himself to read a book a month, and to read books outside his 'comfort zone'. He's never been a great book reader though he does read a lot of articles and periodicals.

Anyway his list of books from 2023 made me wonder what I would most recommend from last year so I scanned my journal looking for books with a 5* score. None. Zero. Zilch.

Am I being too critical? Books that are good/very good for their type I will score as 4*. A book has to have something extra to edge up 5.

The best I could do last year was two books with a score of 4.5! They were The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shakar and The Winners by Fredrick Backman.



This year has started better though with 5* given already to The Door to Door Bookstore.

What were your books of the year? 

6 comments:

Abby said...

Last year was a bad book year for me too, but then I'm really stingy with the 5th star.
I've not heard of either of your "high scorers", so maybe I'll check them out.

Ole Phat Stu said...

Fiction: Biplane, by Richard Bach (who wrote Jonathan Livingstone Seagull) and
Nonfiction: Warped Passages by Prof. Lisa Randell.

Stu said...

Oops. Wrong. Biplane is autobiographical. For his fiction you might like his Messiah's. Handbook as you are a religious person Liz.

acorn hollow said...

I am sad to say I haven't been reading much at all
Cathy

Terra said...

4.5 is a respectable score for a book. I read many classics and older books which I often rate at 5 so new books need to be very good to rate 5, sometimes they are. I would like to read Winning and also the bookstore title you mention.

Ann said...

I can't even remember what I read last year. Maybe I didn't read anything.