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Jayson, i am interesting on how you rate your books, especially on the letters and the percentages you add on your notes! is a known technique or?

Paola wrote: "Jayson, i am interesting on how you rate your books, especially on the letters and the percentages you add on your notes! is a known technique or?"

Glad you asked, Paola! I often forget that most people aren't where I'm from and so aren't familiar at all with the measures I use. As far as I know, I'm the only one who uses percentages in their reviews, though several people over the years have messaged me to ask permission to copy my method. But as far as grading on a 100-point scale and assigning letter grades to percentages, that is the standard way of grading in North America at least.

Basically, I use pretty standard Canadian university grading, which is more or less metric. A pass is 50% and grades go up by 10%. Though the particular one I use has D grades stop at 55% and the remaining 5% divided up among C and B percentages. That's just a peculiarity of my alma mater. I started this all when I was still in university, so I was pretty attuned to the grading system when it came to rating books. If I'm unsure about something, I have a cheat-sheet that I made up to help me fine tune my grading:


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I regard books as if they were submitted for, say, a creative writing assignment where below 50% is a total failure and 100% is theoretically possible yet unattainable. And in that sense 75% is average.

The stars and grades I assign aren't strictly correlative. I use stars as a measure of personal enjoyment and grades as a measure of book quality. In my "About Me" section I have the exact terms of my star rating system, but I again made up a chart to help guide my decisions. So in the chart below, forget about everything except for the star rating columns. The numbers are grouped in three sections. The middle section will always be that star rating, while the top and bottom sets can be one or the other star rating depending on my discretion.


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I've done this often enough to have established informal borderlines between star ratings. For example, 78-79% is the grey area between three and four stars, wherein 78% could be four stars and 79% could be three stars. So I give myself leeway to apply stars to grades at my discretion while still holding to an established "common law" precedent.

It's a lot less complicated than I probably make it seem. Hopefully that answered your questions. If you have anything else you'd like to know, please feel free to ask. I'm more than willing to go deep into the minutiae of it :)

tbh... i am speechless! (O_O) 

thank you so much, i really appreciate that you take the time to write everything down and ofc share this with me!

it's just perfect!!

i will try to see if it works for me and hopefully include it on my reviews, if that's ok with you!

how many pages do you read before you take notes?

i mean you can read as many as you want, but after all these years of rating like this, you've figured out how many pages is a good point to do it •ᴗ��

Paola wrote: "tbh... i am speechless! (O_O) 

thank you so much, i really appreciate that you take the time to write everything down and ofc share this with me!

it's just perfect!!

i will try to see if it work..."

Happy I could clear things up for you, Paola! By all means, if it works for you, feel free to use it for yourself :)

As for taking notes, it used to be that I'd write an update at the end of every day for each book I happen to be reading. Though, that got tough because I'd often not have anything interesting to say. Now, I've pretty much settled on writing down notes every 50 pages (or thereabouts) for books and every hour for audiobooks. Of course, if the book's less than 50 pages, it's just the one update. As well, on occasions where I have a lot to say, I may just stop to type up my thoughts before I get to 50 pages. I'm actually doing that right now, come to think of it 😅

tysm you're awesome!

that'll be a perfect 1st try for my April book, i'll read The Count of Monte Cristo and cant wait!

yeah, 50 pages seems right!

i am pretty close to that too, i take notes on 30-50pgs but i 'm using a simple notebook just bc sometimes i have a memory of a goldfish! XD

love your system, i couldn't resist no more, i had to ask! hehe

Paola wrote: "tysm you're awesome!

that'll be a perfect 1st try for my April book, i'll read The Count of Monte Cristo and cant wait!

yeah, 50 pages seems right!

i am pretty close to that too, i take notes o..."

Happy I could provide some inspiration! I also use a notebook to take notes, or rather a notepad. It just doesn't feel right without a pen and paper, switching to a keyboard mid-read is just so awkward 😅

Looking forward to seeing your review :)

sure, the traditional way is always the best one, but the technology is more fun!
something between it is the perfect combination !


Thank you for your time Jayson!

Have a good one ٩(^ᗜ^ )و ´-

Paola wrote: "sure, the traditional way is always the best one, but the technology is more fun!
something between it is the perfect combination !


Thank you for your time Jayson!

Have a good one ٩(^ᗜ^ )و ´-"

My pleasure. Happy reading 😁👍