Welcome to Arachnibook a more visual approach to book reviews just a tad more granular than a simple star rating.

For example: Imagine if you could rate a set of books against each other across several characteristics and then plot the rankings on a typical "spider chart". Some books would fair better in a given area better than others but on balance may not be overall as enjoyable a read if, for example, the historical or scientific  accuracy was poor. You might be tempted to give the book a low rating, but if the book was otherwise an enjoyable read, how can you compare it to a book that was just average everywhere?

While I would clearly give The Passage 5 stars, when I try and differentiate between all the 2-3 star books I have plowed through of late, each with at least one or two positives, I struggle.

 While this is still a work in progress, the following are the current metrics used in the above chart

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its important to note that three characteristics in my mind carry more weight is setting a standard. They are general storytelling, complexity, originality. These also seem to have the widest gap between average and truly outstanding reading, so I have allowed these to scale 1-7 and the other characteristics to scale 1-5. with 3 generally being neutral.

 

Comments on the scales are welcome as only with good feedback will I be able to create a scale that both reflects my opinions of the book while still conveying the grading scale to allow others to choose or not to choose a book for entertainment.

 

Enjoy your reads and if you would like to post a review in this format, please contact me.