I said in my first blog post I had made three new additions to Rated Reads, known best for its book rating system. First addition: the blog.
Second is the new “Rapid Rating” feature. Over the course of 15 years and with the help of a few dozen volunteer reviewers throughout that time, I’ve accrued more than 2,000 book ratings with reviews. But that’s not even scratching the surface of all the books out there (even ones just published in the past 20 years or so). It’s a tiny drop in a vast ocean of literature. So I’ve been trying to figure out how to get more book ratings and content information on the site. I am very grateful for those who have helped out to review and rate books, but it’s still a very limited group compared to all those books out there!
Since book reviews can be found in thousands of places online, whether it’s on blogs, websites like Goodreads, or on Instagram or TikTok, I figure the reviews here are nice and useful, but the reason Rated Reads exists and is unique is the ratings for content. So I am going to give book ratings using the electronic versions I can get hold of easily (for free, whether it’s libraries or Kindle Unlimited, etc.). On those, I can search for profanity (pretty much all of which I can catch) and even some sexual content or violence (that’s trickier, though I can search for a few common key words).
Books that get a Rapid Rating of High would, of course, still be rated High if I read the whole text. I’ll probably mostly be giving Rapid Ratings to these. It will be a bit tougher to assign Mild or Moderate Rapid Ratings because there can be content that won’t show up in a quick search. If I do give a book a Rapid Rating that’s lower than High, you may want to proceed with caution knowing this. But at least this provides more useful information as you decide what books you’d like to read.
This new category will probably mostly take the place of the previous “DIRT” rating that’s been part of my book rating system. That was a way for me to share content information about a book I decided not to finish fairly early on but that clearly already had a lot of strong profanity, sexual content, etc. The likelihood of it having more always seemed likely (which I partially confirmed — in hard copies of books, I would flip through and do some spot checks to see if strong content continued).
Now, when I start reading a book (I probably read 90% or more ebooks and only 10% or less hard copies), I do a search for strong language before I even begin reading. If there’s a lot, I stop and do a Rapid Rating. If there’s not, I continue on to enjoy the book, review it and give it a full rating.
How to tell the difference between a review and a Rapid Rating
You can identify books that have been assigned Rapid Ratings by the badge on the cover and the tags underneath the covers in search results and places like “Latest Book Reviews” on the home page. They show up in searches on the site just as any other book that has a full review. You can see my first Rapid Rating book here. I already have four more lined up to publish soon.
Stay tuned for my third blog post about my third addition!
