I have a slightly different rating system for books than I do for, say, movies or television shows. For the latter I typically rank them with a star system, the traditional 1 – 10. I find this very hard to do for books for some reason. There are so many factors that go into make a “great” book or a “good” book. I can’t explain it but it just doesn’t feel right to give a numerical or arbitrary ranking to books, at least for me.
Instead, I use a tier system. I would also like to say that I cannot take credit for this as an original idea of mine, a close friend of mine whom is also an avid reader, introduced me to this abstractly.
The way the system works is pretty easy and most people would probably believe it to be cop-out for not having to be decisive enough to “rate” (again, this is typically synonymous with a numerical system). Many people would find this system open to being subjective, and I’m not sure I could disagree, but then again, it is my system 
.
The basics is that I have three tiers with the first being reserved for the best of the best. To get a feel of what falls into Tier 1 think LoTR, The Bell Jar, Dracula, the Harry Potter series and Name of the Wind. Fairly selective.
Second being reserved for those books that I really enjoyed but that I could qualify as “elite” or “special”. Most books I review on this site as favorable would fall into this category. Examples being most of The Sword of Truth series (with the exception of books 1 and 5 which would make it into Tier 1) and the Night Angel trilogy. Good stuff, but certainly not elite.
The third tier is typically books that I enjoyed and would probably recommend (to certain audiences most likely) but would rarely or ever read again and really had no lasting impact on me. Percy Jackson series falls into this category.
So there you go, hope this doesn’t confuse. My movie rating are much simpler to comprehend .
