New Blogger Friend: Nina from Death, Books and Tea

A couple of weeks ago, one of my friends in the year below me at school who goes to my school book club started up her own book blog after I told her about book blogs. I just wanted to share her blog, Death, Books and Tea (I love the name!), which she set up about a month ago with you all. Nina is lovely and as you might be able to tell from her blog name, she loves books with death in them and manga. Another friend, Katy has now begun contributing to the blog too and they both have similar reading tastes. Here is what Nina has to say about herself, Katy and their blog because she can describe it much better than me:

 

Dear Stephanie's Readers

 

First things, big thanks to Stephanie for the free advertising (hugs). I'm Nina, and I book blog at Death Books and Tea with my friend Katy.

Ok, she wasn't sure how to describe us, so I'll do it.

We read a lot of manga, we read a lot of things with vampires, death, blood, horror, that whole idea. Basically the things that Stephanie doesn't really like. Not all of it though, we like dystopians and historical fiction too.

Oh, and we get high on tea. A lot. Hence the blog name. And the slightly insane rantings that may appear randomly.

Please come over if your looking for a blog with a completely different flavour to Stephanie's. And even if you're not, please come over and enjoy tea and books anyway!

Once again, thanks to Stephanie. And hugs. Stephanie is EXTREMELY huggable.

Hope to see you here!

Nina xxx

Thank you Nina and congratulations on reaching 40 followers over the past month! Incase you were wondering about the last bit, Nina has a rather sweet habit of randomly coming up in the school corridor to give me a hug. My favourite thing about their blog is their unique and awesome rating system, which uses tea strengths as you can see from the graphics they use that I've included. They also have a great new feature called Open For Discussion.

Some of the books that they've reviewed recently include Matched by Allie Condie, Delirium by Lauren Oliver, Fallen Grace by Mary Hooper and Death Note: Another Note by NisiOisin.

If you like the sound of their awesome blog, pop over to Death Books And Tea and say hi- I'm sure Nina and Katy would really appreciate it and love it!

Trial Rating System

A few weeks ago, I posted about my thoughts on rating systems and asked your opinion on whether I should integrate one here on my reviews. Thank you so much to everyone who left a comment, they were all really helpful and thoughtful. The majority of people seemed to find rating systems helpful because it gave a definite impression of a person's overall opinion and the results of the poll showed that most of the voters would like a rating system here because only 2 out of 15 voters said they wouldn't.

So, I've decided to a trial rating system here until the end of March to see how it goes. To get over the problem of different genres, I'm going to rate mainly on enjoyment so if I couldn't get into a book even though the writing was good, then the rating will be lower. I love all the pretty graphics that people use for rating systems but until I decide whether I will use a rating system permanently here, I'll just to keep to just writing the number of stars. If I do continue to use it, I will probably also create a page to explain the ratings more in depth.

Here's what I've got outlined for each rating:

1 stars-  I really didn't like this book and it wasn't worth my time.

2 stars- Overall, this book wasn't for me but I probably liked small parts of it.

3 stars- I liked this book and it was worth a read but there were a few things that affected my enjoyment. You may want to get it from the library before you buy it.

4 stars- I really enjoyed this one and would definitely recommend it but it was missing that extra spark.

5 stars- Everything about this book was amazing and I absolutely loved it- go and buy it now!

There will also be half ratings to give me more leeway in deciding because I don't want all my ratings to end up really high.

I'm very interested to see how this trial goes and I hope the ratings will be useful to you!

My Thoughts on Rating Systems- to rate or not to rate?

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about rating systems and whether I should use one for my blog. There are so many bloggers who use a numerical/alphabetical rating system often. accompanied by really pretty and creative graphics that are displayed in their sidebars for example flowers or cupcakes along with a description of what each rating means. I love those as they bring a lot of originality and uniqueness to a blog.

When I first started blogging, I decided not to develop a rating system as I thought it would be better to let my reviews speak for themselves and let my opinion shine through in my writing. This is partly because I am a  bad decision maker and also different types of books are  fantastic/not so fantastic for different reasons. There are action packed and exciting reads that might be a five star from me and then a beautiful descriptive book that made me think a lot might also get a five star but they are different in their own way.

However I know that sometimes people want to find out my thoughts on the book in a quick and easy way that helps them decide whether to read the book or not, especially if they are short on time so I implemented a verdict in bold at the end of the review summarising my thoughts. So far, that has worked pretty well for me.

From my perceptive when I read reviews, the rating doesn't really make that much of an impact on me but it is nice to see an opinion concreted more, especially as it can be hard to tell sometimes the difference between what would have been a four or five star review.

I'm thinking of introducing a rating system of either five star rating or a five star with half stars in between. The reason I'm leaning slightly towards a half star rating system is because lately I have been enjoying nearly all the books I've read (through some great recommendations from other blogger's reviews!) and I don't want all the ratings to end up being reasonably high. It all depends on what your perception of a low/high rating is. For some people, three means an average enjoyable read with a few issues but for me, it seems quite low. I'm not sure why but there are plenty of other books with five stars that are more likely to catch my attention.

You're my readers so I'd love to know your thoughts on rating systems and whether you would find one helpful here. I've added a poll below so it would be fantastic if you submitted an answer. I'm open to ideas and suggestions too- what do YOU think? Thank you!