I like my five stars, but I always preface any rating with a description of how I define my ratings: 5: This book changed the way I think. 4: I enjoyed reading

I like my five stars, but I always preface any rating with a description of how I define my ratings: 5: This book changed the way I think. 4: I enjoyed reading this book. It was interesting and engaging. 3: This book is OK. I wouldn't read it again. 2: This book had parts where I wanted to drop it. 1: I couldn't finish the book. It's actively bad. As always with scales like this, any definition is subjective and scales shouldn't be used without understanding their impact. I'd never apply this scale to an Uber driver. Also, scales shouldn't be used for stack ranking. At least not without defining the heuristics first. To me, scales are a way to focus my qualitative impressions into something that's not an essay. It's a good starting point for a discussion about the merits of the work. It definitely has its footguns, though.