A hobbit eats six meals a day. This paper rates books by how many of them a book is worth missing. It is a six-point scale with no half-marks, because half-marks are how a rating system stops meaning anything.

The scale is about appetite, not quality in the abstract. A flawed book I could not put down outranks a immaculate one I kept setting down, and I would rather be honest about that than pretend to a neutrality I do not have.

The scale

Rated 1 of 6 meals.1 meals  ·  Finished it. That's the compliment.

I don't finish books out of duty any more. Reaching the last page means the book kept its side of the bargain, and that is worth saying out loud.

Rated 2 of 6 meals.2 meals  ·  Good on a train.

Held my attention in a distracting place. Not a book I'll press on anyone, but I was glad of it at the time and I don't regret the hours.

Rated 3 of 6 meals.3 meals  ·  I've told someone about it.

The threshold where a book escapes the shelf and starts turning up in conversation. Most genuinely good books live here.

Rated 4 of 6 meals.4 meals  ·  Stayed up later than sensible.

It cost me sleep and I let it. Something in the book was more urgent than the morning, which is a rare and specific achievement.

Rated 5 of 6 meals.5 meals  ·  I have bought a spare copy to lend out.

The highest practical compliment. I want other people to have read it badly enough to spend money on the possibility.

Rated 6 of 6 meals.6 meals  ·  Cold supper, no regrets.

Reserved, and given roughly once a year. A book that rearranged something. I have given it out twice in this paper's history and thought hard about both.

What does not get rated

Books I did not finish. They appear on the shelf with the page I stopped at and the reason, which I think is more useful to you than a low number would be. A book I abandoned at page ninety is not a bad book; it is a book I could not do at the time, and those are different claims.

Rereads are marked as rereads. A rating can go up or down on a second pass, and when it moves I say so rather than quietly editing the old notice.

Review copies

Where a publisher or author has sent a copy, the notice says so at the top. It does not change the rating, and I will not run a notice I would be embarrassed to have the sender read. If I dislike a review copy, the notice runs anyway.

A rating scale is a promise about consistency. Its only real job is to mean the same thing in five years that it means today.— The Editor