A Fantasy Reader is four years old!

Tuesday, April 16, 2013


The blog turned four years old... and I still love doing it and I hope you enjoy some of the stuff I put up!!!

When the year began, my intention was to find a new template for the blog.  I still find the actual one nice enough but it would be refreshing to make a change.  I still haven't found what I'm looking for but I shouldn't be much longer.

However, there is one thing I decided to change for my reviews.  At the end of 2011, I reconsidered my rating/scoring system. I wasn't sure if I wanted to continue to score at all.  In the end, with your comments, I chose to keep the rating system as it was (not simply for the overall score but for the five categories I'm also rating). Ever since, I kept struggling with my 10 points rating system with 0.5 points.

The more I review books, the more I find it difficult to score the books, mostly so in 0.5 points increments. The review in itself gives way more perspective about my feelings than a 0.5 score (which I feel is too precise to discriminate two books).  In fact, it's not incredibly hard to put a score on a book but when I compare books with the same score from the past, I find some irregularities.  Moreover, when I choose the number of stars to put on a review on Goodreads, it always feels much easier even if the full stars rating system tend to be to restrictive (in my opinion).

So, to give a better\broader interpretation of my overall (and for all the five specific categories) score, I chose to switch it to a 5 stars system with half stars.  It's not a huge change (I know, it's still the same as a 10 points rating system but without the 0.5 points), but I find it to be more representative of my feelings. More books will tend to fall into the same categories but even so, a novel shouldn't be judged solely by the score.  I looked at several of my past reviews and I like it better that way (they will be modified soon).  I hope you like it too.

Almost forgot... on this day, I thank you all for visiting my small part of the Fantasy blogosphere!

11 comments:

Bob/Sally said...

Happy birthday, Phil!

Anonymous said...

happy happy birthday..u're doing fine job and keep up that way..

Hdawg said...

happy bday from Australia, mate! Great job.

Antonakis said...

Yeaaah! May it continue until the end of all internet! :p :D

Mihir said...


Many congratulations Phil, here's hoping to a lot more :)

Mark Lawrence said...

congratulations!

Bryce L. said...

Congrats man and glad you're still going strong.

Dom said...

Keep it up son!

Anonymous said...

Happy birthday (blogday?)! Making it to four years is pretty impressive in this field. May there be many more such celebrations in the future!

Phil said...

Thanks everyone!

Anonymous said...

Hey Phil,

i know it's a lil bit late,but i wanna thank you for this blog! :) i love and visit it pretty much every day ! :) you're the best! :)

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