A Fantasy Reader is four years old!

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!