Rating using BALSPEL
When I started paying more attention to my reading habits a few years ago, one of the things I started thinking about was the way I was rating books with stars on Goodreads.
Before that, I gave stars purely based on my feelings and usually immediately after finishing the book.
In 2017, I published a post about how I started giving stars less emotionally and more thoughtfully, based on a description I had written down for myself:
- 1★: Bleh – horrible, almost unreadable.
- 2★: OK – not really impressed, not horrible, but not good either.
- 3★: Nice – entertaining and enjoyable to read, but no lasting impression.
- 4★: Great – Ooh, this book makes me happy. Captivating, with fun characters and a memorable world/plot.
- 5★: Brilliant – This book is almost perfect. I am completely speechless, it is majestic and masterful. I will never, ever forget it.
To this day, this is still roughly how I designate the number of stars, but how I arrive at that number of stars has become even more thoughtful and systematic than just based on that text.
Last year I tried the CAWPILE system for the first time, created by BookRoast.
CAWPILE is an acronym for the 7 different categories on which a book is judged:
- C – Characters – Personages
- A – Atmosphere – Atmosfeer
- W – Writing style – Schrijfstijl
- P – Plot – Plot
- I – Intrigue – Interesse
- L – Logic – Logica
- E – Enjoyment – Plezier
For each of these categories, you give the book a score from 1 to 10. This score is then combined into one number, which can be converted into a number of stars.
The full explanation for the most recent CAWPILE system from BookRoast, including a downloadable Excel tracker, can be found in this YouTube video .
So last year I tried this out in my Excel on a separate tab, and I can say I’m a fan. Reviewing this way feels more focused and objective, and it also helped me to put my thoughts into words when I write a review.
All praise for CAWPILE, but I still regularly faltered in a number of categories and felt that some nuances were missing.
For example, the categories logic and plot were virtually the same for me and I also regularly confused intrigue and enjoyment.
So when I was making my Excel with read books for 2022, I decided to make my own version of CAWPILE, in which I could totally relate to the different categories. Also, you know by now that I like to translate things into my own mother tongue, despite the fact that I rarely read books in that language, lol. So I also translated each of the categories into Dutch and found a fitting acronym to make it easy to remember.
And that’s how BALSPEL was born!
BALSPEL is the acronym that will replace CAWPILE for me and it stands for:
| Abbreviation | Meaning | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| B | Begin (EN: Beginning) |
Was the book gripping from the beginning? Did it intrigue you to continue reading? Was it difficult/boring/confusing to get into? |
| A | Atmosfeer (EN: Atmosphere) |
How compelling/enchanting was the reading? Did the book give you a good/warm feeling? How did you like the world building? Could you imagine everything? |
| L | (verhaal)lijn (EN: (story)line) |
Was the plot coherent and well-structured? How was the pace? Was the storyline unique and/or surprising? Was it complicated? |
| S | Schrijfstijl (EN: writing style) |
Did you enjoy the prose? Was it a quick read or did you have to plough through it? Was the dialogue realistic? |
| P | Personages (EN: Characters) |
Are the characters memorable? Could you imagine them? What was the relationship between the primary and secondary characters? Did they feel real or more like cardboard? |
| E | Einde (EN: Ending) |
How did you feel about the ending of the story? Did it feel satisfying? Was it logical or were there plot holes? |
| L | Leesplezier (reading enjoyement) |
What was your overall feeling when reading this book? |
I’m actually a little proud of this acronym, even though I had to fiddle around a bit with the first L. Okay, I could have gone for BAPSPEL, with the P for plot, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to make my Dutch acronym form a real word (BALSPEL = Ball game).
Also, the logical person in me is very happy that the order of the letters follows the logic of a book. That the B(egin) comes before the E(inde), for example.
Ultimately, the rating system is quite similar to the CAWPILE system.
After finishing a book, I give each of the BALSPEL letters a score between 1 and 10. I try not to divide smaller than halves. For that score from 1 to 10, I use a fairly simple guideline:
- abysmal
- horrible
- bad
- weak
- mediocre
- OK
- good
- great
- excellent
- favourite
Next I calculate a standard average for these 7 scores, so add and divide by 7. I keep track of that score to 2 decimal places, and then convert it into stars as follows:
| ★ | ≥ | < |
|---|---|---|
| 0★ | 1,10 | |
| 1★ | 1,10 | 2,30 |
| 2★ | 2,30 | 4,60 |
| 3★ | 4,60 | 7,00 |
| 4★ | 7,00 | 9,00 |
| 5★ | 9,00 | 10,00 |
And that’s it.
Step 1, give a score of 1 to 10 to each of the 7 categories.
Step 2, calculate the arithmetic mean over the 7 scores.
Step 3, convert the score to the number of stars.
In the meantime, I’ve been using BALSPEL instead of CAWPILE since the beginning of this year, so about two months, and so far my version has fixed all the glitches and problems I had with CAWPILE and no new problems have surfaced yet. So it’s probably going to be a keeper!
As I said, all credit goes to BookRoast for coming up with this system, and which I have merely tweaked a bit to my own liking.
Do you have a personal system for rating books? Or do you go all in with intuition and gut feeling?
Cheers,
Charlotte
