Original article: "The Goodreads’ ›Mediocre‹: Assessing a Grey Area of Literary Judgements" - https://zfdg.de/sb006_002

FWIW, for recently released books (<5 years) with more than a few hundred reviews, I find a 4.2 or above rating on Goodreads to be a fairly accurate indicator of whether a book Wil be a pleasurable read. The types of books mentioned in TFA have classic saddle curves - high on both ends, low in the middle. These controversial books may offer high engagement in a classroom or book club environment but for my time and money, the wide variety of possible negatives that cause the low-end of the saddle are sufficient to remove a book from my consideration no matter how high the other end of the saddle. Time is short, books are many, and although I am a very fast reader, I'm going to focus on reading writing that hits more positives rather than one that is split. The ends of a saddle-shaped vote curve can be discarded leaving, still, a middling rating.

A lot of reviewers are all or nothing, so the three star will be an average between one and five star reviews rather than a legitimate rating.

> The results show that about 30% of these 2,000 "mediocre" books are rated as literarily important or of high quality according to other criteria—for example, whether they are considered classics, are part of education or have had great cultural significance.

I am not surprised. I found that a lot of books that are considered classics and were required reading in high school are very boring... I would not call them "good read" at all, and I would not recommend them to anyone else.