Book Club :: Book Ratings for 2023-2024

Book ratings 2023-2024

The slump is behind us! Hallelujah and let the book angels rejoice.

Last year at this time I was bemoaning the fact that five of the books we had chosen for the year had scored in the 2’s. To flip that trend on its head, five of our books scored in the 4’s this year!

What’s the difference you ask? Well, in acknowledgement of our slump, at last year’s book pitch, we added a requirement that members could only recommend books they had read. I think this made all the difference in that there were no known “flops” which has been the case the last few years.

For this year, we didn’t make that a requirement, but we did have members disclose whether or not they had read the book so that we could take that into consideration as we were voting. I guess we’ll see how that fairs this time next year.

With that said, here’s our 2023 – 2024 book ratings!

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver – 4.11* (High – 4.75; Low – 1/DNF)
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese – 4.72** (High – 5; Low – 3.8)
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus – 3.83 (High – 5; Low – 3)
All the Broken Places by John Boyne – 4.64* (High – 4.75; Low – 4.5)
Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano – 4.2 (High – 4.5; Low – 4)
The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb – 2.91** (High – 4; Low – 1/DNF)
Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr – 3.89 (High – 4.75; Low – 1/DNF)
Umami by Laia Jufresa – 2.98 (High – 4.75; Low – 1/DNF)
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li – 4 (High – 4.75; Low – 2)
Honor by Thrity Umrigar – 3.61 (High – 4.25; Low – 3)

Notes about some of these ratings & discussions:

*This rating could be seen as misleading. If you remove the DNF, the score would be 4.42. But, in our club, every vote counts.

**The Covenant of Water received a 5 from six of our members.

***All the Broken Places had the most consistent rating across all members, with everyone giving it a 4.5 or 4.75.

**** Several of us had read The Hour I First Believed many years ago and liked it more than we did at this reading. This brought up an interesting discussion about how the context of reading a particular book can impact your engagement with it.

Recommendations for Your Book Club

These annual posts provide a great place to find the best books to recommend to your book club. Simply search “ratings” in the search engine at the top right corner to find each year’s wrap up of book ratings.

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