Why I Use a Modified Version of CAWPILE to Rate my Books

There was a time when I would choose my star ratings entirely on gut instinct. Granted, yes, they were often very colored by emotion and I would struggle to use half stars or not. Some days I wished I could rate up to 10 stars, other days even 5 stars was too many. On my old book blog, I would rate the books almost entirely on emotion and enjoyment. I am very easily entertained, which left me with far too many 4 and 5 star books, many that I regretted the rating on later.

Taking Chances by Molly McAdams is a brilliant example. If you view my old review on Goodreads, you will see that I gave it a 5 star rating. While I don’t remember enough of the story these days, it was over a decade ago that I read the book after all, I remember being crushed, blended, extruded through a noodle press, and baked like a lasagna by the end of the book. It destroyed my soul and put me back together, however, I’m an empath so it’s rather easy to do that. As soon as I finished reading, I flew to my computer to open WordPress and started to gush over the keyboard.

Two days later though, I was still living in the fog of Taking Chances, chewing on the words and the plot and I started to see the problems I had with it. It wasn’t a 5 star book for me. It was probably not even a 3 star book. I had given it a review that I no longer believed it deserved. I’m not saying it wasn’t a great book, it was, it was a fantastic read. However, there were problems in the plot, with the characters, in the writing; things I didn’t see until after I actually started looking at different points instead of the whole book overall. I realized, my rating had come from the ending and my emotions entirely, and clearly they were skewed. I knew I needed a better way to rate my reads, but it wouldn’t be until much much later, far after I had retired my original book blog and stopped even giving my reads star ratings that I would find a system that worked for me.

Then along came CAWPILE

I live on youtube. I even pay rent (hello youtube premium, I hate your subscription fee but I love the lack of ads) and decorate the place with my massively abundant amount of playlists. I am embarrassed by how many videos are saved to watch later because of time and attention constraints, (Did you know the Watch Later has a 5000 video limit? Don’t judge me!) but I am on youtube at least daily.

During the third round of lockdowns in 2020, I managed to come across something called CAWPILE. I had seen the acronym for a while, but never knew what it was or that it was actually connected to book reviews. When an innocent Google search affected my Youtube recommendations (Darn you, Robot Overlords!), I finally got to see and understand what exactly CAWPILE was.

The CAWPILE rating system was created by G of Book Roast over on Youtube. You can see her CAWPILE playlist, which includes the updates she makes to the system as well as grab her free spreadsheet templates to use the system yourself here. The rating system uses a 10 point scale to rate the book based on seven different categories; Characters, Atmosphere, Writing, Plot, Intrigue, Logic, and Entertainment: hence CAWPILE. The system then utilizes magic maths to convert those scores into a 5 star rating. Newer updates to the system offer the use of half stars, but I’m sticking to more of the old school rating system. I personally used V2 as my base rating system.

I was in love as soon as I saw it. It really makes you stop and think deeper about the book you are rating, which is perfect for me, since it forces me to look past my emotional response while also allowing for that response to be considered in the Entertainment section. The fact that it has a free spreadsheet template that will do the maths for me?! I was sold! I adopted it right away and then decided I would slowly undergo the arduous task of re-reading and “properly” rating every book I’ve ever read. Ok, that goal is too lofty, so I’m working on the ones I’ve marked as read on Goodreads to start, especially since those are the books I’ve actually written reviews for.

Nice, but not perfect…

However, as I started rating books, I quickly found that even CAWPILE wasn’t perfect. It was a thousand times better than what I had originally been doing, but it also had some issues. I felt like certain categories were just pointless for me. I don’t care about the atmosphere of the story in most cases, and the intrigue isn’t necessary unless I’m reading a thriller or murder-mystery. I also found that many of the books I was rating were all hovering at the 3 and 4 star mark. I would find myself having to think deeper and tweak various stats to get closer to the rating that I actually felt the book deserved. I’d look at the numbers of a 4 star read and think that the maths just had to be wrong, because it was so obviously a 3 star book, and yet the rating block on the spreadsheet would be staring back at me with a number four in the star column. Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer is a great example of a 5 star read that the math swore was a 4 star book. The math was wrong! I knew it was! So I had to up various categories to make the 5 star rating happen and it felt wrong.

Then I came across Susan Lyn’s post about how she was tweaking the CAWPILE system to fit her needs and it was like a lightbulb went off above my head. How on earth did I not think that tweaking the ratings was possible?!

Susan had decided to change the weights given to various stats, allowing for them to have more importance and say in the rating totals. She doubled three stats and tripled another.

“So now my average score out of ten is based on Characters x 2, Atmosphere, Writing, Plot x 2, Intrigue, Logic x 2, and Enjoyment x 3. I think this will allow me to rate each category truthfully and come out with an average score that reflects what’s important to me.”
–Susan Lyn; Tweaking CAWPILE to Fit My Needs

Tweaking the weights to work for me

So I decided to take a page from Susan and tweak the weights for my own purposes as well. While I liked Susan’s choices, I also felt that some sections needed a little more weight to them, so this is what I’ve done for my own ratings:

• Characters: x2 – I’ve doubled the weight here, because characters make up such a huge part of the story, that they really are too important to not increase their ranking.
• Atmosphere – I’ve left alone. The atmosphere only really matters to me when something is high fantasy, but even then, good world building is just as much in the writing as it is in the atmosphere.
• Writing: x2 – I chose to double writing. I’m not generally someone to focus too hard on the writing. I don’t cringe at misplaced punctuation or a run-on sentence, I’m guilty of such things myself after all. I do look at the general writing though, because it is important. I spent years reading fanfiction, and do still enjoy doing so, but these are published novels we are talking about. Look like you at least tried to use an editor! Writing considers the logic and dialogue when I rate it, but overall focuses mostly on the flow, structure, and editing.
• Plot: x3 – The plot needed tripled, it had to be done. The plot is one of the most important parts of the book for me. If the plot isn’t interesting and well planned out, then the entertainment aspect cannot exist. Afterall, the synopsis is two-thirds of the way I decide what to read, clearly the plot is important to me. I can’t deal with a plot that, despite being well written, I can clearly see the ending by the second chapter. (I’m looking at you, What A Boy Wants!)
• Intrigue – I’ve left this alone as well. While it can hold importance in certain genres, I just feel that it isn’t as important as other sections.
• Logic: x2 – I decided to double the logic because it really does matter that a story makes sense. This is also where I consider any plot holes. While plot holes should be thought of in the writing or the plot, I find they hold the most weight with the logic of the story for me.
• Entertainment: x3 – The weight needed tripling here as well as the overall entertainment really matters. A horrible story with sub par writing can still be a worthy read if I find it enjoyable. Not everyone can suspend reality or manage their expectations, but I read for the enjoyment of it. It was the very basis for all of my original rankings. I couldn’t just double or leave this one alone.
• Dialogue – Wait, dialogue?! Yes, I’ve added a category to the system. It is now CAWPILED. I decided to leave it as a single weight though, as it isn’t as important to me as some of the other sections. I wanted to track the dialogue because I find it to have some importance. A wonderfully written plotline, with fantastic world building, and interestingly fleshed out characters can be ruined if the dialogue is stiff and awkward.

I also changed how the stars were calculated. G of Book Roast calculates the system by adding up the various numbers in the CAWPILE categories and dividing them by 7 and then uses a decimal scale to determine which star each number set falls under. I decided to alter these as I felt that some of the star ranges were too broad and there was also the very slim chance of a book receiving no stars, which doesn’t work for me. I always give a star rating. If a novel doesn’t have stars, it means it was a DNF for me. Even the worst novel needs at least a star, you can’t rate it on purchase sites otherwise and those reviews and ratings can be invaluable for someone wanting to purchase the book. Below is a table showcasing the original numbers with my changes.

 

Ratings	Stars	My Changes
Up to 1.1	0	-eliminated-
1.1 – 2.2	☆	0.1 – 2.2
2.3 – 4.5	☆☆	2.3 – 4.3
4.6 – 6.9	☆☆☆	4.4 – 6.7
7 – 8.9	☆☆☆☆	6.8 – 8.7
9-10	☆☆☆☆☆	8.8 – 10

Thank goodness I make spreadsheets for fun and was able to alter the formulas with ease, because having to do the maths manually with each read was not appealing to me. The alterations did change up a few of my star ratings (and allowed me to return all of the categories for Letters to the Lost to it’s true rankings without it removing it’s 5 star rating), but it worked out since I managed to get the system modified before I started this new book blog, so I only had to change my ratings in Notion, where I track my library since I only add the star ratings to Goodreads when I paste in my review.

How do you rate your book reviews? Have you tried the CAWPILE method before?