The 90 Second Book Reviews Must-Read Scale is an important tool to help you decide if a book is worth your investment of time and money. It evaluates a book’s value in five areas and then provides an overall rating of its “must read” value. This is what it looks like:
Must-Read Scale—Non-Fiction 5=Highest Value; 0=Lowest Value
Importance to Society
4.2
Importance to You
4.7
Fun Read
4.0
Quality of Writing and Presentation
4.6
Perspective Changer
4.7
Overall Must-Read Rating
4.4
It’s pretty quick and intuitive to use, but it might help you to know a little about our thinking in applying it to each book we review.
Here are some questions we consider when we assign a rating to a book for each evaluation factor:
Importance to Society: Does the book further thinking about an issue or issues that are important to the world we live in? If everyone read this book, would it impact our world?
Importance to You: Will this book likely affect your life? Could it make you wiser, kinder, wealthier, etc.? Five years from now, will you remember any lessons you learned from it?
Fun Read: Is reading the book a pleasant experience? Does the author explain difficult topics in an easy-to-understand way? Is it hard to put down? Do you laugh or smile after reading certain sections, regardless of the seriousness of the topic?
Quality of Writing and Presentation: Is it well written? Is the structure logical? Does it present the information in a way that’s easy to understand? Does it flow well?
Perspective Changer: Is this book likely to change the way you look at the world?
Overall Must-Read Rating: This is the average of the previous four ratings and provides a summary of the value of the book and how important it is for you to read.
Of course, the Must-Read Scale is subjective, but so is any critical review. Chances are if you read the book you’ll agree with some ratings and disagree with others.
But we suspect you’ll find the scale of value and a good complement to the rest of the information presented in the review. And we would love to hear from you, agree OR disagree!