True, they're rather primitive as evaluation goes - and since one has complete freedom in how to use the rating system, they are less than helpful in telling you how people feel about a book, anyway. A friend of mine recently gave Oliver Twist a one-star review, so I enquired, and in the end we were in agreement on essentially everything about the book - except I gave it four stars and she gave it one (admittedly, she's Jewish and Fagin did play a role, but even so).

The averages of ratings for books also tend to mystify me, as I've been unable to see any kind of pattern in why some books score higher than others - the ones with high scores are certainly not always the ones you would expect, thinking about what a large group of readers' opinions would likely average out to.

Still, ignoring the ratings, the site is useful in a few regards - a convenient way of maintaing a list of books to read and finding other books that might be of interest, and showing you what your friends are reading so you can pick up the same book or start a conversation on a book you've both read. But the discussion system isn't exactly great for longer discussions involving multiple people, I've no idea how people manage to find their way in the hundreds-of-pages threads that do somehow crop up in the book clubs (when you try to quote an earlier post, it automatically cuts off after a really very short character limit, so you end up quoting manually anyhow).