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The Bookscore: the new Rotten Tomatoes for books?

The website The Bookscore rounds up book reviews, assigns a ranking, and lets readers discuss literary news.

The website The Bookscore also includes the category Editor's Choice in which the administrators recommend titles for visitors.
  • By Molly Driscoll Staff Writer

Why rely on one book review when you can read five?

The website The Bookscore aims to fill that need with its collection of aggregated reviews for new titles. On The Bookscore, the articles for a certain book are gathered so that, like on movie websites like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic, a website visitor can look at a title and get an overall score for a book, averaged from multiple reviews. For example, “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed currently holds a score of 8.8; “Bring Up the Bodies” by Hilary Mantel” is the proud possessor of a 9.1.

“The Bookscore sets itself apart by including reviews from the only the most trusted sources, by giving users a complete online forum for news and discussion to go along with the reviews, and by allowing the users to contribute to the content directly by requesting books to be scored,” said co-founder Sam Griswold, who founded the site with Chris Laursen.

A button on the front page of the website lets visitors ask for a title to be included. The site’s blog includes articles on book world controversies like “Imagine” author Jonah Lehrer allegedly committing plagiarism and the frontrunners for the prestigious Man Booker Prize.

When looking for reviews, visitors can search through the category “Most Recent” for new releases, “Critic’s Picks” for books with the highest scores (“Bring” by Mantel has the all-time highest score, with other titles like "A Dance with Dragons" by George R.R. Martin also occupying slots), or Editor’s Choice, which currently features titles like “Cheerful Money” by Tad Friend.

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