When it comes to memoirs/autobios, I tend to rate them on how much they share about their lives. When it comes to historic events, I will give high ratings if the author clearly did a lot of research and digging on a topic where information is not readily available. I can appreciate an easy to follow book and also a very scholarly one as well. I read a lot of different kinds of books, I will give high ratings for authors who hold my attention to the point where I’m not reading other books in between (which is often).

1 - I enjoyed it

0 - I didn’t enjoy it

If an author has decided to write a book about a subject, it’s because they believe it is interesting or important for some reason. If they’re undertaking the writing of a book, then it’s their job to convey that in their writing as well and make it compelling to read.

You rate the writing not the subject. A great writer can make any subject interesting and a poor one makes reading about the most fascinating thing unbearable.

As you mention, I think it depends on the type of fiction book. For example, if it’s a book written on a subject like economics or history, I would rate the book based on the integrity of the research (if I’m able to) and how well the author(s) manage to distill complex topics to a wider audience and build a narrative.

I will exactly rate the book by how easy it was to follow the narrative thread, or how interesting it was (or what kind of tone the author took or what their sources were or how much editorializing they did).

Part of the skill of writing a biography, or a memoir is making it easy to follow and interesting. If you look at professional book reviews for nonfiction books, that’s the kind of stuff they talk about.

Just because it’s about history or someone’s life doesn’t mean it can’t be poorly written. Did the story(ies) captivate you? Did the author tell a concise story or was it rambling and go off in random directions? Did the author make it easy to understand what they were talking about and the concepts described in the book.

• How interesting/relevant (to me, anyway) the subject matter is.
• How well it’s written - that matters just as much in non-fiction as in fiction.
• If it’s research-based, how well it’s been researched (I do look at the footnotes).
• If it’s about a subject that is or may be at all controversial, what others in the field have to say about it.

I’m far more likely to read a research-based biography than I am an autobiography, but that’s not a universal rule for me. I’m not interested in autobiographies or biographies of so-called celebrities. The biographies on my bookshelf include books about my favorite 18th- and 19th-century British and American writers, historical figures (e.g. the Tudors, Eleanor of Aquitaine), and interesting/influential women (e.g. Georgia O’Keefe, Victoria Woodhull).

I assiduously avoid what I call political nonfiction – the kinds of books written by politicians and so-called pundits that exist solely to push a particular political agenda.

I mostly read non-fiction. My ratings are usually the following:

1. piece of junk, the author has no idea what he/she is doing and the book is full of error. It might even be a bad piece of propaganda. Examples are The Secret Life of Cows (Rosamund Young), which just is the author inventing stuff about how her cows think, or The Origins of the Modern World: A Global and Ecological Narrative from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Century (Robert Marks), which has so many factual errors that I in the end just gave up;
2. it was an ok read, to the point and informative. Most of the non-fiction books I read are here. Examples are WELS & Other Lutherans (John Brug), Gateway to Malay Culture (Zapi Ragman) or Stoic Logic (Benson Mates)
3. a good read. I learned a lot and it made me think. The book is well-researched and the author knows what he/she is done. Examples: Le Siècle de Louis XIV (Voltaire), which has a lot of information but bored me to tears (it doesn’t help that Voltaire is extremely biased and love facts and dates too much) or A Short History of inguistics (R. H. Robins), which is good, but cliché and never got updated.
4. an excellent read. A factual book with a high level of scholarship, which made me think a lot, gave different points of view and has loads of info. The Rulers of Magindanao in Modern History (Michael O Mastura), which completely changed how I viewed colonial history of South-East Asia, Geologica (Robyn Sutchbury), which gave me a lasting love of geology, or La grammaire de Denys le Thrace (Jean Lallot), which is an excellent commentary;
5. a masterpiece. An opus magnum. Examples are the The Great Church in Captivity (Steven Runciman or A History of Education in Antiquity (Henri-Irénée Marrou), a masterful take on respectively Orthodox faith after the fall of Constantinople and education in antiquity.

My average rating on goodreads 2.48 (+1000 books rated), so I’m quite picky.

In general the rating is how you like the book. Some might think that one book is excellent. Others that the same book is junk.

I feel like I would be doing a great disservice to rate a non-fic book by how…

Yeah, I don’t think your rating is that important.

I rate all books with 3 categories, 1-5.

The first is the quality of the writing (Q) some would say this is the objective criteria . the second is the experience of reading it (E) which is subjective, the third is the impact it has on me (would i recommend it, would i reread it, super-subjective).

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QxE + I for a max score of 30.

depends on the type on non fic and also the writer’s purpose for writing, i think. for biographies, i’d rate it based on how easy it is to read and my own personal interest. for self help, philosophy, history etc. i base it more on the informational stuff. so what and how they use research, how well they elaborate their points, and i also like to think about how well i can connect/apply that info to my own life

I’m pretty generous to memoirs because they are usually written by someone who I respect who has gone through hard times and shared them publicly. Like Britney Spears’ book was not well written, but I gave it five stars because she’s been through enough without needing to be critiqued on her ghost writer, it was brave of her to share her story. Narrative nonfiction I usually rate based on how interesting it was/easy to follow/accurate, etc. I am probably more generous with nonfiction as well.

Because history can’t be presented as objective.

Authors will prioritize some facts over others in how they construct their narrative, two authors may include the same information, but will come out with two totally different ways of telling the same story.

All historical writing is presented as an argument to the reader, authors are trying to convince you of their version of historical events, and will adopt different points of focus to do so.

Well I’ve read a few history books. Some are extremely dry and dull, some are written with an infectious enthusiasm. But also the writing skills of the author are important as well.