That won't work if the ending is just heartbreaking.

The irony here is palpable.

One of my favourite books.

Read it years ago and don't remember much from it. I see I rated it 3 stars on Goodreads, so I considered it nothing special at the time. I feel that is about accurate for a book that evokes nothing from me years later.

Earthsea Cycle?

For authors just look if they have published peer-reviewed papers and how often they are cited, or what their experience is (for example a journalist that was based in a foreign country for 2 decades could write just as well about an event as a historian might, but from a different point of view).

And for books I'd look at Wikipedia. For most popular books there is usually a Wikipedia page with a section that aggregates the book's reception by scholars with sources. For example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind#Reception

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_War_for_Civilisation#Reviews

Welp, well there we go ...

We still have countries where child brides are a common occurrence. I wish the innocence children was actually sacred.

5. Loved it, still think about it months or years later. I never read books a second time, so for me that's not a qualifier for 5 stars.

6. Just an excellent book, but with minor flaws. Usually related to pacing.

7. Just decent, was worth my time.

8. Obvious issues with the plot, writing, characters etc. For example if your characters are cardboard cutouts you end up here.

9. Never rated a book a 1. I don't rate DNFs, and apart from that I'm pretty strict in my book selection.

Charlie from Flowers for Algernon.

I had the same feeling after looking up Dan Simmons. Made me sad. As for Orson Scott Card, it stopped me from actually buying/reading his work after Ender's Game.

No

Just read when you want to?

I only read books in English and I keep my phone nearby to lookup words if I don't know their meaning and they seem important to the story (most aren't though). 95% of books I get through without looking up a word. But I also want to mention that some writers or books are just harder to read because of they way they are written. There is nothing you can do about that, and if it stops you from enjoying the book then just don't read it. There is nothing wrong with that.

Just use a bar chart.

I was originally planning to make a joke about WordArt.....guess I wasn't far off.

The only thing worse than a pie chart is a 3D pie chart.

Your colouring should reflect the story you want to tell. What you are basically saying is that you are ok with a visualisation where red means good and green means bad as long as there is a scale/legend.

Yes, if you need to look at the scale to actually understand what is going on then you made a mistake in your visualisation.

Thanks for looking into it

It really doesn't matter that your prose isn't the best of the best if your stories are great. A lot better than the reverse, that's for sure.

For real? That's fantastic and immediately shows how biased reviews can be.

Making a visualisation is the art of removing things.

Slaves you mean

Which colour represents what gender? Even if it seems obvious, always add a legend.