书评好坏更多反映读者偏好，而非书本身质量。
Are some books better than others?
- 分析62万条书评，发现内容对阅读愉悦度预测力弱
- 热门书籍评论中，10倍信息来自读者而非书本身
- 资深书评人评价更稳定，适合推荐系统参考
学者、评奖委员会和普通读者常讨论著作价值。文学从业者与记者对书评中的主观性看法不一。我们分析了624,320条数值与文本书评，发现专业出版书籍的内容无法预测随机读者的阅读愉悦感。在线评论中，流行小说与非虚构类书籍的评论信息量高达10倍于书籍本身，主要反映评论者特征。对于偏好的题材，读者较少给低分，但仍难以达成一致评价。书评的评估在经验丰富的评论者间比普通读者更具可泛化性。针对同一本书的不同评论，在具体问题描述上的可预测性较差。结论：研究文学质量、授奖及推荐系统时，极端相对主义是合理立场。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Scholars, awards committees, and laypeople frequently discuss the merit of written works. Literary professionals and journalists differ in how much perspectivism they concede in their book reviews. Here, we quantify how strongly book reviews are determined by the actual book contents vs. idiosyncratic reader tendencies. In our analysis of 624,320 numerical and textual book reviews, we find that the contents of professionally published books are not predictive of a random reader's reading enjoyment. Online reviews of popular fiction and non-fiction books carry up to ten times more information about the reviewer than about the book. For books of a preferred genre, readers might be less likely to give low ratings, but still struggle to converge in their relative assessments. We find that book evaluations generalize more across experienced review writers than casual readers. When discussing specific issues with a book, one review text had poor predictability of issues brought up in another review of the same book. We conclude that extreme perspectivism is a justifiable position when researching literary quality, bestowing literary awards, and designing recommendation systems.
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