Why is Classic Literature Rated so Poorly on Goodreads?

I recently saw some discourse around the web regarding the Goodreads top 100, which ranks the site’s top 100 books according to user ratings. The crux of the issue, is that some are perplexed by the sheer modernity of the list and the total absence of classics - or even just books that are older than a couple decades.

As blogger Woolgathering points out in their analysis, as of last week the list featured only “ten books published before the year 2000, with the oldest books having been published sometime in the 1950s.”

Compare this, say, to the top 100 rated list on Letterboxd, which contains films spanning across film history, and the question emerges:

Are modern readers cooked?

My gut instinct says we’re probably giving Goodreads ratings more credit than they’re worth.

Still, why aren’t classics getting good reviews? I mean, how does Frankenstein only get 3.9 stars and those bloody wizarding-school books average out at 4.5? Do people just not enjoy the classics anymore?

A blogger going by Tiramisu made some good points on the subject in their own blog post, noting that classics are often controversial and challenging by nature. Moreover, many people have bad experiences from being forced to read them in school (a problem that often blights poetry, I might add).

Perhaps more crucially, they note that “good” is somewhat of a reductive term when it comes to certain books.

Give me, say, a modern horror fresh off the presses for a week and I’d happily review it based on my experiences reading the thing. Task me to do the same thing with Beloved or Wuthering Heights, and that becomes not only more of a challenge, but also might feel somewhat frivolous. Maybe it’s a little elitist to say, but some books carry too much weight for that style of discourse¹.

Personally, I think giving something like Crime and Punishment three stars feels like leaving an average trip advisor review for the Galleria dell’Accademia because David’s lower extremities didn’t give you a dopamine fix.

How do you rate Sir Gawain and the Green freaking Knight? Like I don’t know, man, did the author not hear that you gotta show, not tell? Sure, The Old Man and the Sea was okay, but maybe the protagonist should have just put the fish back. Yeah, I read Pride and Prejudice. Bit dry, huh? Wouldn’t recommend.

Look, of course I’m not saying you can’t show preferences when it comes to the classics. After all, no book is truly above being called enjoyable or tedious. And who decides what is considered a classic anyway? It’s worth remembering that the traditional literary canon is a flawed and constantly-in-flux construct historically dictated by old white men with a burning hatred for anything that isn’t dense realism.

Point being, I’m not in any way suggesting that classics are inherently better than other books, nor that we shouldn’t question their place in the literary canon (or our own personal canons).

That said, I think it stands to reason that people who enjoy and engage with classic literature aren’t tackling the great novels just to rate them on Goodreads, of all places². If you are, I dare say you might be missing out - not just on what makes the great books great, but what it really means to observe and find discourse with art.