In this, the first monthly “Review” issue of 2025, I’m introducing a new feature – a rating system. It’s something I’ve been cooking up in recent years to explain and justify my judgements on the quality of books and films and other works of art that tell stories. These are obviously abstract notions about subjective experience, but they work for me – and I hope they work for you.

My Rating System for Most Books/Films 

* Horizontality: How much and how well did the book/film provide a sense of a particular place, time, community, and/or culture?

* Verticality: How deeply did the book/film go in mining the depths of the human experience?

* Stickiness: How tightly did the book/film keep me glued to the story?

* Literary/Visual Richness: How well did the written descriptions/cinematography enhance the story?

For some non-fiction works that need a slightly different approach – e.g., Stoic Paradoxes and The Last Lecture (reviewed below) – I’ll be using this…

My Rating System for Some Non-Fiction Works 

* Vertical Knowledge: How much did the work elucidate what is essential to the human experience?

* Horizontal Knowledge: How much did the work teach about the details of the subject matter investigated (history, science, psychology, etc.)?

* Depth of Thinking: Were the insights and revelations deep? Did the work leave me feeling that I’d learned something important?

* Literary Quality: Was the writing itself engaging and entertaining?

One More Thing 

There will be occasions – rare occasions – when I will add a half-point or a point to my rating. When, for example, the book or film changes the way I think or feel about something in some important way (I’m thinking of Schindler’s List or Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk, which I’m reading now) or when, even though it doesn’t score very well on the analytics, I enjoyed it so much that I still want to recommend it strongly (e.g., my rating today of What We Do in the Shadows).

In this issue, I’ll be applying my new system to three books and four films/TV series that I’ve enjoyed.

The books:

* Stoic Paradoxes by Cicero
* The Blue Hotel by Stephen Crane
* The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

The films/TV series:

* Maria
* Emilia Pérez
* Conclave
* What We Do in the Shadows

Plus… I’ll be sharing my list of 46 more books that I’m thinking of reading in 2025.