Grade Inflation

I'm quite excited.  What The Librarian Did just arrived from Amazon today.  I'm hoping I'll get a chance to read it in the next week or two.  I'm still swamped with work.  I'm just coming off of mid-terms, which is why I haven't been posting much recently.  It looks like for the next two months things are stacking up, so I might be going a week or so between posts.  *Sigh*  This semester is turning into a total roller-coaster.  Summer is looking more beautiful by the minute...


Something which popped into my mind earlier today when I was browsing on Goodreads is grade inflation.  And I don't mean the academic kind (though I really wouldn't mind if someone pumped some air into my chem grade o.O).  Goodreads has this nifty little stat on everyone's profile that says what their average rating is.  Mine is 3.40, which is fine considering 3.00 is about average.  In my boredom I began to hop through my friend's profile's and look at their stats and I began to see a trend.  Not only was the average "average" rating well over 3.00, but most were over 4.00, and even 4.50!  I know everyone has their own way of rating a book, but come on, is every book really that good?  What's so wrong with rating a book as average?