Word Count Wednesday & Do You Think There Should Be Book Guides?

So my word count is zero again.  But I thought about it more this week.  I think that's progress.  Or at least I'm calling it progress.

I've been reading a lot of books instead of writing. (I know, I know, but maybe it will inspire my muse to come back or something.)  But I've been reading historical fiction to be exact.  And some books are definitely better than others.  There are some I wish I hadn't paid for and that could come with a warning or rating of some kind.  You know, like on IMDb there's a parental guide that says what kind of violence, language, and sex scenes are in a movie, that's what I want to find for books.  I know there's some sites out there for YA and kids books, but I sort of wish there was something out there for adult books as well.

Case in point:  I read a book that had great reviews on Amazon (remind me to take all of those reviews with a grain of salt from now on) and it also had the recommendation of a few friends who'd read it and rated it on Goodreads.  I thought I was pretty safe buying it, and it was on sale, so I did.

The first twenty pages were actually pretty good.  I was turning each page, anxious to see what happens.  Then the heroine, who is supposedly a proper and innocent girl in Regency England, goes into a man's bedroom, stares at his bare chest, then when he awakens and seems shocked to find her in his room, she goes over and kisses him.  And if you've read regencies before, you know this is a big no-no.  Of course things escalate from there and several other implausible things happen, but the book degenerates into mindless sex scenes about every other page.  Like, scenes that don't even make sense, that don't contribute to the characters or the plot, and are just there to . . . annoy me? Sell books?  Show that the book has no real plot so it needs something to fill the pages?  It reduced the main characters to one-dimensional cardboard types and the story ended up just making me shake my head and think, really?  REALLY? No rhyme or reason to it at all.

I was so disappointed and could not imagine how I'd spent good money for a book like that.  And it's not the first time I've been disappointed.  I wish there was some way to have a book guide that said something like:

Violence: None
Language: Some
Sex Scenes: About 35 or so
Plot Cliches: About Seven.  Maybe More.
True to Setting (Regency or otherwise): On a scale of 1-10 about 3
Character Depth: On a scale of 1-10 about a 1. Maybe a 0
Chance you should spend money on this book:  0

I know, I know, people's tastes are different, but really, just some sort of guide would be nice sometimes.

What do you think?  Guides like Goodreads and Amazon reviews have to be enough?  Guides would be too subjective to be helpful?  Smacks too much of censorship?