The Wizarding World Once Again...

I constantly use Harry Potter references, get used to it. I'm going to use the reviews of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (The Seventh Book) On Amazon and evaluate the importance and flaws of these reviews.

When I looked up the book, I was very relieved to see that they had illuminated directly underneath the product the most helpful FAVORABLE REVIEW and the most helpful CRITICAL review. I feel that this is a great way to showcase the reviews, rather than just having uneducated or biased jumbled messes of reviews that would obviously contort the buyers. THANK GOODNESS, is what I must say. Users can deem reviews "helpful" if they wish, and that's awesome, so we aren't just caught in a sea of bewilderment and confusion when we are looking for a decent review of a book we are potentially going to buy or read.

The first gives it 5 stars. (<- click to view)

This review is, I believe, on point. He gives a lengthy, appealing, justified review that credits JK Rowling and the plot and characters for being awesome, and the writing for being better than ever, but this isn't the universal point of view about the book.

Review 2: 3 Stars (<- click to view)

This review is rather critical, and has absolute relevance, he says that the book is good, but can’t receive a five-star review because Rowling uses many clichés and shortcuts to make her story work, and also includes many plot holes in her novel.

While both of these reviews are indeed helpful, and seem to be written by intelligent people, I don’t believe that we can entirely base our opinions or desires to read a book solely on these reviews from users who don’t necessarily do this professionally. I'd like to say that I absolutely LOVE Harry Potter, and would say that I'm moderately obsessed in comparison to most. So, obviously I'd give the book five hundred stars on a 5 scale, but that's just me. Based on complete and total literary aspects of the book? Hell no. And that's where we have a problem: average joes like myself rating books and others basing their opinions or purchasing of the books on user reviews entirely.

Do I think that these reviews are a step in the right direction? Absolutely. One can look and see how favorably a book is generally reviewed by an audience of his own people, and it helps to get a more realistic idea of how a book is reviewed by the intended audience. I like New York Times reviews and all that get posted on the back of the books, but they aren’t always realistic and don’t sway me in either direction. Real people with real reviews are important in today’s world. I was also happy to see that when I was browsing on the page for the book, it first lists literary critiques and reviews from other sources before I could even find the link to user reviews, this gives the users the ability to first see what professionals think of the book before they are thrust into an environment where thousands of normal people give their “two cents.”

So, overall I think that the way that Amazon has their reviews constructed is helpful and logical. There’s always going to be positive and negative feedback for books and other entertainment or educational products, and one must be prepared to encounter these and still go into the use or reading of it with an open mind. I know that I’m guilty with biasing movies based on Rotten Tomatoes movie reviews, because I end up agreeing with the critics 90% of the time, but if we are capable of open-mindedly entering the world a book creates, and not continuously recalling reviews and other’s perspectives when reading, these reviews are very helpful and can help us to avoid reading things that are generally unfavorable, IF they are unfavorable for good reason and by those that we seem to be able to relate to on an intellectual level.

So, I suppose my questions are: Do you think that it is helpful or harmful (or both) to read book reviews BEFORE reading or purchasing the actual book? Why or Why not? Should we leave the critiquing up to the experts? Or ignore them entirely?