This is a compilation of various things that caught my eye this week. They were things that needed more explanation than I could offer in A La Carte, but not enough that they merited an article of their own.
The Great October Giveaway Winners
The Great October Giveaway comes to a close today. I have already drawn the names of the winners and will be sending emails out shortly. So check your inbox in the new few minutes to see if you’re among the winners.
Amazon Reviews - They Matter
I post almost all of my book reviews at Amazon and, because I write so many reviews, have become one of the top reviewers there (ranked 335 out of approximately 1,000,000). It is always interesting to me to track the reactions to them. I post the majority of my most notable reviews here as well, but of course Amazon represents a much larger, much more diverse readership. What I say at my blog tends to go over well with the readers here, but often doesn’t go over so well at Amazon, especially when I write about Christian bestsellers.
Take my review of Joel Osteen’s Become a Better You. It got a fair number of mentions in the blogosphere (27 blog reactions, according to Technorati), the majority of which were positive. But at Amazon it has been voted on 91 times with only 54 of those people believing it is helpful (You can see it here). This tells me that there is a great deal of interest in this book (which there must be for a book with an initial print run of three million!) and that people are greatly divided on the book.
Then there is the review of Jerry Bridge’s Respectable Sins. It has been voted on 21 times, with all 21 people agreeing that the review was helpful (You can see it here). I take this to mean that the type of people who research and read Jerry Bridges’ books are from a fairly narrow slice of the Christian world.
And then there is the infamous review of Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change. It is registering 248 votes with 189 of them saying the review was positive. (You can see it here). Of course this book, as with all of McLaren’s, elicits strong reactions, both positive and negative.
What does all of this voting mean? It actually does prove important. The reviews that are deemed most helpful, purely by volume of helpful votes, are included on the main product page for the book. They are the first reviews people see. And since Amazon sells countless millions of books, a good or a bad review there can make a lot of difference as it will be seen by a lot of people. While customers vote on whether or not a review was helpful, in reality the votes are really about whether or not customers agree with the review (which is ironic, since most of these people haven’t actually read the book).
The long and the short is this. If you are an Amazon shopper, you should get in the habit of voting for reviews you find helpful. It really does matter.
The Forgotten 500
Some time ago, Al Mohler recommended a book called The Forgotten 500, a book that tells the story of an amazing but largely forgotten rescue. When he waxes eloquent about a book on the Second World War, I take it as a given that I am going to need to give the book a read. I immediately secured a copy for myself.
During the ongoing bombing campaigns against the massive oil refineries in Romania, a country conquered by Nazi Germany, hundreds of American bomber crews were shot down, far from lands occupied by Allied Forces. Though they had been warned of the risks they took in falling into the hands of the local populace, they were shocked to find the Serbian villagers embracing them and regarding them as conquering heroes. Serbian forces controlled by General Draza Mihailovich helped these American soldiers evade the Germans and eventually helped them organize an incredible rescue operation. Under the very noses of the German army they built an airstrip and landed plane after plane there, taking the Americans back to freedom. The Serbians did this despite knowing that it could cost them their lives. Had the Germans discovered what was happening, they would have tortured and killed entire villages.
This story is set against the backdrop of the Serbian-Croatian conflict with Mihailovich’s Serbian forces battling the opposing Communist Croatian forces, even while they both battled the Germans. The author, Gregory Freeman, shows how the Allied forces came to favor the communists, even after the Serbians saved so many American lives. The communist forces eventually destroyed the Serbian resistance and communism reigned in Yugoslavia for many decades. For this reason the entire operation was buried for years and was largely forgotten. The Forgotten 500, though, brings it all to light, shining some richly-deserved attention on the heroic Serbian forces who gave so much and received nothing in return.
The Forgotten 500 describes a fascinating piece of history and one that was, until now, almost entirely forgotten. And this, just when we thought that there was little new we could say about the Second World War. World War 2 enthusiasts will want to add this book to their collection! You can buy it from Amazon.
Comments (1) »
1. DLE
October 20, 2007
11:51 AM
Amazon reviews are a truly mixed bag. More often than not, I find them to be unhelpful.
Here’s why I think Amazon reviews can pose problems:
1. Fanboys - Fans of a certain writer or company tend to be blind to the problems in a book or product. Often, it’s hard to distinguish whether a work is a legitimate 5-star item or not if all the 5-star reviews have been by fanboys who would give 10 stars if they could. Who is a fanboy? Pretty tough to tell, isn’t it? I’d rather hear a review from someone who stumbled upon a writer or product by accident. I’m then more likely to get an unbiased review.
2. The Star Rating - A random sampling of any fifty products on Amazon should yield a 2.5 star rating, but that doesn’t happen even though statistics alone should tell you that most items are merely fair. What explains so many 5-star ratings on Amazon, then? Well, for a lot of casual critics, they only post if they like something, not when they don’t . That means a disproportionate number of 5-star votes exist. Fanboys exacerbate this problem, especially when they post a 5-star rating for everything their favorite author or company sells.
3. Poor critical analysis - People aren’t discerning today. In the case of a non-fiction book, especially a Christian one, they’ll knock it by reflex if they encounter an idea they don’t like. But knee-jerk responses aren’t wise. The narrow person encounters an idea that jars their world and he’s too ready to dismiss it, rather than wrestle with it. That’s why controversial authors are always awarded mostly 5 or 1-star reviews. Fanboys give a high score, and Haters a 1. But most books and products aren’t that simplistic. One of the things that bothers me tremendously in the Christian community today is we don’t wrestle long enough with questions posed by controversial authors, especially when we disagree with those authors. I often recommend books I don’t agree with simply because the author made me think hard on issues I may not have considered. I may still be processing what they wrote weeks later. In fact, their insights may even make me rethink my position on an issue. I may give that book 4 stars even if I don’t like much of what the author says. But other reviewers just jump right to the 5 or 1-star review because they aren’t discerning enough to spot the holes or they do spot the holes and write the book off. And that helps no one reading those reviews.
4. Ghettos - Ghettos are a broader variant of the fanboy problem. Here, we’re so entrenched in one way of thinking that we never expose ourselves to other avenues of thought outside our comfort zone. This is a particular problem in the Christian realm, too. If I tend to only read Reformed books, then I’m not reading Pentecostal authors. The body of my reviews then becomes unrepresentative of the greater whole. If I’m a fanboy, I only make the problem worse.
5. Knowledge - Many reviewers have not read widely enough to wisely review material. They may rate a book 5 stars, when it’s more like 2.5 when compared against the larger body of work on a given subject matter. Only by reading more broadly would that reviewer know that the book, while amazing to them, is only average against even more spectacular books. If I’ve never eaten ostrich before, I may think my ostrich burger at Exotic Burger Shack is amazing. But if I’ve eaten ostrich burgers all over the world, then I might know that Exotic Burger Shack’s ostrich burger is actually not that great.
These five issues make it difficult to get a good idea of the truth from an Amazon review. This isn’t to say that Amazon reviews are worthless (I’m a Top 1000 reviewer on Amazon myself), only that we need to be wary of the problems inherent in a volunteer system of criticism.