I find the amazon book, music and dvd reviews usually quite useful. You can instantly filter out the useless reviews "book had damaged cover" "arrived late" and so on, or the utterly daft ones with american christians panning a book on fossils for not saying the dinosaurs drowned in the flood, or some nutter trying to say Einstein was wrong. But something which gives some insight into whether the book is up your street can be a real help. I have been put off a couple of books because otherwise favourable reviews give examples of convoluted writing. I generally haven't got the patience to have to construe what the author is actually on about especially if the subject matter is itself difficult. It's either lazy writing, poor editing, or not uncommonly a pretentious author trying to sound cleverer than he is by being obscure. Similarly reviewers can point out if there are silly mistakes - this matters a lot if it's a maths or physics book where the material is hard. On the other hand I have seen obvious shill reviews on a truly terrible military history book which had a load of 5 star reviews from people who had only been moved to reviewe this one book, and / or had candidly admitted it was their lecturer's book and felt obliged to brown-nose. Similarly with music - if someone writes an intelligent review of a performance I can get an idea whether this or that version of a symphony is going to appeal whatever score they themselves give it.
that needs to be shouted about.
Many thanks to you and those helpful reviewers!
