Amazon Reviews

Celebrating 100 Reviews on Amazon

Today I put up my 100th review on Amazon.com. While my friend Lew Taylor will be deploring my use of Amazon, I have found it to be a useful way for me to write a review of what I have read in the world of books. A few non literary reviews have made their way into the system as I play the reviewer game off and on in pursuit of a higher ranking. There are also some double reviews as well, but so far I have placed 84 history books, 4 fiction books, 2 board games, and 10 assorted reviews including a few double entries onto Amazon for a total of 100 reviews as of today. 

The latest review was Eric Foner's Reconstruction which I read along with the final course in the EdX Eric Foner's Civil War & Reconstruction MOOC series. I enjoyed this method of watching Foner lectures and reading his book. It really helped make the reading more engaging. You can find more information on the MOOC at: Eric Foner's Civil War and Reconstruction

One of my goals with these reviews was to see how high I could go in the ratings. My first book review put me at some number exceeding 1 million. I quickly made it down to 100,000 something and steadily worked my way to a better ranking. It took some time to get to 50,000 and I even quit writing reviews for a while as I got discouraged from the lost cause idiots who did not like my review of the Kennedy brothers' waste of good toilet paper masquerading as a non-fiction book, The South was Right! My answer to that was "No, it was not and if you think it was, then you are an idiot." This is where the problems with Amazon's review process begin.

I decided to quit worrying about it and continue to write and post my reviews. These are more for my own use so that I can look back and see my impressions on a particular book. I save them all in The Mad Historian's Athenaeum online for reference. I am curious to see how far I can go with Amazon reviews. My best score is 40,677 with 125 Helpful votes out of 157 total. You can go see my reviews at: gloine36 profile page and even vote if you want to. Gloine36 is my Amazon handle. I will eventually have to change that to my name.

A word of caution: I am not writing serious formal academic reviews. I could, but I would prefer to be paid for that. Instead, I write what I want to for my use. So please do not expect to see a detailed academic review. I would never be able to write those for Amazon. I also read what I am interested in, not what is sent to me. You will be seeing more educational titles pop up over time as well as some more works of fiction by Terry Brooks. I am going to review the Shannara series as a reward for reading so much history all the time. Yes, I need a break and there are only five Game of Thrones books!