I have been a member of a book group for over 5 years. There's been a few personnel changes during that time - one or two people have moved away, one person found that she couldn't find any reading time once she'd had her first baby, and we welcomed two friends, one of whom had just moved into the area, and the other approached us as she was fed up with her current book club which was little more than a dining club for middle-class mothers. But essentially we've remained constant. In May this year we celebrated our 5th birthday with a long weekend in Hay on Wye. It was lovely. Over the lifetime of the reading group, we've evolved a number of rules of engagement. First of all, we take it in turns to host the meetings, and the hostess (we're female only) has to make a meal as well as serve drinks and so on. For about the past year and a half, the hostess has additionally had to propose three books for election, the book receiving the most votes being the one that we'll all read the following month and review at the next hostess's home. You get the picture, I'm sure.
So as the beginning of September loomed, and with it my hosted meeting, my mind started turning around suitable books, and much perusing on Amazon's Listmania! ensued. I felt that it would be interesting to put a work of non-fiction for the first time, and evolved various criteria for how I would select such a book. It had to be reasonably accessible, for example. And not too long - 30o pages max. The right non-fiction refused to materialise.
Finally, I was waiting for a train one day at Birmingham New Street station, when it occurred to me that any non-fiction book for sale in a train station bookshop should be intrinsically accessible. I started browsing through the History session and my attention was drawn to "The Thames : England's River" by Jonathan Schneer. My interest in the history of London was crystallised about a year ago when I discovered that until relatively recently, the Thames was only one of a number of rivers in London, and I've always thought it a privilege to be living so close to one of the greatest cities in the world. So maybe this book on the Thames was it. This is when a further selection criteria came into play. I had decided that I would only pick a book with an average 5 star rating on.
When I got home I found Schneer's book on Amazon and browsed through the reviews. To my pleasure, I found that every single reviewer had given it a star rating, and there was a number of references to how readable it was. I had found my non-fiction book.
On Sunday September 9th, we all met at my house, and after discussing the last book (The Road by Cormac McCarthy) and eating dinner, I presented my three options. There was slight consternation at the appearance of a history book, but people had open minds and it was voted in (by a narrow margin, it has to be said, and I had to use the deciding vote which is the hostess's perogative!)
A couple of weeks later, then, I started reading The Thames. The first chapter, which went through the prehistoric era, was fascinating, but as we progressed, it started getting a bit hard going. My head was spinning with the speed of the narrative, with important eras such as the Tudors flashing by in less than a page. I experienced mounting panic as I thought of my friends struggling through this stuff, knowing it was all my fault. The narrative did settle down a bit, for example the Blitz had its own chapter, and was incredibly interesting. I did learn quite a bit, but the book was definitely faulty - it was episodic and the metaphors of the river were a bit laboured to say the least.
Last Sunday we all met up at Sally's house to discuss it. We all agreed that it was pompous, with no real narrative flow, and dubiously selected historical episodes, well those of us who had managed to read it agreed anyway. Everyone really wants to choose the book that is unanimously loved and remembered (even though these make for pretty dull discussions), and I'm no exception. Truly on the back foot, I explained that I'd made sure that it had an average 5 star recommendations on Amazon before selecting it. We all speculated about how couild this be so? The best explanation we came up with was that the recommendations might have been from Anglophile Americans. I agreed to go back and check.
So this lunchtime I've been onto Amazon to revisit those recommendations, and am disappointed to find that the 6 reviews have been written by only two people. In fact only two people, namely Kurt Messick and J Chippendale (who incidentally are both English) are responsible for all 6 reviews. Each have written one review and then posted it three times.
Are Kurt and J. friends of the author or are they working for the publisher, perhaps? I think we should be told.
Shouldn't Amazon be checking for duplicate reviews that could be (deliberately or otherwise) distorting the overall rating, perhaps? Yes definitely. The average star rating is displayed prominently with the book's description, right from the initial search results onwards. I for one, use it as a guiding factor when purchasing all sorts of stuff on Amazon, including books. Next time, I'll check the reviews a little more carefully, especially when it's not just my own enjoyment but that of other people that's at stake.
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