[Gideon]

I love bad reviews on Amazon.

They are so useful... I usually just glance at the good ones, and then head straight to the '1's'

Why? Well, a couple of reasons.

First off, people who are going to be thoughtful will rarely give a 1, and so if there are any competently written 1's I'll give them some serious attention. I'm not usually reading things that a thoughtful person would give a 1 (and by thoughtful I mean capable of intelligent, civil disagreement - they might not agree, but can see the difference between agreement and quality work) so this is a pretty good rule of thumb.

Of course, thoughtful is rarely the case. Usually the 1's are written by complete idjits of one variety or another but sometimes finding out who a book pisses off is a great way of knowing if you'll like it or the viewpoint being expressed. Since I tend to both academically and personally study religion.... the field is a bit of landmine and this is of enormous use. And, depending on what I find there, I might start looking at the high reviews, then the middle ones.

But the 1's save me a lot of time.