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I've had the same problem that Mike has had. IME, the issue arises more with "classic" books, and the introductory review is not a book review as much as it is something of an essay - a scholarly discussion of the history and impact of the book. If you buy a Penguin paperback of, say, a book by Jane Austen, you'll often get a somewhat interesting essay written by a professor at Oxford or Cambridge talking about the history of the work, a little about Jane, and how the book was reviewed. But more recent classics will have something similar as well - things like "Catcher in the Rye," "Catch 22", "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" ... okay, I've run out of "cat" works.
I like these, and sometimes they're pretty interesting...but they're not what I want when I want a sample of the book.
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