PD Harris Chimes in on an HK Review

See it here.

W.Boudville abandons medicine...

...and enters a new field -- financial engineering. His incisive review of the book Credit Derivative Strategies: New Thinking on Managing Risk and Return, edited by Rohan Douglas, from Bloomberg Press, published very recently: on July 31, 2007 (as the books that W.Boudville reviews tend to be, at least those he gives a high evaluation) sets a new standard of... er... uhm.... something.

The Good Doctor Under Attack Continued

Methinks the good doctor is confused. He thinks the HKAS is attacking him??? Oh well, some extra publicity for the blog.

Dayton Blog: Michael Vick, Amazon.com, and more...

In a new post on his blog on Dayton Daily News, Vick Mickunas deals with Michael Vick, dogfighting, and Amazon's selling magazines like Gamecock. Check it out.

Innocent passerby perplexed

After reading Harriet Klausner's review of the book The Careful Use of Compliments: An Isabel Dalhousie Novel, a person unfamiliar with the situation writes [emphasis mine]:

Trina L. Drotar

HK, you mention that people who enjoyed Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency would enjoy this book although they are different. It would be useful if you would elaborate on that. If you read both books, you certainly should be able to do that. All I am seeing here is a plot summary, which I could get from Amazon or many other places [indeed]. You might keep this in mind in other reviews. Why is the book good, interesting, bad, etc? What made the book that way? Are the characters well developed, etc? These are far more useful than plot summaries.

Ah, we agree. But, with the above recipe, how many reviews would you produce ? Moreover, you may even want to write a two-star review at times! For a Top Reviewer that's a no-starter.

Daily blotter: Quality Comments™ and more.

JP Picks wrote :
>I enjoyed your streamlined review, Grady. I should be seeing
>this film soon.

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The Good Doctor is under attack! Waylaid by the Klausner Protection Squad!

Joseph J. Neuschatz wrote:
What's wrong Harriet ? Only 6 (six) reviews yesterday ? Headache ?
[...]
ken Oconnell wrote:
the only joke here is you M.D., you ranting about a woman who is ranked number one on a website on the internet? Truly where did you go to Med School,Franklin Pierce? Go away

Twilight wrote:
Joseph J. Neuschatz M.D.,
I have read the reviews of you book "terrO.R." I can't wait to read it.

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Our good friend Mark-O has another new review! (And an item to sell, of course).

He changed his seller nickname -- it's '123marko' now (the old was 'shipbooksnow' or something like that).

Also notice that he has deleted three reviews -- the ones with the comments, of course. The comments, as you remember, were pointing to his copy/pasting his 'Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!' spam-piece thirty-three times, and that he's been selling all the books he's reviewed. Would someone please report [this gentleman's activities] to Amazon so we can be done with this particular phenom. I mean, so that we can see what Amazon will do in such a case.

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More neuroscience news from our friend Top Reviewer W. Boudville! His valuable thoughts on the book Consciousness and Cognition: Fragments of Mind and Brain can be found here. Also of interest is his older review of Sextus Empiricus: Against the Physicists. Against the Ethicists. (Loeb Classical Library No. 311) by Sextus Empiricus. He did not quite like this particular book: three stars. A rarity! Not to be missed.

Hmm... never heard that before!

25. Peter D Harris on Aug 17th, 2007 at 10:08 am:

So you don’t have a better idea than the existing system, nor do Amazon, nor do I, when it comes to the issues you are so concerned about. In that case, why not just take your business elsewhere and forget about Amazon as countless others have done before and will do so in future? [...]

Oh cunning PD Harris! He just keeps coming up with new stuff...

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Competely OFF TOPIC: curious article about Bergman, check it out.

Our friend Top Reviewer Robert Morris was asked:

Here:

Tralphonso Beshore
Is every book you read a 5 star book?

Robert Morris
Excellent question. No but most of those I review are.

And, as we've pointed out before, since Robert Morris has been, apparently for years, reviewing on average a couple of books a day, it follows that not only does he read at least that much daily, but actually even more than that: but he does not review the books that aren't quite perfect. Hmmm... OK, if you say so, Sir. Btw, about those that are not five stars, what are they? Four stars? Have you ever posted a one-star review? I couldn't find any; as a matter of fact, I could only see five-star reviews -- but then I haven't checked it all, of course.

Amazon appears to be selling cock-fighting rags

Check this out. I thought this was bs posted by a fruitcake when someone mentioned it (isn't organized animal fighting illegal?), but it's true. How could that be? Also read the related article. Here's another one (thanks to Barbara).

Here's another one: The Feathered Warrior.

Here's another one: Grit and Steel

Thanks to Barbara for the links.
Thanks to the 'fruitcake' who posted this comment. That's the risks you take: first, people will think you're a fruitcake; then it turns out it's all true.

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Oops, there's more. Dog fighting. The "Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed" thing.


And more.

Mark-O got another book to sell.

A new book to sell, a new review on the Mark-O reviews list. But this time he took trouble to write a new review for it (rather than pasting in his "Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!" piece one more time). Why the change?

Now here's an enterprising Amazon Bookseller

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0007191332/sr=8-1/qid=1187283786/ref=olp_product_details/102-4421097-9253744?ie=UTF8&qid=1187283786&sr=8-1&seller=

Make sure you look at the price. What's really funny is The Wild Rose isn't even written yet. Amazon has something goofy going with this whole book. I went looking for The Winter Rose, which is the second of a planned trilogy that's already been published in the UK. According to the author the third book, still unwritten, will be called The Wild Rose.

I searched Amazon for The Winter Rose and came up with this book. How the heck does one sell a book that hasn't even been written? It's a head scratcher.

In Grady's own words

Profile for Grady Harp:

Author of WAR SONGS, I am an Artist Representative, Gallery Owner, writer of essays and articles on Figurative and all Representational art [...]

What's the deal with the capitalization here? Is the self-inflated maestro misunderoverestimating a bit his, uhm, literary prowess? No, that can't be, 'cause if it were true, how would he be getting so many 'helpuful' votes. Please advise, for I am lost.

Lambert's Ghosttown: Rivitting !

Harriet Klausner, born in the USA, holder of an MLS degree, whose thesis topic apparently was 'the Impact of Science Fiction Reading by High School Seniors on Standardized Reading Scores', evaluates the book Ghosttown (by Mercedes Lambert) thusly: "Rivitting". Yeah, I believe she writes these reviews... their a rivitting, absolutly rivitting reed; Harriet, your brilient; your a Great Literary Authority who's No.1 Position as an Amazon reviewer is clearly justified.

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Btw, today, she's already read eight (8) books. I mean at least eight: she reviewed eight but maybe she's read more: after all, Harriet doesn't review everything she reads: she reviews only the books that she likes a lot, four- or five-star ones. Eight reviews today. That, after having read (reviewed) what, fourteen books yesterday? Awesome, simply awesome.

Hurried Klausner Copies too much again!

Here,

This is the second time I've seen one of her reviews with the ISBN # and other book detail at the top of the review. Is she pulling that along with the editorial reviews off of the book page? It's not on her review of the book on B&N. Just wondering.

Ted Klotz: Now Here's An Honest Reviewer (NOT!)

I give credit for this to a posting by Claudia I on the Amazon discussions.

See Reviews by Edward Klotz. I do believe that's spamming, isn't it?

See his book, The Trigger Event. Nice to see he gave him self five stars for a non-review.

Let's see, wonder if I report this to Amazon they will take appropriate action, unlike what happens with complaints about the wonderful and untouchable top reviewer, Harriet Klausner. Odds, anyone?

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NOTE by moderator: since these reviews seem gone, I'd like to quote one of his reviews here (no worry, it's not much): "Brilliant! An excellent book! If you like quality political thrillers you should check out The Trigger Event" -- and so it went for about about six pages' worth of such 'reviews' for all kinds of books. I'll also post a link to the cached versions of some of it -- just so a newcomer could see what it was all about. Here's the reviews, and here Edward Klotz reviews a book by Ted Klotz, five stars. The cache will be gone at some point, but for now let's point to it.

Curious comments

Here.

PS. Notice Quality Comments(TM) by 'Alrin':

Alrin said...

Sorry, Pat, but what exactly is the point of this post? Maybe I've missed something, but it seems to me that the intent is to give this particular reviewer a bit of a bashing. Just don't seem like cricket to me, especially when coming from a fellow reviewer.

Correct me if I totally missed the point.

Yes, Alrin, you've totally missed the point -- or maybe you pretend to, since the issue is a really easy one. The problem is here: "especially when coming from a fellow reviewer". 'Reviewer' is not the problem, you see. Fraud is. Still a fellow? Fellow fraud?

Klausner update

Fourteen more today (as of 12:25 pm PDT). Musta read them yesterday (after writing and posting yesterday's dose).

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PS. A good comment by Robert Moore (in the GH section):

Guys, you miss the point: these vote totals are stacked and violate the spirit of reviewing on Amazon. The review is good, but not a masterpiece. And I'm sure if anything Ms. Clamor is upset to have a work of hers reviewed by someone who is pretty obviously guilty of ballot stuffing. [...]

A good, eloquent post -- except, perhaps, that no one's missing the point. Oh, all right, members of the Shill Protection Force do, but that's not for real, they're just playing stupid, hoping to make the Gentle Reader there distrust his lying eyes and believe the unbelievable instead.

Having said that, maybe Robert Moore was addressing FreeHam in plural as an organization. Either case, a good post.

Laugh out loud funny

This has nothing to do with Hurriet or Grady, etc. I just wanted to point you to someone named person's reviews. They can be quite entertaining. Reminds me a bit of KrossD's reviews. It was nice to laugh.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A39L6FG6O2IZ75/ref=cm_aya_bb_pdp/103-2697241-6524618

How hurried can one be?

About this Klausner review that Cathy already posted about: I'm amazed that even after several days of this review's being on display, HK (or whoever does this under her name) hasn't fixed it! I mean, how telling this is. Post and never look back. Soon she'll switch to posting random excerpts from an old phone book with five-star ratings: after all, that could be done even faster than what she does now.

PS. Today is August 14, 2007. In these fourteen days Harriet reviewed ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR (154) books. That is exactly eleven (11) books a day on average. (Of course, L.E. Cantrell and other Friends Of Harriet would say something like, so what? Just because you can't do this doesn't mean no one can! :-) Or something like that... )

Amazon Vine?

Did anyone get an invite for Amazon's newest review creation called Amazon Vine? I did **blush blush**
Do you think the invited Harriet?
God forbid she starts reviewing movies and music!!!

PD Harris weighs in

With his habitual perspicacity PD Harris (remember PD Harris?) comments (No.13) on our post (No.12).

Dame Harriet seems to be losing it.

No comment, just read this (thanks to our correspondent).

Congratulations!

Finally someone understood what this blog is about! Ian, your brilliant ;-)

Did Hurried Klausner hurry too much?

See this review. Interestingly enough, HK posted a review for the book on B&N without the duplicate paragraphs (as best as I can tell, my eyes hurt bad enough reading her reviews) and with four stars instead of the five she gave it on Amazon.

Hurried Klausner (love that by the way!), seems to have been way too busy copying and pasting just a little bit too much. Doubled paragraphs and a double signature, and WHEW what a title for her review. I guess posting all those reviews the last couple of days --- where is LE Cantrell when we need him to count for us anyway? I went back to page ten or so before I could find something posted before August 10.

Another note on these recent reviews. She does review some erotica books in the latest bunch, but seems to have toned down the her randy side and the sex scenes aren't described in such excruciating and tasteless detail.

I also noted that one of the books she reviewed today was written by Amazon's #26 reviewer, http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AFVQZQ8PW0L/002-5252214-5336844?sort_by=MostRecentReview&display=public&x=17&y=11.

Grady Gets Bumped or The Lazarus Effect

It looks as if the latest technique of the Harpists is to resurrect Grady's old reviews and attempt to breathe life into them. The most recent exhumation has been performed by Diogenes, (there's an irony, I thought he was looking for an honest man-keep looking). This review of Robert Hellenga's novel The Fall of a Sparrow is from September of 1998. It's one paragraph and tells you absolutely nothing about this book. But that didn't prevent Diogenes from his attempt at reanimation. I guess he saw the success that C.MCCALLISTER had and thought he'd jump in.

This nine year old review currently has 7 of 24 helpful votes. Those were the days before the "loyalty voters". It will be interesting to watch and see how many votes this old review can pick up.

"It is an exciting time in neuroscience"

So says our friend Top Reviewer W.Boudville. We'll take his word for it!

Klausner undeterred (August 2007)

August 2007 is barely five-days old and already Hurried Klausner posted thirty-six (36!) book reviews. Eighteen of those posted today. You go, girl!

(I hope L.E.Cantrell will do the counting and post more Quality Comments^™ soon.)