Amazon.com saves the day

Last week, I visited 2 of my favourite bookstores in Chennai. Connexions and Landmark. While I was at both places I was sorely tempted to buy Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code", currently a raging bestseller. Having heard so much about the book from ICF I decided to skim through the cover story at the back. And what do you know......it was catchy. The book's synopsis sent down a minor tingling through my spine. I haven't been this interested in a book merely by reading its cover story ever since I picked up a copy of Robin Cook's "Toxin" way back in 98. And that had started my memorable tryst with Cook's books.

I vacillated for quite a while at both places with the copy of the book in my hand. Should I go ahead or not? The synopsis at the back of the book and ICF's recommendations kept urging me strongly to take the plunge. But I was hesitant to violate my golden rule when it came to buying books or renting movies, which was to check online reviews of the product before deciding to go ahead with it. In case of books it was amazon.com and in movies it was imdb.com.

I can't tell you how many times these 2 sites have saved me from making bad choices. And they have helped me make an equal number of good choices as well. The battle raged in me for a while and finally amazon.com won.A week later when I checked up on reviews about the bestseller, the site had a surprise in store for me.

The total number of reviews for the book numbered more than 1000, but going through the first 20 or so of them I was disappointed. Most reviewers had trashed the book and the author. It was their opinion that the book was over-hyped, overrated, short on character development and reading it was just a foray into escapism without much substance. These were exactly the sort of things I didn't want in a book. And most reviewers agreed that the trend was conspicuous in all the books by the same author. So finally I've decided to remove Dan Brown from my list as of now.

All hail amazon.com!