I have long been an eager customer at Amazon.com. Their collection is damn impressive, and their website is, imho, tied with Wikipedia for best on the Internet (discounting meta-sites like Google). Ever since “Search inside this book” and the revamping of the recommendations interface/algorithm, I find myself spending more time on it than on almost any other single website.
And I must say their customer service is superb: once I ordered two copies of the Complete Calvin and Hobbes, and one was badly dented in shipping. Without my having to provide so much as a picture of the defective item, a replacement was promptly mailed. What’s more, since I live all the way in Brazil, they didn’t demand I send the unwanted copy back — I guess they wouldn’t be able to sell it at a price to cover the postal costs. My mom was more than happy to keep it.
But today they sent me an email invitation to look at the editors’ picks of the best books of 2007, and I was surprised to see “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” at #3.
Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m the last person to criticize a piece of literature simply for not being Shakespeare. I read the other six books, and most of them were quite a bit of fun (I vaguely recall the third one, Prisoner of Azkaban, feeling like a rehash of the first two). But honestly.
Maybe it was the overwhelming media pressure on Mrs Rowling, or an unrealistic deadline set for her by the marketing folks; or maybe she was under contract to write seven books but just didn’t care about Harry Potter anymore. Whatever the reason, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” is terrible. Terrible. And again, not because it’s not Shakespeare. It’s an awful book compared to the other six. The whole plot is a russian doll-esque exercise in deus ex machina; in spite of this arbitrariness, the minor happenings are mostly predictable and woefully cliché; and the dialogue is bollocks. More avid fans of the series than myself have expressed their dislike of the finale.
So what’s it doing up there at #3? It’s not a “customer’s choice” thing, that’s got its own separate page. Honestly, out of the tens or hundreds of thousands of books published in 2007, Amazon’s editors picked 100, and this piece of crap is not only among them, it’s #3?!
I suppose they put a couple “serious” books by trendy writers above HP&tDH so as not to appear too idiotic, but sure enough, they’re also “bestsellers”. The next 40 titles in the top 100 (that’s as far as I got) are similar in spirit: a shameless attempt to sell the greatest possible number of books. I mean, if they listed some actually good but not-so-famous books, they might sway a thousand readers’ buying decision. However, by giving that extra push to already widely publicized books, and just in time for Christmas, they’re going to cash in big.
So shame on you, Amazon, you’ve lost all credibility.
