The Old Man & The Sea from Amazon

3-star review from Amazon:

Ernest Hemingway certainly knows how to write a tight, concise narrative novel with his Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Old Man & The Sea". This is what makes "The Old Man & The Sea" a great novel.

There seems to be quite a bit of religious inference going on inside this novel too. Sin is touched upon. The old man struggles to catch the fish (only to have a sad ending in the novel) and there are other scenes that eludes to the crucifixion of Christ.

I enjoyed reading this classic novel... But wouldn't rank Hemingway's writing style as one of my favorites.

Again, this is emblematic of the problems with user reviews. Someone takes a single literature course and then decides that they can apply their three months of study to anything and that everyone should be interested in their opinion. What opinion is even being expressed here? Good work, you notice some religious imagery in this novel and you enjoyed reading it. Well, then I guess your declaration that Hemingway's style isn't one your favorites is something that Harold Bloom should be noting.

If you don't have anything but an obvious observation, keep it to yourself.

"The Road" from Amazon

A 1-star review from Amazon:

'one word - BORING!'

didn't draw me in at all. as i read the pages (or scanned them) i would get to the bottom and find that my mind had completely wondered to thinking about other things.

seriously - i dont understand the hype

...or how to read good.

"Dreams From My Father" from Amazon

Beware this review. It's a little offensive, at times, but he's entitled to his opinion. Since we just inaugurated a new president I thought I'd post a review of  one of Obama's book. I don't want to draw attention to any of the hate in this review but there were two parts that I thought really found the spirit of the bad user review.

The ordeal that many reviewers who subserviently brownnose Obama experience is confusing what "Dreams From My Father" accomplishes; Obama's 1995 book DOESN'T in any form come close to qualifying him as presidential material. Shame on the reviewers for abusing a book which tells his mediocre life story from childhood to 33 as the basis for endorsing him!!!! Because of the hype instigated by the liberal media for their favorite mulatto (liberal wet dream of theoretically having the first, sort-of "black" man installed as president), this book's selling aggressively, but in a just world, "Dreams From My Father" should've continued to be relegated to the obscurity it enjoyed before.

This book actively makes the case AGAINST Obama ever becoming president as it fails to present him and his unsatisfactory values in any decent light. I'm in the majority of the country--excluding the 35% of blindly worshipping Democrats who hype Obama due to the misconception they owe the black community for slavery by exalting Obama--which is mystified by the insincere sensationalism surrounding Obama. I picked up this book to investigate this empty suit, yet what I discovered was Obama's substanceless character and disappointment at his ideology and "values!!!!"

I contemptuously distrust that many of the fanatics giving 5-star reviews to Dreams From My Father have actually read the book (probably all Democrat operatives). The book is a disturbing confession of a racially mixed individual with so much emotional baggage that he's ideological, divisive, self-hating, race-hustling, and mistrustful of the goodness that is America. An example of his ideology is he spends much of the book pushing organizing instead of telling blacks to get a better education to increase their pay; his divisiveness is his association with reverse racism which looks at the destiny of blacks as controlled by whites; his self-hate is he actually compares life of the poor in America with the impoverished masses in Kenya; his race-hustling is his choice to associate almost exclusively with blacks (throughout high school, college, inner-city organizing); and his mistrustfulness in America is his longing to connect with African heritage instead of considering himself American foremost.

Much of the book is untrustworthy as Obama presumptuously fakes he's able to remember exact quotes in conversations he's had going back to his childhood!!!! This is simply not plausible, so many personal conversations Obama recounts cannot be believed based on only his memory. Another undesirable sickness his book perpetrates is the unabashed swearing Obama writes down, supposedly recollections from personal conversations, especially blacks in low-class neighborhoods. Nonetheless, this is egregious, repelling the reader.

The premise of Dreams From My Father is so unrighteous that it's skewed: it's an homage to his Muslim father, but his father is unmasked as an exorbitantly dislikeable renegade!!!! His dad is culpable for abandoning Obama's white mother and him at an early age; fathering scores of children in Kenya; being a drunk and abusive husband/father when he was ostracized from the Kenyan government's favor; and dying practically penniless without leaving his family anything.

His father's ignominious memory begs the question why Obama would write a book expressing such yearning for his father and his African heritage, yet the answer is found in reverse racism. Obama doesn't consider himself mulatto; he militantly views himself 100% black. This is desecration considering the whites in his life--Grampa, Toots, his mother--took care of him!!!!

Obama's personal "values" system is quite bankrupt since as a young kid growing up in Hawaii, his coarse Gramps took him to bars in the red light district. Predictably, this damage provoked him to do cocaine and heroin, which he admits on page 87 of his revelatory autobiography.

Some of the most anguishing testimony comes during his college "career"--he never mentions getting an undergraduate degree, yet purports that he had a personal secretary while working as a financial writer in his early 20s!--and working to "organize" black communities in Chicago. This favoritism for blacks was from his father's abandonment and Obama's yearning to get close to his father by associating with blacks exclusively. Being the far-left liberal he is, Obama's primary strategies as a community organizer wasn't telling blacks to get a better education to improve their financial situation. It was menacingly getting churches, black groups and unions together to intimidate the local government to dole out money, the quintessential, Democratic strategy for anything!!!!

Obama's book has misleadingly connected with liberals/progressive sheeple because it's so sappily melodramatic and pretentious. It agonizingly recounts Obama's sob-story of being racially mixed and feeling empty due to his father's absence; this doesn't make him presidential material, only arrogant to assume he's more special than other mixed-race offspring. Obama's shoddy talent does lie in fiction-writing as his style is very rich in vocabulary, complex sentences and scene-setting. Democrats in their moral relativism find this acceptable enough to exaggerate Obama as presidential material (LOL!!!!). The cover caption by Marian Wright Edelman is deceptive as this book WILL NOT TELL YOU ANYTHING about yourself whether you're black or white!!!!

I'm sorry that I made read that. Yikes. 

Two points. One, everyone who disagrees with him are "probably Democratic operatives." He's right. Everyone who actually thinks agrees with him and no one actually likes Obama. That's why there are over 300 5 star reviews and 14 1 star reviews: Operatives. Clearly was one of the primary tactics of the Democratic party this election season. I can see the meeting now, We should really start to utilize this user review feature on Amazon; I bet that'll get Obama elected. But I don't know how to sign up for an account, they're asking for a credit card. We better not use the Democratic Party Mastercard, because people really give a shit about these user reviews. Between that and using the word "operative," like it was a stealthy CIA mission, I don't understand how some people take themselves seriously. Like any high school drop out couldn't just get an Amazon account and start telling the world how he knows everything about the history of literature and politics. "Operative." Wonderful word.

Second slightly odd thing is that this man seems to have never read a work of non-fiction before. He subscribes to the University of Oprah Magazine, where rule #1 is that if it says non-fiction, it's 100% true, or the author is a liar. 

Of course the dialogue isn't exactly what was said, dumb ass. Read any autobiography, there are always conversations in the books. Always. Would anyone in their right mind really believe that these are conversations have been recalled verbatim? No. Dumb ass. The book might be a little boring if there wasn't any dialogue or any specifics that might have to be remembered as best as the author can. A passage that read:

There was this one time I met this guy, I think he might have been wearing a coat, he talked to me. He said something about needing some change. And I said something to the effect of I don't have any. But he asked again, probably said he was really hungry, or he needed some change for the bus, maybe it was that he wanted the money to find a place to stay. Anyhow, I said that I'd look around. I found some change. Can't remember if it was in my pant pocket or in my jacket. But it was there. I gave him a little, and I think he thanked me. It made me feel really great. I'll never forget that day.

might be a little boring. 

Tough to take you seriously when you've never read a book. (Probably a Republican operative.)

"The Golden Compass"

A 2-star review from a intrepid Amazonian reader:

Ok. First of all. This book took me two weeks to read, which is a ridiculously long time for me. I've been known to finish a couple of books in a day.

The reason it took me so long was that I was lost from the very beginning. There was just way to many characters and questions introduced in the first few chaptes and I couldn't seem to catch up. I'm not sure if this was Pullman's writing style (lots of dialogue, not many descriptions) or my fragmented reading style - but I just couldn't get into the story.

I wasn't a huge fan of the characters. I liked the setting and thought the premise was original... but I wasn't blown away.

Yes, I will read it again because I think it will read better the second time.
Yes, I will read the next book.

But overall - I probably wouldn't have even finished it if I hadn't of purchased it.

Ok. First of all. "My fragmented reading style"? Reading styles can be defined as follows: I like to sit next to the fireplace, I read in bed, I read on the train, I like to have a glass of wine while I read, I like sitting in my underwater playing with my balls while I read. Authors can write in a fragmented style. You cannot read in a fragmented style. Did you only read every other sentence? Or was it a more random process? That's the first sign that no one should give a damn about your opinion, despite what your mother says.

Ok. Second of all. No one gives a shit how long it took you to read this. That's it. Think about it, dipshit. If I told you that Pizza Hut pizza was slightly sub-par in comparison to, say, Papa John's because it takes me an extra thirty seconds to eat a slice from Pizza Hut (by the way, this is true) what would you say? Probably that you agree. But that's because you're a fucking idiot and I still don't care about your opinion. 

Next.