I too read the one and two-star ones. Usually a book that interests me comes with a reputation, however. I often start with recommendations from friends, too.

For example, Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner has just published And the Mountains Echoed. I would bring up reviews in the NYT and similar sites rather than those on the sellers’ sites.

Instead of buying the book, I am taking it out of our library, which solves all problems but more money in the economy.

I tend to buy books on reports from friends or other sources like The New York Times Book Review, I will select subject specific books for the library based on Amazon reviews if I couldn’t find them in library selection periodicals.

“Where the populace eat and drink, and even where they reverence, it is accustomed to stink.” -Nietzsche

Those reviews seem fake to me. They often come out before the book is even for sale. Sometime the reviewer will be honest and say it is based upon one chapter.
I read negative reviews. They are more honest.

Useless? Yes.

Some of them are brilliant though. Well worth the read.

@glacial Oh – those are hilarious! How did you find them?

These are good too

@janbb I suspect the wolf shirt was the first to get masses of crazy reviews – that went viral some years ago. Every once in a while, someone will compile a list of good ones. :)

Ohhhhh… this one is really good, too!

Most books are going to have a decent amount of 5-star and 1-star reviews. Before I buy something, I generally read both types of reviews. But I need the 1-star reviews to be more than “this book is too long” or something along those lines. I have more patience than a lot of those 1-star reviewers…

Whoops, too late to edit my response, but if you’ve never used goodreads.com, now’s a good time to start. They have a multitude of 5 and 1-star reviews near the top (because there are always going to be a good amount of people who both hate and love every book ever written).

You just have to read them with the eye of a good reviewer, rejecting what most say, finding the rare gem buried in the tailings.

I generally find most online reviews unhelpful. They seem to be split between people who bought the product and were disappointed (often for some random reason unrelated to the actual product) or they are complete fanboys.

I do read the bad reviews too, not just for books but for other items as well. I feel like the bad reviews tend to be more detailed and explanatory, and less of that general “it’s great!” stuff. It’s almost like people can explain why they don’t like something, but have a harder time explaining why they like something—so yes, the bad reviews, even if I don’t agree with them, give me more insight than the good ones.

I prefer to get my book referrals from my Goodreads.com ‘friends’ and word of mouth from IRL friends, who I often ask for details as to why they like a book.

I rarely read book reviews at all, least of all on a site that wants me to buy their books. If a book interests me I buy it regardless of what others think about it.

Sometimes I do find them incorrect, but I don’t ever think they’re useless. I just think it’s simply a matter of opinion

I’ve read and written some book reviews on Amazon myself. I generally already have an idea what I’ll buy beforehand because people on other blogging sites have the same interests I do, so usually their recommendations are fairly accurate. Sometimes I’ll even have the opportunity to view a part of the book online. I rarely use Amazon book reviews to determine which books I’ll purchase or not. When I do read the reviews I try to read both the good and bad ones, but I read these for other reasons since some of them turn into debates.