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Occasionally, when I am bored, I like to read the one-star customer reviews at Amazon.com. I’ve done this before (here, here, and here), but…well, I get bored easily, I guess. And it occurs to me that I didn’t even mention September’s Banned Books Week, and it might be interesting (for me at least) to see how some of those books stack up against the competition over at Amazon. So anyway…

Of Mark Twain’s classic American novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a reader from Santa Clarita, California, writes:

“In my opinion, this book was very boring. I say this because it went at a slow rate. There wasn’t any exciting parts for me. It was plain boring but it is worth reading because you understand this person’s life. But if you are like me, you’ll think it is boring and don’t want to read it anymore. But you have to continue and learn something. In my opinion, buy it to learn the person’s detailed life, but don’t be suprised if it is boring.”

If only he/she had mentioned if it was boring.

A reader from Beijing, China, calls The Color Purple “the collection of sick perverted ravings of Alice Walker.” He/she writes:

“I started reading the book thinking it had to be great to win the Pullitzer Prize, but I couldn’t even finish it because it was so grossly sickening. I urge you to not read this book because it will subvert you and defile your mind with unwanted perverseness.”

But wanted perversenesses are still okay, right?

Of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, a reader from California writes simply: “YUCK”.

A “furious teen” from Cleveland, Ohio, suggests that you read Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird only “if you read every book that is such a hit.” He/she adds:

“But rather than that burn all the pages exept the last chapter. Thanks to all my friendswho had to tourchure threw reading this disgrace and supporting me in not likeing the book. By the way, DO NOT BUY, because if i find it in your house i won’t think to kindly of you.”

Heaven forfend. I’m not trying to suggest that these readers are wrong, or that if a book is labelled a “classic” everyone is required to love it. But, more often than not, Amazon’s one-star reviews are little more than “I didn’t like this, books like this suck, you’re stupid if you like it, neener neener neener.” Which is childish and laughable, and that’s probably why I amuse myself by reading them from time to time.

Reading Lewis Shiner and Bruce Sterling’s sometimes painfully informative Turkey City Lexicon (discovered through the fine folks at Invisible City), I came across this:

Signal from Fred

A comic form of the “Dischism” in which the author’s subconscious, alarmed by the poor quality of the work, makes unwitting critical comments: “This doesn’t make sense.” “This is really boring.” “This sounds like a bad movie.” (Attr. Damon Knight)

Hmm. I wonder if I should rename my weblog.

All things considered, I had a very nice weekend. On Friday morning, I drove home to New York and, despite the terrible rain, made pretty good time. I didn’t get lost once. On the way, I listened to Neil Gaiman read Coraline on CD, which luckily arrived in the mail the day before. It’s a funny and odd and wonderful book, and Gaiman reads it exceptionally well.

On Saturday, I attended my aunt’s wedding. I’m still a little shell-shocked from the volume on the dj’s speakers, but otherwise it was really quite nice. The groom’s son insisted that the rain was good luck, but would you really tell a bride that anything was bad luck on her wedding day? Anyway, I had fun. I managed to avoid dancing for most of the afternoon, but I couldn’t really refuse to dance with my grandmother, and I was then roped into a conga line by my mother and my sister. It was less traumatic than it might have been — I am a terrible, terrible dancer — and I did get to keep the silly hat.

On Sunday, after lunch, I drove back to Pennsylvania. The last few photographs are from that trip. There wasn’t really anywhere to stop where it wasn’t raining, but the changing color of the leaves was really quite spectacular in some places, and I have been promising fall photographs. The other pictures are of nothing in particular…but then, that’s what I seem to do best, photographs of nothing in particular.

Oh well. Again, all things considered, I had a nice weekend, but it’s good to be back. Not necessarily good to be back at work, but one can’t have everything, right?