Reviews

Reading reviews can be a double edged sword. Positive reviews are often written by sheep or trolls - Billy goats Gruff any one?  Sheep are those who write positive reviews because that is what they are told to do. A minority, I know. Trolls are those who write positive reviews in order to gain points from either the author/creator or the vendor. Many of those.

Derek Rydall, who conducted an on-line book club to coincide with a set of webinars about HIS book was continually pressing his audience to post positive reviews to "help get the word out about this amazing system." Okay, perhaps not a direct quote but that was the gist of his message, and Amazon was receiving a very high number of 5 star reviews.

Negative reviews also have their fair share of trolls, such as Christians panning books on paganism for no reason other than the book is non-Christian in nature and the reviewer is trying to save peoples souls. These trolls are usually easy to identify and discard.

Now, more to the point, it is easier for me to make a decision based on negative reviews than positive ones. Such as one review that said the book was bad because the author did ____. I read the review, thought to myself 'I love it when authors do ____, bought the book and was thoroughly pleased with my purchase.

All that said, I will also confess I have always been somewhat addicted to 'self-help' / 'self-improvement' books and methods. Probably my Aspie self trying to figure out why I never quite fit in and why it seemed like remarkably few people around me had any common sense. Discovering I had Asperger's rather than ADHD was a very freeing experience, but that occurred when I was in my 50's and I was already hooked on finding ways to improve myself.

Combining those two points I am going to give a sort of book review here. I'd had the opportunity to get a free e-book, Power vs Force by David R. Hawkins. Pretty dry reading but fully sourced and was something I dove into, loving every page. When I was done I wanted to get more of his series and purchased Letting Go, the pathway to surrender. I found this to be another wonderful book. Not nearly so dry, but full off information I could apply to my own life, so half way through I wanted to figure out which would be the next in the series for me to purchase. Amazon did not have his books listed in any kind of order so I went on-line and found reviews for "truth vs falsehood" which all panned the book as being more about pushing one political ideology than anything else.  From the reviews I know I will not purchase this book and am seriously reconsidering purchasing any others by this author. I still intend to finish Letting Go, but may follow it by dusting off my old Sedona program. You see, the biggest reason I could never gain anything from the Sedona Method was, the program insists on 'letting go' with no real explanation on HOW to do it. Hawkins has explained the how, so I may gain more from the Method this time. We will see, but first I need to finish reading Letting Go.

Do one thing at a time. Do it slowly and deliberately. Do it completely. - Zen thoughts, author unknown