Trying not to hyperventilate...

Amazon.com is down?! In all the years I've been shopping there, which, is, what, eight years now or something, I have never once not been able to access the site. Its dependability never occurred to me before. I don't just shop there; I get loads of information there as well. And I was headed over there now to decide whether I want to get four books that looked interesting in the most recent Bookmarks Magazine:

John Hart, The King of Lies
Alan Furst, The Foreign Correspondent
Tom Shachtman, Rumspringa
Kathryn Hughes, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton

Nor would this have been my first trip to Amazon today. I already went earlier to check out Peter Falk's new memoir, Just One More Thing, which, as a long-time Columbo fan, I'm very excited about. Plus I checked my associates account. Plus I put up my review of Jason Kersten's Journal of the Dead.

So, I could find information about these books elsewhere online, of course, but I've come to rely on Amazon's presentation of books, the combination of straightforward book information and customer reviews which, flawed though they can be, I trust in the aggregate. (As I may have mentioned here before, I find more often than not that my own star rating of a book corresponds with the average rating given the book by other Amazon customer reviewers.) Even when I'm sent a press release about a book, or have access to review selections, as one gets in Bookmarks Magazine, I still need to go to Amazon before I'm comfortable making a decision about whether a book is worth getting.

So.... I hope it's not offline for long.

Tags: Amazon, amazon.com, books, book reviews, Columbo, customer reviews, Peter Falk

Comments

[Jersey Girl]

I love Amazon...I too research books there even when I'm not buying there...

They just released a new beta store..maybe that's what they were up to?? I'm trying one out of my blog...we'll see what it does..
Cheers.

[Debra Hamel]

I've never spent very much time at Barnes & Noble online, but when I have I've never been as comfortable there. I always feel like navigating it takes a very long time.