All three are essentially just short book reviews written by experts on the topic, for example, a book on the history of Constantinople written by a Greek history professor. The books reviewed are definitely more “serious” and sometimes a little niche, so you usually won’t see the stuff on Amazon top charts.
In any case I highly recommend it, if only as a way to discover some new books and learn about different topics:
https://www.the-tls.com/ https://www.nybooks.com/ https://www.lrb.co.uk/
Yes, the caliber of reader reviews on Goodreads is all over the map. But it is huge, passionate forum for active readers of all stripes. Spend a little time with lists, filters, reading circles, etc. -- and you can semi-reliably get both reviews and recommendations that are well worth the time invested. Most major publishing houses know this, accept it, and have even come to appreciate it.
As a hardcover author in 2017, I found that my publisher's marketing/publicity team was very comfortable with Goodreads' prominence and felt that its review-by-review quirks balanced out over time in a way that ultimately was quite good for promoting wider readership of interesting books.
> user reviews exert ever more influence compared to serious criticism […] The rise of Amazon reviews has reinforced a larger pattern of populist impulses challenging older cultural norms. The book clubs and reading circles that do so much to fuel book sales today generally pay little attention to professional critics
I don't quite see why the author shuns them.
There should be 7 paragraphs in the preview shown, with paragraph breaks after ‘reigns.”’, ‘on Amazon.’, ‘Well, yes.’ and so on.
It seems that when given the option, folks don't choose traditional media for curated books-to-read lists or literary criticism.
Just like they are tending toward social media for news and streaming companies for tv and movies.
