Books etc and reviewing wars

Books: I am currently reading Barbara Erskine's latest time slip offering - 'The Warrior Princess' - and totally absorbing and scary it is too. This one to a certain extent follows on from the last as it's set in Romano Britain and modern day Wales and Italy. More later when I've finished it.

Noreen over at Norn's Notebook has raised some interesting points about the life and death of the high street as we know it. We need moderation and balance really - not just independent shops but also the chains. In Spalding - population approx 25,000 - there are Boots, Woolworths, Holland and Barrett, Dorothy Perkins, Specsavers and just outside the town centre - Halfords, Sainsbury's, Argos, Carphone Warehouse, Lidl, Co-op, Aldi etc. But we also have - an independent book shop, independent butchers, greengrocers and bakers. It is a similar mix in Boston - population approx 70,000. Though in Boston there are more of the chains and they have a Marks & Spencer whereas Spalding only has an M & S Simply Food. If I was to draw a sweeping generalisation I would say small towns perhaps get the balance right. The bigger towns are of more interest to the chains - e.g Boston has a Waterstones, Costa Coffee and Past Times. Spalding has an out of town outlet centre which attracts a lot of visitors from elsewhere as it has an excellent garden centre, Cotton Traders, Marks & Spencer outlet, Next outlet etc etc. So really we have the best of all possible worlds living here. There is also a water taxi from the town centre!

Reviewing wars - I only became aware of this issue recently because I belong to Amazon Vine. There is a members only forum where such esoteric issues as tactical voting on reviews published on Amazon are discussed. Apparently there are certain reviewers out there who apply tactical voting to other people's reviews to try and get higher up the reviewer ranking list. As no one has managed to work out exactly how Amazon calculate the reviewer rankings I can't help feeling this is a total waste of time. Through reading the discussions I become aware that there are some very weird reviewers out there - people who always mention their family in derogatory terms in the review, others who post exactly the same review whatever the product and then there's the people who paste in reviews from elsewhere on the Internet! Skulduggery aplenty!! Amazon do take down anything that contravenes the law but they seem to let the rest carry on - fascinating stuff!