Heard It Through the Grapevine

I love me some Amazon.com, even though I am trying to consume less these days & not buy every book that catches my fancy when there is a perfectly good library right here in town and all that. I also like to write (and read) consumer reviews -- they help me a lot when I'm shopping, and I feel like it's only fair to return the favor -- although lately I've been writing my reviews on All Consuming instead of Amazon, I don't know why. It could be because I am lazy and it's easy to just click the link in the right-hand column of this very blog rather than perform actual web navigation.

Anyway, Amazon's latest brainstorm is a program called Amazon Vine -- a group of reviewers (by invitation only, thankyouverymuch) who are eligible to receive advance copies of products (mostly books, but also some CDs & DVDs & whatever else they want to throw out there), and who will hopefully review them and generate some buzz for the publishers. Like a grapevine, get it? And who would have figured that I would get an invitation? I had no idea I was a top reviewer. I just like to treat everyone to my wisdom. ;-)