I'll own up. I have not read the book and, to be honest, I'm not sure if I'll get around to it. I've a feeling it ain't gonna tell me anything that I didn't already suppose or guess at. Apologies for ending a sentence with a preposition.

So this is not that sort of review.

Instead it's a review of a review of the book on amazon.com.

Full marks to one Brian T, who penned the following after awarding the tome 1*, under the glorious heading:

FAKE NEWS!!!!! SAD

The review is as follows:

VERY SAD!!!!! I read a lots of books more than anyone and this book is a DISGRACE. Wolff is a loser. A TOTAL LOSER and everyone knows it. you know it, I know it, everyone knows it. This book is NOT FOR SMART PEOPLE. Only a very for dumb people would read this TRASH. Only very dumb people like, not the kind of book I would read because I’m one of the SMARTEST PEOPLE. Ask anyone, anywhere in the world—ITS TRUE! If you like to read words, and I like to read words—I read a lot of words, every day. All kinds of words. I know More words than most people know. People are always saying I have THE BEST WORDS!!!. They always asking me about the words I read, because everyone wants to know—so if you want to read really good words then you should read THE ART OF THE DEAL it has tremendos words, really BIG BEAUTIFUL WORDS, you should read that book,It’s a really great book, really fantastic./ just a fantastic a book and one of the best books you can read so you should read that and not this LOSER wolff guy PATHETIC!!!!!!! -Ronald

The review garnered (at the time of writing) more than 50 comments, the vast majority getting the joke. Astonishingly, though, there are a few penned by people who clearly did not.

What's also wonderful is that the aforementioned Brian T's profile declares that although he has only contributed 6 product reviews in total - including the one above - he has gained close to 3000 helpful votes.

Brilliant.

Oh, and the bit about not being sure if I'll get around to reading the book....?

FAKE NEWS...! SAD.!!!

A word of warning: if anyone out there has a hankering to read the book, do make sure you pick up the right one. As several Amazon purchasers have discovered, there's another offering out there with the same title. The author, Randall Hansen, has been both surprised and dead chuffed to see his book rise through the Amazon rankings.

Hard to believe, as the two books are completely different in content.

As the talk show host Stephen Colbert put it:

'One's about the taking down of a Fascist dictator. The other one's about World War !!...'

ps...update:

OK, I took the plunge and invested in a copy of the Wolff book. Gotta say it's a great read and horribly believable. Well worth a look-see.