A Zagat Guide to ‘Hard Choices’—According to Amazon Reviewers

On its first day out, Hillary Clinton’s Hard Choices hit #2 on Amazon’s bestseller list (sorry, Hillary—John Green trumps Tom Cruise, too), and is picking up around 12 user reviews per hour. Whether or not the reviews are based on actual digested information, well, you be the critic…

Hard Choices

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

Political memoir | Ubiquitous

Prose: 25 | Poesy: 17 | Candidness: 12 | Cost: $35.00 $21.00

This “well-written stage setter” of an “engaging memoir” comes across as “election propaganda” “designed not so much to enlighten as to persuade” to some; others think it could give The Manchurian Candidate some competition “in the fiction section.” Clinton’s “resume is quite impressive” stands among the fainter praise, though another reader “had to stop myself from vomiting”—perhaps there is some political salmonella in the “low-salt, low-fat, low-calorie offering with vanilla pudding as the dessert.” Or maybe that was from someone else “just here to troll the Democrats.” For anyone “hoping for something more,” um, duh, get the net—“Hello, people, she can’t reveal too much until AFTER her presidency.” (I mean, really, “It’s a memoir—did they expect her to paint herself in a negative light?”) Several reviewers were skeptical of peer ethics: “Unless you’re really fast readers, I doubt that you finished reading the book, let alone bought it.” To read or not to read, ain’t that the question? “Under no circumstances would I ever read this book even if Hillary paid me a million $$… I am serious!” (And we will bet another million “$$” you’re not serious.) Nevermind all the Benghazi brouhaha, though; Hillary failed to answer that other all-important question: “I was really hoping to find out who killed Vincent Foster.”

Claire Howorth is an editor at Time and a writer for other publications