Reviews: The World Is The Greatest Judge

The time and money available to any individual is very scarce. When you buy a book or movie ticket you're not only investing your money, you are also investing your *precious* time. The problem is, you can only know for sure whether the investment was worthy after the money and the time is spent forever. While preferences and tastes vary from individual to individual, one can get a good "quality indicator" by:
a) Researching some information about the author and about the book, music or movie.
b) Finding the customer ratings, and reading public reviews - usually the most important are the most positive and most negative
Personally, my favorite sources of this type of information are Amazon for books and music CDs, and IMDB for movies. While not 100% accurate, it greatly improves the probability that you make the right choices. I also feel some obligation to share my opinions with other potential consumers so that they can benefit from my experience. You can find my book reviews in this link.