faults and confusions

at my sister's house the other day, I picked up John Green's most recent fictional creation, The Fault in Our Stars. it's one of those young-adult snack-type books, easy to read if you ever get a spare few hours. I stayed awake turning pages in my sister's spare room until I couldn't stay awake any longer. then I woke up (much too early) and finished the thing.

it is a lovely story. full of metaphorical resonance, wit, and neat thoughts. it's on the edge of sappy, so I can't quite rave about it. but I am glad I read it.

and I did add it to my handy digital list of books I've read. and as I was doing so, I noticed the following strange collection of search results:

what is with the at least five variations on some sort of probably-crowd-sourced online review collection?

um?

I'm pretty confused about this. four of them have the same cover image. all five have different 'authors' listed. all five have the same word-for-word description. most of them (I looked) have been put on several goodreads users' to-read lists. three of them even have a few (quite positive) ratings. one person even left a review, simply to mention that the book of reviews was not as depressing as its description makes it seem.

and I know I said this already, but I am so confused. how did they go about choosing just one hundred provocative/sensational/intimate/whatever statements from the probably millions of things people have said about this book on the internet? are these one hundred statements actual quotes from John Green's many, many fans, or what? did these 'authors' get permission to republish the comments they've selected, or what?

who is this Jake/Jack/Andrew/David/Adam Manning/Silver/Seeding/Finning fellow anyway? are they all the same person, do you think, or not? if not, why would they all do this strange thing? and if they are a single human just being creative with their identity, why would they do this strange thing?

now I'm wondering which would be worse--a single 'author' guilty of spamming goodreads in this bizarre manner, with multiple versions of the same 'book'--or five separate 'authors' being so blatant in their copying. hmm.

either way, or whatever the story might be, I don't get it. maybe we should summon the powers and skills of those many, many John Green fans, the intrepid and determined Nerdfighters, to figure out this strange little mystery. I would be interested to get to the bottom of all the strangeness.