My brother is starting to learn a bit of programming, and was looking for books to read. I suggested SICP, so he went to Amazon and immediately picked up on the

My brother is starting to learn a bit of programming, and was looking for books to read. I suggested SICP, so he went to Amazon and immediately picked up on the fact that almost all of the review scores were 1 or 5. Interestingly, he didn't bother reading the favourable reviews--just the unfavourable ones. His argument was that in reading the unfavourable reviews he could better pick up what the book's strengths were: what did it teach that many people weren't ready to learn?