Am I swayed by the critics?

This week’s question is suggested by Puss Reboots:

How much do reviews (good and bad) affect your choice of reading? If you see a bad review of a book you wanted to read, do you still read it? If you see a good review of a book you’re sure you won’t like, do you change your mind and give the book a try?

If Iris Murdoch came back from the dead to write another novel I would buy it and read it even if James Woods said that death had not helped the quality of her prose. I think I would stand by my man Richard Powers too. Equally, if the Times praised Danielle Steele's next product from now until next Thursday little on earth would persuade me to read it. But reviews frequently convince me to read books that I wouldn't have thought worth it or that weren't on my radar. I first read the Harry Potter books based on a review, otherwise they were so popular that I wouldn't have been caught dead reading them. Scott Pack turned me on to Sarah Salway's Tell Me Everything; I'd never heard of it before. Mary's Library told me about The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Mark Sarvas inelegantly beat me over the head to read The Indian Clerk. I'm pretty sure that The New York Times Book Review turned me on to Phillip Pullmans' His Dark Materials trilogy and the writer John McGahern. The New York Review of Books frequently introduces me to things I've never heard of - particularly non-fiction. It was a review there that introduced me to Revolution on My Mind, about keeping a diary under Stalin's rule and which is now on my Russian Reading Challenge list. It also introduced me to the stories of Mavis Gallant. On the other hand, I didn't read Zadie Smith's second novel because of the reviews it received, even though her first novel convinced me of her talents, and her third blew me away. Although I read many positive reviews of Ian McEwan's most recent book On Chesil Beach, those reviews convinced me that I would have no interest in reading that book, and I haven't. Sometimes a review will persuade me that maybe I should borrow a book from the library rather than purchasing it. So yes - professionally published criticism, blog posts chatty and serious, interviews with authors, and the opinions of my reading friends in particular all sway me, but it depends upon the author, the genre, my mood. The short answer is yes, but...