I was updating my Amazon Wish List for my birthday. My favorite author, Laurie Notaro, had a new book available on pre-release. I added it to my list. And the magic of Amazon had some suggestions based on other people who had selected the same book. Needing more ideas to place on my list, I figured why not just pick one of these I know nothing about. I added David Sedaris's Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim. It said it was a National Bestseller. My odds should be good that it's funny and well written.
To my surprise I was given both books for my birthday. I decided to start with the unknown author, you know living on the edge.
Within the first chapter he talks about going to the emergency room at Rex Hospital. Then in another chapter his childhood dentist's office is in a converted brick house by Colony Shopping Center. Not much further in the book he's giving money to hippie panhandlers outside the gas station at North Hills Mall.
Wow! All of these places are less than a mile from my house (besides the hospital which is several miles away, but is where I birthed both of my sons). His stories are about his life in this area in the 60s and 70s. It's so neat to read about this area. And of course his life. He is hysterical.
It must be part of Amazon's plot to take over the world and they are secretly monitoring our every purchase. They knew that I like funny authors and that I live in Raleigh. So clearly it put two and two together to suggest a funny author from Raleigh. (Adrian thinks they have good programmers who can develop algorithms. But that just sounds too nerdy.)
2 comments:
Cool! I love David Sedaris! We got a pre-release copy of Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim when we worked at Borders, and I read part of it and really enjoyed his writing. I hope your other book is great, too!
Since Adrian mentioned it, here's an article that explains it:
"Amazon.com Recommendations: Item-to-Item Collaborative Filtering" (with info provided BY Amazon abuot their algorithm, which is actually the third method "Item-to-Item..." that they describe)
http://www.softwaresecretweapons.com/jspwiki/resources/presentations/Amazon_Recommendations.pdf
Greg Linden, Brent Smith, and Jeremy York. IEEE Internet Computing. January-February 2003.
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