02 May 2006

Number Eight: Follow the Amazon Trail

"People who bought this book also liked..."
"Related items to those on your wishlist..."
"Buy this book and get this one for (completely combined price with absolutely no saving whatsoever)"

You've got to love it. You innocently and work consciously enter the site with the title of one book in mind, when Amazon's cyber literature pimps recognise the smell of an addict and take you on down a meandering path of books which seem to lead you closer to "the answer" that you're looking for.

Several hours later you realise it's dark, your eyes hurt and you've spent a small fortune on a mountain of seemingly irrelevant books on jazz music, country houses, knickers and language reports, with the promise that these are guaranteed to improve your life/knowledge/thesis to previously unimaginable proportions. Until they turn up and you find that the seven lines of blurb on the site are the only seven relevant to what you were looking for (if that).

The double whammy of this complete fallacy is that you'll never have time to read them anyway.

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