Amazon.com: Great, but really really weird

First of all, I'd like to thank Dan and the rest of the Prawfers for inviting me to stay around for another few months.  I've really enjoyed posting here and look forward to posting throughout the rest of the winter and spring.  Perhaps I may even get around to posting something substantive, rather than twisted and deviant.  Not today, though.

I can tell already, with still five months until my book Holy Hullabaloos comes out, that I will be spending way too much time looking at the Amazon.com page for the book.  It's so full of weird stuff.  Not just the sales ranking, which is itself so fascinating that I'm already checking it daily (right now it's at about 738,000, which I think is pretty decent for a book that won't come out until June), but also my current favorite, the "Customers Who Bought Items Like This Also Bought" list.  Note that this is not a list of items that are similar to your book, or even items that people who bought your book also bought, but rather items that people who bought books similar to your book also bought.  How they even decide what books are similar to other books is beyond me.  But, hey, what do I care?  The number one book on the list of items that people who bought books similar to my book that hasn't come out yet also bought is Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation, which is the book that inspired me to write my book.  So that's pretty sweet, right?  The next book on the list is Vowell's new book, and then after that are the new books by John Hodgman and David Sedaris.  I'm a little more confused by why Season 2 of 30 Rock is on the list, not to mention Vicki Ryan's Dewey: The Small-Time Library Cat That Touched the World, but again, what do I care?  I'm just so psyched that people who are buying books that are similar in unknown ways to the book that I wrote that won't come out for another five months and that therefore nobody has ever read are also buying books by Vowell, Hodgman, and Sedaris.  It's enough to put a smile on my face for the whole entire day.  Yay, Amazon.

(cross-posted on Holy Hullabaloos: the blog)