what Amazon needs

Amazon needs a button that says “Sorry Amazon, I was just joking,” for whenever you browse a book solely for the sake of a laugh. Otherwise, their marketing computer takes it very seriously.

When I clicked on that romance novel The Princess and the Wolf just because of its resonance with the Latour/Harman/Erdélyi volume of a similar name, I was having embarrassing Harlequin-type recommendations for the next week or so.

Now, having directed everyone to those crazy miscellaneous books by Dutch authors yesterday, I’m paying a karmic price for it with a number of preposterous recommendations that haven’t the least connection with the Netherlands, but do link up with some of the flimsier subject matter addressed by some of those volumes.

Good thing Latour isn’t female, because then I might have called it Princess of Networks, and then Peter Erdélyi would have run into infringement on his excellent choice of title for the LSE volume.