Actually, I’m on assignment for a Lonely Planet Poland guidebook, but I was waiting at Poznań’s main train station for a train to Gniezno, with a few spare minutes on my hands. I decided to try a real-life “related product” experiment. Amazon always has those “Products related to this item” alongside books you’ve searched for or bought, and I have to admit to being perplexed by what it’s been suggesting alongside my novel “Drifting on the Edge.”
Take the book “The Intergalactic Interloper,” for example. “Aliens have landed in New York City — and they’re here to contact Earth’s most intelligent life forms: house cats. Welcome to the East Village, where a cosmic visitor throws one peculiar neighbourhood into chaos. There’s Ollie, a struggling musician with a missing cat and a crumbling bookstore job…”
Really? I can’t see the relationship, but then, it’s the algorithm writer’s prerogative to make suggestions, not mine.
So, with those few minutes on my hands, I ducked into the bookstore at Poznań’s train station to see what the kindly bookseller would recommend alongside mine. She could only judge this one by its cover, of course. And I did cheat a bit. First, I explained that I wanted to plug “Drifting on the Edge” in a post. (In case you haven’t noticed, this is what I’m doing now.) I showed her the book. I asked for a couple of decorative classics, perhaps one Dostoevsky, please, to place “Drifting” alongside.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not shamelessly rubbing shoulders. But studying its cover for a moment, our intrepid bookseller slipped off and worked her catalogue, zipped over to a couple of shelves, and returned with these: Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita,” and Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.”
No offence intended to the author of The Intergalactic Interloper, as it may well be a future classic, but I think I’d prefer to rub shoulders with these guys. Alas, my train was waiting for me. I had to run. A delivery guy pushed in several boxes of books and the friendly saleswoman had to race off to sign her delivery receipts. But there we have it in real life, not the algorithm. Albeit, judged by its cover and title, which of course we should never do.
See the FEATURED sidebar here for links to the book on Amazon.