Funny. Amazon sends me one of those e-mails ‘Recommended for You”. Out of the 8 books they recommend me, I already own 6, and I have read 7. I have published reviews or articles about 3, and blogged about 2 others. The books are Infinite Jest, The Age of Wire and String, The Rifles, Europe Central, State of Exception, Homo Sacer and the Open. DFW, Vollmann, Agamben. The only book I do not own is Charles Olson’s Maximus Poems — and that one is, yes, high on my have-to-read list.

Apparently the software knows my taste quite well. But is this good recommendation? (Of course, the reason is that the software doesn’t know what I’ve bought at Atheneum in Amsterdam. And I think I prefer to get an e-mail that makes me smile, above eagerly awaiting what the software figures out I might like. Hmm, do I?)