The Reading Habits of My Readers

I've been a member of the Powell's Books partner program for over three years now. The primary benefit to me is, of course, earning store credit from books purchased by readers of my blog who click through from my site. But as an added bonus, I also get to see exactly what books people are buying, the complete list of which is below the jump. Three observations are worth noting. First, I've never even heard of half of these books. Second, I've only recommended a handful of these books (both Algrens, Evans, Fitzpatrick's Bum Town, Freese, Hamsun, Hornby's High Fidelity, Kinsella's Shoeless Joe, Kogan and Wendt, Kuper, and Laxness' Iceland's Bell) on my blog. Third, my blogging efforts have resulted in the sale of three copies (!) of Culley's The Immortal Class, a book which I read but didn't particularly like. It's apparent that many of my blog readers wander over to Powell's, following one of my links, and proceed to go on a shopping binge that had absolutely nothing to do with any of the books I recommended on my blog.

Not that I'm complaining about any of this, mind you. Some people are taking my recommendations so much to heart that they're buying their own copies of books I love, while others are simply following their own whims (and fattening up my store credit balance in the process), including three people who don't give a damn what I thought of Culley's book. And for the most part, it also looks like my blog readers don't read fluff -- there's Sebald, Mead, de Tocqueville etc., with nary a Nora Roberts or Danielle Steel in the lot. That's certainly comforting.

Nelson Algren, Chicago: City on the Make
Nelson Algren, The Man With the Golden Arm
Anna Banti, Texts and Translations #9: La Signorina E Altri Racconti
Robert Olen Butler, From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction
William E. Channing, Works of William E. Channing, Parts 1 and 2
Travis Hugh Culley, The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power (3 copies)
Hanns Eisler, Composing for the Films
Terry Evans, Disarming the Prairie
Tony Fitzpatrick, Bum Town
Tony Fitzpatrick, Dirty Boulevard: 25 Drawings
Barbara Freese, Coal: A Human History
David Gillespie, Russian Cinema (Inside Film)
Laura Grant, Well Said : Advanced English Pronunciation
Andrew Sean Greer, The Path of Minor Planets
Knut Hamsun, Hunger
Amy Hempel, The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel
Nick Hornby, High Fidelity
Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down
Alexander Humboldt, Personal Narrative of a Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent
A.L. Kennedy, Indelible Acts: A Collection of Stories
W.P. Kinsella, Shoeless Joe
W.P. Kinsella, The Thrill of the Grass
Herman Kogan and Lloyd Wendt, Lords of the Levee
Peter Kuper, The Metamorphosis
Halldor Laxness, Iceland's Bell (2 copies)
Halldor Laxness, Under the Glacier
Janna Levin, How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space
Beth Luey, Revising Your Dissertation: Advice from Leading Editor s
Dick Marr, Bicycle Gearing: A Practical Guide
Carson McCullers, Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Margaret Mead, Kinship in the Admiralty Islands
Francesca Merlan, Ku Waru: Language & Segmentary Politics in the Western Nebilyer Valley
Andree Millar, Orchids of Papua New Guinea
Charles Olson, The Collected Poems of Charles Olson Olson
Ann Patchett, Truth & Beauty: A Friendship
J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Reymundo Sanchez, My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King (Illinois)
Bob Scarboro, Etowah County Volume II
W.G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction
Marilyn Strathern, Women in Between
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America