Speaking of morons, has anyone noticed Amazon's Purchase Circles? I think they fired them up about a year ago. talk about a way to get your finger on the reading pulse of the nation. it's not the best tool, but nothing is.
Amazon has been sharing a record of the top ten books purchased according to the digital origin of the order. You can get purchase circles by geography, by corporation, by government agency, by university, etc. In order to make the list, there's a minimum of 200 orders.
They list the top ten books purchased by people using an Oracle IP address, for example.
The geography one would be interesting.
QUICK! Quick! someone create a quick and dirty tool for analyzing Amazon's data. The possibilities are endless. You could examine by universities, compare geographies, urban/exurban/suburban/rural, by industry,.... Oh! The possibilities!
Washington and Lee university, for instance, lists: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/215298/103-4783988-3899841
1. The Da Vinci Code 2. Angels & Demons 3. When Genius Failed 4. The South Beach Diet: 5. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: 6. Cold Mountain : A Novel
City University of New York:
1. The Da Vinci Code 2. Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: 3. The Great Unraveling: 4. Living to Tell the Tale 5. The Five People You Meet in Heaven 6. The Fortress of Solitude : A Novel 8. His Dark Materials Trilogy: 9. Eragon (Inheritance, Book 1) 10. Don Quixote
"Be a scribe! Your body will be sleek, your hand will be soft. You are one who sits grandly in your house; your servants answer speedily; beer is poured copiously; all who see you rejoice in good cheer. Happy is the heart of him who writes; he is young each day."
--Ptahhotep, Vizier to Isesi,
Fifth Egyptian Dynasty, 2300 BC