lovehatethings

Some of the resources I listed in the podcast can be found here:

Some snarky observations upon comparing the Top Ten Book lists between Amazon Canada and Amazon US.

• Canadian list topped by a box set of books about soul-sucking vampires. US list is topped by a book authored by a soul-sucking vampire.
• Both countries' readers have a whole lot of faith that Dan Brown has a brilliant storyline left in him.
• Canada balances out US right wing political theory with Malcolm Gladwell.
• Canadian list finished by a box set of books about soul-sucking vampires. US list is finished by a book authored by a soul-sucking vampire.
• Number nine on the Canadian list is a book about "The difficult choices a family must make when a child is diagnosed with a serious disease are explored with pathos and understanding...." Number nine on the US list is about the difficult choices a book buyer must make when an entertainer's demise is exploited by pathos and misunderstanding.
• If Dan Brown is to get to number one on the US list, he must lengthen the title of his book to The Lost Symbol: How I Lost an eBay Auction for the Holy Grail to Mary Magdalene When That Bitch Bid Sniped Me While I Was Staring at the Proofs for the 25 Ambigrams I'm Gonna Get the Publishers to Fork Out Big Bucks For When They Print This Book. Guaranteed number one.
• 7 out of 15 unique titles (that aren't box sets) rely on the overused colon for their titles.
• None of the titles contain the letter "z".
• Only one book contains a vanity self-reference to the author... actually, to the author's common sense.
• Only one book name drops an American Revolutionary in the title (strangely enough not on the Canadian list). I wonder if the devout religious followers of the author know he's inspired by a man who said "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church."

Top Ten Books at amazon.ca

1. Sookie Stackhouse Boxed Set by Charlaine Harris
2. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
3. The Book Of Negroes by Lawrence Hill
4. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
5. Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller by Jeff Rubin
6. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
7. Three Cups Of Tea by Greg Mortenson
8. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
9. My Sister's Keeper: A Novel by Jodi Picoult
10. The Twilight Saga Collection by Stephenie Meyer

Top Ten Books at amazon.com

1. Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine by Glenn Beck
2. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
3. The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power by Jeff Sharlet
4. Sookie Stackhouse, Books 1-7 by Charlaine Harris
5. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
7. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, Annie Barrows
8. The Shack by William P. Young
9. Unmasked: The Final Years of Michael Jackson by Ian Halperin
10. Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto by Mark R. Levin

One of the features Amazon has built into its recommendation engine is the "Frequently Bought Together" section that, I'm guessing, is supposed to inspire you to think "WOW! If other people are buying that, I should probably by it too!"

In the case of a recent purchase of, however, (and what I'm sure isn't a rare occurrence) there were two pieces of media that I could never imagine going together... ever. You see, the concept of "Frequently Bought Together" would indicate to me, more than once. Now I could buy into the fact that perhaps no one who had purchased that Ben Folds' University A Cappella! CD would necessarily buy the same second item before leaving Amazon. I more than expected the second item in the side-by-side purchase push to be another CD by Ben Folds or similar genre pounding piano rocker. I was shocked to find out that, as evidenced by the "Frequently" recommendation, the most popular accompanying item was the DVD Repulsion by Roman Polanski.

Ben Folds CD is described as "a great mix of pop-sounding arrangements (with beat-boxing and voices substituting as drums) and more traditional a capella singing (with lovely harmonies, etc.)"

Polanski's Repulsion, on the other hand, "shows us, in simple but effective terms, the horrors that lurk inside a troubled psyche. While obviously working on a shoestring budget, Polanski recreates with disturbing impact the strange and unsettling horror of a mind that has begun to turn upon itself. Carol Ledoux is not on a strong emotional footing as the story begins: she's at once compelled by and terrified of her sexual needs, and she displays an unhappy emotional distance from others that suggests a mild form of autism. When Carol is left alone after her sister leaves on vacation, her fragile connection with the rest of the world gives way, and. as she isolates herself in her apartment, Carol's mind fragments into a hallucinatory state, which Polanski manifests on-screen with an apt surrealism. Within the increasingly grim and shadowy confines of the flat, revolting images of rotting food and buzzing flies mingle with things that shouldn't or couldn't actually be there, and Polanski's impressionistic use of odd angles, visual distortion, and blunt, shocking violence make Carol's world seem as frighteningly alien to us as it must be to her."

Now those Ben Folds haters out there might think themselves clever by saying... "I get it. Ben Folds REPULSES me!" But to use film commercial techniques, I believe I can make the case for the tie...

The new Ben Folds CD is "simple but effective". Its "strong emotional footing" will convince detractors as "the rest of the world gives way". A "frighteningly" "apt" selection that will have an "impressionistic" "impact" all over the "world".