I’m picking up on an item I saw in Gwen Dawson’s blog Literary License, where she refers to the predictive searching now on Amazon. Another US blogger came up with a list made by typing in the letters of the alphabet and seeing which books came up first. I thought I’d do the same for Amazon UK, and see if there were any big differences and/or surprises …
A is for audio books
B is for breaking dawn
C is for children’s books
D is for dan brown
H is for harry potter
I is for ipod
J is for james patterson
S is for stephanie meyer
T is for twilight
U is for usborne childrens books
V is for vampire
W is for wilbur smith
X is for x-men
Y is for yoga
Z is for zafon
U is for usborne childrens books
V is for vampire
W is for wilbur smith
X is for x-men
Y is for yoga
Z is for zafon
There are many that appear on both lists – multiple Stephanie Meyer mentions, Dan Brown, Harry Potter, James Patterson, Nora Roberts, vampires, x-men, and yoga. The rest of the UK list is mostly comprised of crime and thrillers and general searches including the great British passion for ‘gardening’. There’s no room in the UK abc for non-fiction like Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers or the novel Pride and prejudice and zombies here, (although I do fancy reading the latter). The most pleasant surprise was to see the Oxford Reading Tree and Roald Dahl featuring, (the ORT is a popular literacy scheme for children). The rest was oh so predictable – I’m sure that all those thrillers will appear on the bestseller charts in all the papers.
Reflecting upon all this, it was actually rather a silly exercise, wasn’t it!