About Amazon

I don’t use Amazon all that much these days, but I do find its wish list function a useful tool with which to jot down books and other products I might wish to buy (from someone else) in the near future. Except that of course I forget about my list for months at a time, and the items on it become incrementally less desirable additions to the tsundoku pile.

For some reason, today I found myself rummaging in the depths in the deepest recesses of my list, going back as far as 2006. Many of these titles ring not the faintest bell. And I muse on what version of myself thought I might want to read the following:

• Shyness and Dignity, by Dag Solstad
• The Gift: How the Creative Spirit Transforms the World, by Lewis Hyde
• Living Life Without Loving the Beatles: A Survivor’s Guide, by Gary Hall
• The Giro Playboy, by Michael Smith
• Dork Whore: My Travels Through Asia as a Twenty-Year-Old Pseudo Virgin, by Iris Bahr
• Beware the Lobster People, by JJ Flitwick
• Thirteen, by Sebastian Beaumont
• Yiddish with Dick and Jane, by Ellis Weiner
• Gents, by Warwick Collins
• Transparent Imprint, by Michael Barnard
• What The Actual: Exasperated Incredulity Will Save America, by Muriel Chong
• The Edgier Waters, by A Stevens
• The Amnesiac, by Sam Taylor
• Three Trapped Tigers, by Guillermo Infante
• What Was Lost, by Catherine O'Flynn
• TM: Corporate Brand - Dream #69, by Nenko Joretsu
• I Am Not Sidney Poitier, by Percival Everett
• Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living, by Declan Kiberd
• Cyburbia: The Dangerous Idea That’s Changing How We Live and Who We Are, by James Harkin
• The Great Dog Bottom Swap, by Peter Bently
• Gribley’s Last Conundrum, by Horatia Mannix
• Mobius Dick, by Andrew Crummy
• Callisto, by Torsten Krol
• The Last Mad Surge of Youth, by Mark Hodkinson
• How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, by Charles Yu

Except that three of these, inevitably, are titles I’ve just made up. But which one? Without looking back at the list, even I can’t remember.