Amazon recommendations – Confuzzledom

In which I go slightly overboard on the brackets…

Tuesday, 2 February 2010Tuesday, 2 February 2010 by Confuzzled Bev, posted in 101 Things in 1001 Days, books, cross stitch, life, me, reading

Work was pretty good today, but busy. Very, very busy. It’s only Tuesday and already I’m exhausted! So instead of doing some washing (which was my plan for tonight) I’ve spent the last 20 minutes ordering books from Amazon as a “treat” to myself (for what I’m not sure). This Internet shopping malarkey is really bad for my bank balance! But on the plus side it means I’m actually getting somewhere with one of my goals… I’m up to 9 books read from the never-ending list (5 of them in January… no wonder the past month seems to have flown by without me even noticing – I’ve apparantly spent most of it with my nose in a book!) plus one German children’s book, whcih I am counting towards the 101 things list even though I technically read it for my dissertation and not because I desperately wanted to read a book by Eric Kästner. I really need to start reading some non-fiction books though… I’ve been saying for ages that I want to. Instead I find myself going through my Amazon recommendations, adding even more books to the list (can you believe the boyfriend actually has the never to tell me he finds it difficult to choose birthday and Christmas presents for me? There’s a ready-made list full of the perfect gifts just sitting, waiting for him to pay attention to it!). I failed on the monthly photo theme again (maybe 50 photos was a little too ambitious?) so it’s good to know I’ve managed to get somewhere with something…

I’ve also started to get back into cross stitch lately. A few weeks ago I picked up a project that I stopped working on months ago and I’ve come surprisingly far since then. It was supposed to be a birthday present for Jan’s mum in 2008! Hopefully I’ll actually manage to get it to her this year. I have until November, which should be do-able as long as I don’t stop again…

Ooh, and I’ve just realised, the package that arrived for me today is probably another cross stitch kit that I ordered… a wedding sampler for one of the couples I know who are taking the plunge (Yes, you read that right. I said one of the couples. There are a few…) I hope it is – I’m really looking forward to getting started on that one.

A proper post… perhaps

Wednesday, 6 May 2009 by Confuzzled Bev, posted in blogging, me

I promised you all a proper blog post today. The only problem is now I’m here I can’t think of a single interesting thing to tell you. There is lots to catch up on, of course, but where to begin?

Having the internet back may be a very positive thing for my mental health and my relationship (I swear Jan and I argue more when I can’t blog every day!) but I have a feeling it’s going to be very, very bad for my bank balance. I’ve already been on Amazon, checking out my recommendations and wondering which book to treat myself to. As if being back online wasn’t treat enough! And once I’ve written this I’m thinking of taking myself over to the pixum website to get some of the photos from Paris printed. Is having instant access to places that want to take money from me really such a good thing? Thank god blogging’s free!

Speaking of money… my bank wrote to me yesterday. Apparantly they still need documents to do with my Mietkautionskonto (if you want to know what that is look in my blog archives. I’m too lazy to explain again now). But I gave back all the forms they told me to fill in and they never told me to bring them anything else. I bet they’ve gone and lost their copy of the form and are trying to pin the blame on me. Sounds about right for a bank.

So how are you all anyway? What have you all been doing while I’ve been away? Tell you what… I’ll just come on over and see for myself shall I? As soon as I’ve ordered myself some nice new reading material for the tram…

Cooking in the Secret Garden with Gordon Ramsay

Monday, 7 July 2008 by Confuzzled Bev, posted in books, reading

I’m sure I’ve asked this question before but… where on Earth do Amazon get their recommendations from? I admity they’re usually pretty good at predicting what I’ll like, and in this particular case they may be right again but I’m totally confused about their reasoning.
Amazon UK says I should buy “Gordon Ramsay’s Healthy Appetite”. Fair enough. I’ve bought cook books from Amazon before, it’s not entirely out of the question that I might want one written by Gordon Ramsay. Maybe I’ll even buy it. But… underneath the recommendation there’s always a little sentence telling you why they think you might like it. Under Gordon Ramsay I spotted the words “Recommended because you rated The Secret Garden and more.” What? Why? What on Earth does a recipe book by a TV chef have to do with a children’s book about an orphaned girl who finds her way into a locked garden? As far as I can remember there’s no cooking in The Secret Garden and I’m fairly sure there are no orphans in the Gordon Ramsay book (although I suppose there may be gardens… or at least stuff that comes from the garden), so how does the fact that I enjoyed The Secret Garden lead Amazon to believe that I might want to buy a cook book? The mind boggles, or at least mine does.

I’m off to bed now. I know it’s not even 11 o’clock yet but the alternative would be falling asleep across the keyboard, which would be much less comfortable and leave me with key shaped imprints all over my face… not quite my preferred look for work.