You might like this unrelated book by someone else with the same name

[beige_alert]

Amazon.com's recommendations are an endless source of amusement. Bought an unusual book ten years ago? Every potentially related book will be recommended, forever. The computers also will let you know about new books written by people who have the names of any authors who wrote books you previously purchased. This includes but is by no means limited to new books by the same authors you've read before. If you want lots of interesting but random recommendations I guess you can buy books written by people with common names. Since every single such recommendation Amazon has sent me was clearly actually a different person, I find it interesting that the wording implies that they expected it to be the same person. If I was writing it I'd say something like "You might be interested in this new book written by someone with the same name as the author of a book you've previously purchased, who may or may not actually be the same author."

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Identifying authors is a notoriously hard bibliographic problem. There are authors who use more than one name or multiple variants of one name, different authors who have the same name, and pseudonyms which encompass collaborating authors. Unfortunately -- or fortunately, from other standpoints --there's no such thing as an ISAN.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

You could try buying books written by authors that have unusual names...

I remember being in a writer's group with an aspiring science fiction/fantasy author during the time period when another woman with her exact name suddenly started publishing in that genre. That would have irritated me big time if it had been my name!