

Everything Paul Buchheit has bought from Amazon in the last 3 years - whalesalad
http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2010/01/books-and-stuff-three-years-of-amazon.html

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uuilly
Love 156: "Basic Economics," Thomas Sowell is the Dr. Seuss of market
economics.

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JustAGeek
Maybe I'm not seeing the obvious but how do you get a list with past
purchases?

Er, I do know you can log into your account and check your past purchases very
easily but that isn't very convenient if you want to post that list on your
blog with links to the books.

Is there a convenient API call or do you have to resort to html scraping?

Can't find anything like that in the Amazon API documentation but maybe I'm
just blind... :D

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cwb
It seems that's what Blippy, the company Paul mentions at the beginning, does:
<http://blippy.com/>

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tfh

      93. Rules of the Game
    

I thought Paul was married :)

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SwellJoe
_The Game_ is a better read. _Rules of the Game_ feels like leftovers.

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paul
Agreed. "The Game" was so amusing that I bought "Rules of the Game", but it
doesn't have much substance.

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brandonkm
Some excellent titles throughout this list. I'm currently enjoying 'Tell Me a
Story: Narrative and Intelligence (Rethinking Theory)'. Such a great read.

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mahmud
Very little finance/investment reading. I am surprised.

~~~
pgbovine
my lame speculation:

a.) once you're that wealthy, i don't think you care too much about 'get rich
quick' or 'crazy investment strategies of the week' books anymore. you
probably stash your money somewhere safe

b.) i'm sure paul cares a lot more about hacking than the latest fads in
finance/investment

~~~
rms
Not to mention he is an active angel investor, which is basically as risky as
it can get, so that makes sense to safely diversify.

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mahmud
This is crucial. He is a tech startup angle, not enough literature for those,
it's mostly gut feeling and personal experience. Hard to write valuation texts
for this industry.

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jdanndc
Recommend start at '156.' and scroll upwards.

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ntoshev
Just a few non-books though, and people has been sharing book lists for years.
If Paul really wants to test the privacy implications of this trend and see
what it feels like, he should post a history of his bank accounts, yeah by all
means edit it but still.

I think real geeks can't understand the benefits of social networking because
we are not really that social. We should accept it already: technology's main
use in the next decade will be for ego inflation and vanity with Twitter,
Blippy and the rest being on the leading edge. Triumph of empty form over
substance.

~~~
nostrademons
The world has _always_ functioned on ego inflation and vanity, though. From
500-1500, it was "You can be more righteous than your neighbors if you just
believe our priests." From 1500-1900, it was "You can be more wealthy than
your neighbors if you just invest in our venture." From 1900-1995, it was "You
can be more attractive than your neighbors if you buy our product." From
1995-present, it was "You can be smarter than your neighbors if you visit our
website."

It's interesting how this corresponds with the most idolized caste in society
at the time. From 500-1500, it was the clergy. From 1500-1900, it was the
financier/plantation-owner/prospector/industrialist. From 1900-1995, it was
the starlet. From 1995-present, it's the geek.

Substance is nothing more than empty form that nobody likes. (Or, as the
musician sometimes says it, "What does it say about classical music that its
antonym is 'popular' music?")

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kwamenum86
156 items in 3 years? That is obscene. He averaged one purchase per week from
amazon over this time period, which basically makes Amazon.com PB's religion.

~~~
nostrademons
If you s/Amazon.com/public library/, that is fairly typical of people who read
a lot. There is a LiveJournal community called 50bookchallenge that encourages
people to read 50 books a year, keep track of them, and share what they're
reading with others. It has 7000+ members. My reading lists for 2003-2006:

2003: <http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/24851.html>

2004: <http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/60579.html>

2005: <http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/83785.html>

2006: <http://nostrademons.livejournal.com/105646.html>

(The part I can't imagine is spending so much money on books when the library
is perfectly adequate, but I imagine that's not so much of a concern for PB.)

~~~
SwellJoe
The money isn't my primary problem with buying so many books, though it is a
factor...it's the weight of having all those books. When I moved from Austin I
sold 26 boxes of books and several bookshelves. I promised myself I would
never collect that many books again. I'm moving into an RV this week, and so
had to sell all the remaining books (and any that I'd collected since that
last move), and I sold 8 boxes of books and three book shelves.

Having large piles of things, like books, makes it too easy to slip into a rut
and stay in the same place doing the same thing out of mere inertia (more
mass==more inertia, and books en masse are heavy).

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jonknee
Maybe he gives them to friends or a local library after he's done?

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zandorg
You can return any new book bought on Amazon within 30 days, as long as you
pay return postage, so it is, in a sense, a library.

~~~
nostrademons
Postage can get rather hefty for some of those books. (Though I admit I did
this with some of my textbooks in college...I'd register for the course, buy
the textbook, read the whole textbook in the first week, return the textbook
for a full refund, and then drop the course and take something else.)

