Judge more books by their cover

Nowadays I tend to buy the majority of my books from Amazon. When I buy books from Amazon it's normally when I know exactly what I want - something recommended on a blog or in the paper. However, I still love books shops. I browse and feel my way around them, picking up the books with interesting covers, reading the summaries and generally looking for something but not anything in particular. The last five books I’ve bought on Amazon were; The Brand Innovation Manifesto, The Undercover Economist, Freakonomics, Herd and Convergence Culture. All plannery type of books and my wish list looks similar. Interestingly though, the last five I bought in a book shop were; The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, a Karl Marx biography, Watching the English, The World of Karl Pilkington and Unspeak. All quite disparate and bought on a complete whim.

Hypernarrative has posted this interesting article. It discusses the concept of sites organising products visually and allowing you to meander through and pick up books just as you would in a bookshop. It suggests that 'bad design' can in fact be good design. It encourages discovery, although I doubt it would sell as many books?

Excuse this slight random digression and probable guff but it's just bouncing round in my head.....

So whilst sites like Amazon try and be helpful/sell more products by analysing your history and recommending potential titles, they focus your reading in a particular direction. I now read more plannery type books than ever before, finishing one and then moving straight on to the next. Is this because I'm spending more and more time online? Am I allowing sites like Amazon and Last FM to influence my future knowledge and interests or limit it to specific areas? Sounds a bit extreme I know but I've even started to make a conscious effort to return to my broader, more interesting habits, at least so I can avoid boring people at work with just 'cool work stuff'.

Yep, the Internet gives people access to more stuff than ever before blah blah blah. But rather ironically, because there is so much stuff, news feed, filters, social networks etc allow you to make sense of it, or more importantly limit the amount of new stuff you can discover. Where is the potential of finding something new and unexpected in your Netvibes?