I have an unhealthy relationship with Amazon.com’s “Recommended for You” feature.

While some of our interactions are positive and result in me finding new books to love, I tend to look at RfY’s suggested products as referendums on my personality and worth as a human being.

For example, at the moment my #1 book recommendation is “The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance” by Laurie Garrett. What does it say about me as a person, that three of the top 15 books on my RfY list are about how infectious disease can kill us all?

And okay, I’ve read not one, but two books on the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic in the past three months (”Flu” by Gina Kolata was quite good, but “The Great Influenza” by John M. Barry really dragged in the beginning – he spent 76 pages on the foundation of Johns Hopkins University alone.) But I’m not the survivalist lunatic that RfY seems to think I am! I’m not! I don’t need camping supplies!!

See how worked up I can get? I’m this close to breaking the dinner plates and shouting tearfully, “Sometimes it feels like you don’t know me at all!”