What was your first order on Amazon? This is the latest meme, via Megan McArdle.
I ordered my first books from Amazon in 1998 — one cookbook, Madhur Jaffrey's Quick & Easy Indian Cooking, and a bunch of books for my diss, including Tinkering toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform
White Trash : Race and Class in America in May of 1997. It looks like my ordering trickled along until Amazon started their recommendation service and I nearly went broke.
Perhaps a more sobering meme would involve posting how much you’d spent at Amazon to date. I was shocked to discover that my total for 1997-1999 was over six hundred dollars, so I’m afraid to tally the last decade.
My first book was Minnie’s Sacrifice, Sowing and Reaping, Trial and Triumph : Three Rediscovered Novels by Frances E.W. Harper. Still have it. My second book was purchased on October 28, 2008, 5 days after I learned I was pregnant with my first. The book was The Complete Book of Pregnancy and Childbirth.
The 37th Mandala by Marc Laidlaw. A very cool book, which I probably bought because they didn’t have Dad’s Nuke, or had it only at a prohibitive price.
My first order was a gift card.