So I go to Barnes and Noble to spend my birthday gift card, and I pick up three volumes of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories: The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, The Bloody Crown of Conan, and The Conquering Sword of Conan.
It all started when I saw The Complete Chronicles of Conan around Christmas time, but it was gone before I could buy it with a gift card. So I’ve thought about buying the paperback versions I listed above, but have been hemming and hawing until I got a $50 gift card (the books, in the store, are $17 each plus tax, unlike the lower rates you get if you click the handy Amazon links). So I bought them with the card today and a couple grubzits of my own.
So Barnes and Noble, in an attempt to remain relevant, replicated a bit of Amazon’s functionality by producing a list of recommendations that printed out with my receipt:
It recommended the other books on the shelf by Robert E. Howard that I did not pick up today.
That’s a stunning bit of artificial intelligence there, wot?
