content analysis

…and while we’re talking about worthwhile stuff to read, I need to mention the superior blogging of Jay Livingston over at Montclair SocioBlog.  This guy … I love this guy.  His fantastic posts over the summer made what time I did register online enjoyable.  He has my vote for Summer MVP of the Socioblogosphere.

Sometimes even the best of ideas don’t work out in practice. Take the motorcycle, for example. Putting a small engine on a bicycle? Genius idea in principle; highly dangerous crotch rocket in practice.

So, this afternoon, I was doing a bit of perusing on Amazon and looked up the Wish List of a friend, a fellow sociologist. Interest peeked, I looked up the Wish List of one of his co-authors. Before you know it, I’m looking up the entire population of professional sociologists. From the first Wish Lists or two, I thought I might stumble onto some fascinating insight into the intellectual interests of prominent sociologists. I imagined, for example, that I’d discover that sociologists all had a hidden love for the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski or dove into a bit of Sylvia Plath at the end of a long day of multiple imputation.

Alas, the truth was so much more mundane, human, and sobering. By far, the most common category of books were self-help books of all types. Like anybody else, sociologists had listed books about repairing broken marriages, recovering from cancer, fixing bad finances, overcoming social anxiety, and becoming better at their jobs. Coming to the realization, I immediately felt like a peeping tom, peering wide-eyed into the bedroom windows of my colleagues. So I stopped. Before I did though, I was able to make one more (far less gut-wrenching) observation: sociologists really want expensive books about food.