God moves in mysterious ways. And, at the other end of the scale, someone had a really bad day (note that's an AP feed, not a local story).
Get Religion has a piece on fundamentalism which uses Amazon purchasing circles, giving unique book purchase totals by city, to define selected cities as inside or outside the Bible Belt. My curiosity piqued, I ran Salt Lake, Provo, and St. George. Interesting--not what I expected, especially "Statistical Mechanics Made Simple" being number one in SLC. Here are the Top 5 for each (with "Mormon Studies" books in bold and the link back to the full Amazon list):
SLC: Statistical Mechanics Made Simple, A is for Arches, No Man Knows My History, Insider's View of Mormon Origins, Blood of the Prophets.
Provo: The Book of Mormon Reference Companion, Practical Cryptography, The Crystal City (Alvin Maker, Vol. 6), The Innovator's Solution, Crucial Conversations
St. George: Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, Freedom, Under the Banner of Heaven, Bushwhacked, The South Beach Diet.
Meridian Magazine has a short article on Chiastic Structures in the Book of Mormon--if you've been in a coma for twenty years you might be unaware of the phenomenon. These guys find a "global chiasmus" of 164 elements in 1 Nephi. Have you heard the saying, "If tortured long enough, the data will confess"? How about "If your only tool is a hammer, every scripture is a nail"? For a better Meridian read, see Orson Scott Card's story on bias in the media--I'm not a Card fan, but I liked the article. Nice photo too.
Interesting. Note that the lists you give, as well as the ones you link to, are for books "uniquely popular" in a given region, not the overall bestsellers. The overall bestseller for SLC and Provo is, inevitibly, "The Da Vinci Code."
Posted by: ed | Jul 02, 2004 at 12:34 PM
I must say, that Card article is crap. Comparing a reporting mentioning Abu Ghraib weeks after it is uncovered to mentioning Hillary's cattle futures a decade later? Sophomoric. And silly sidebars about Day After Tomorrow as nefarious liberal propaganda? Card has lost it. Another intellectual casualty of the culture wars. The right's answer to Bob Herbert.
Posted by: gerty macdowell | Jul 02, 2004 at 12:54 PM
Uh-oh. The Amazon purchase circle for Orem lists "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands" by Laura Schlessinger as No. 1. [And note that No. 3 is a book about the secrets of millionaires].
Posted by: William Morris | Jul 02, 2004 at 02:11 PM