My primary e-readers are a PocketBook InkPad Color and PocketBook Color. But I also have a Kindle Paperwhite that I purchased back in December 2018. I recently had cause to turn on my Paperwhite, but first I had to charge it. I opened the cover and saw something familiar on the lockscreen ad:
Amazon is recommending that I purchase the A Sign of Affection manga. I wrote seven articles about the anime adaptation of A Sign of Affection this year. Is Amazon reading The New Leaf Journal and targeting me based on my articles!?
It is not. Much like what was the case in my specious is my TV watching me photo-post, there is some necessary context here. The explanation for this targeting is simpler. I quote from my March 28 review of A Sign of Affection (the anime):
I am usually an anime only viewer as in I watch anime without having read the underlying source material (when applicable, some anime series such as my 2021 and 2023 anime of the year picks are original productions). A Sign of Affection was a rare case where I actually had some familiarity with the source material – having read some of the early chapters when they were being simulpubbed on Kindle Unlimited a few years ago. This is much less disconcerting than Amazon following my website to sell me stuff. I read a decent number of chapters of the manga back in 2020, so Amazon, which keeps tabs on everyone’s Amazon reading, inferred that I may be interested in purchasing the manga.
Of course, this anticlimactic explanation for why Amazon thinks I want to buy the Kindle version of A Sign of Affection would hardly make for a riveting article, so let us expand the story.
As I wrote above, I purchased my current Kindle Paperwhite in December 2018. I know it was between December 3 and 7 although I cannot single out which day with the same precise specificity I was able to hone in on when I received Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life for the Nintendo GameCube in June (probably June 11) 2004. Acquiring my Kindle was not a dramatic event. I actually had a previous generation Kindle Paperwhite and was trading my old one in for the new one at an Amazon store location. But there are a few reasons I remember its acquisition well.
First, the reason why I chose this day to make the Kindle exchange was because I had a dentist appointment in Midtown Manhattan. Second, I was had violent abdominal pain the whole day . It was bad enough that I almost passed on extending my stay 10 minutes to make the Kindle exchange, but I had come that far so I fought through the pain. The pain abated for a time, but on December 21 of that month I went to the local emergency care office and was told to go immediately to the ER. One thing led to another and I ended up having colon surgery before leaving the hospital a week later. Fun fact: My surgery was on Christmas Eve (a cheery holiday season).
All things considered, I recovered fairly well and quickly from being relieved of a decent part of my colon. I recall I that I walked about 2-3 miles the day after I returned home from the hospital (that would be December 29) and I made a point of going out every day. But I was understandably (I think, at least) a bit low-energy for a few weeks, not least because I had significant diet restrictions for close to a month after the surgery (less stringent after the first week home). So outside of my one outdoor excursion each day, I was mostly chair-bound and limited to leisurely activities to occupy myself before I nodded off. One such activity was reading. My new Kindle came with six months of free of Kindle Unlimited, so I made some use of that as well as reading books I already had in my digital library. Recalling two prior New Leaf Journal articles, I also played through the Nintendo 3DS version of Pokémon Trading Card Game for Game Boy Color and had stumbled upon a 20-year old game of Mario Party as I dusted off my copy to play with friends.
Skipping ahead, I kept Kindle Unlimited a while past the six-month limit because I had a list of things to read on it. While I still had it, I noticed A Sign of Affection and thought it looked interesting enough to read. It was being released chapter-by-chapter at the time instead of in full volumes. I would not have remembered when I read it – but Wikipedia notes the first volume was made available on March 31, 2021. I am not sure if that is when I first read it due to the fact the Kindle Unlimited releases were coming as chapters and I suspect they may have been coming out before the first full volume was released in English – but early 2020 sounds about right for when I would have been reading it. It looks like I was reading some of the chapters in the ballpark of when I started The New Leaf Journal.
I eventually canceled Kindle Unlimited because (A) it is not cheap and (B) I have plenty of unread e-books without needing a subscription service (I should work on that). In any event, I tend to favor books released DRM-free these days (that was not something on my radar back in 2019).
Let it be said that one can even turn a targeted Kindle lockscreen ad into an article trip down memory lane.
