Can Amazon actually tell time?

[temporus]

Okay, is it just me, or does anyone else get annoyed by the marketing bits from Amazon declaiming: Best Books of X.  Where X here represents either a year or the month.   What gets me about this, is not the books themselves, but the fact that they are purporting to tell me which are the best books of a month, while the month is only half over.  Seriously, I got an email from Amazon claiming to share with me the Best Books of October.  But, as I recall, there's a good week and a half or so left of the month.  How on Earth can they possibly know that in the remaining time there won't be other, even cooler books coming out?

Grrr..  Okay, that's probably more a pet peeve of mine than anyone else's but I know I got something like that over the summer claiming that it was telling me the best books of 2009.  I have nothing against any of the books they sent me on the mailing.  I have nothing against Amazon for sending me suggestions.  If I did, I'd have told them to stop it by now.  I sometimes get a kick out of seeing books recommended by authors I interact with, and will sometimes send them a note to let them know their book has been recommended by Amazon in an email.  I think that's a great thing.   But seriously, please wait to judge a month, year, decade, etc, until it's actually over.  Please?

So, am I the only person who gets these Amazon mailings?  (Or B&N, or Borders)

And if you get these mailings, do they ever influence you?  Do you ever check out the books from a library, or buy them from the vendor?  What if you get a tailored message that tells you the latest novel by Author you've bought in the past is now available to you for a discount?