SKINNER'S RATS, PELLETS OF FOOD & "SLOW PUNCTURE" - A RATHER TORTUOUS ANALOGY

During this last lockdown (from February onwards) to maintain some levels of sanity (and I am aware that some would argue that this objective was a spectacular failure), I have periodically been checking the Amazon rankings of "Slow Puncture" in the Medical Biographies and Memoirs categories.

Like Skinner's rat, being rewarded with a pellet of food for randomly pushing a button, I quickly got sucked into checking several times a day and I was occasionally rewarded with my own succulent pellet or, in this case, THE TASTY TOP 100 PELLET.* This morsel of literary deliciousness fuelled my appetite and, far from excess of it causing my appetite to sicken, and die (sorry Shakespeare), it left me hungry for more.

We are all aware that these rankings slide up and down with a bewildering frequency but, having kept all of the screen shots from the Top 100 rankings, I decided it would be interesting to put them together in a frieze.

Most of the rankings are from Kindle but there are a couple from sales of the hard copy of

the book. And here they are, below. Number 59 remains our best ranking - so far!

* registered trade mark. May contain nuts.