Way back in the dark ages of the late 1990s, I had an idea for a personal website. I had been sending out a personal newsletter full of humour and quotes, sometimes movie reviews, and I was also running a trivia game by email. It was just a small distribution group for the humour and stuff, larger for the trivia games, and I even got a few movie reviews posted on a local movie times site. I found that I really enjoyed it. But I wondered if I could move it from email to a website.
Over the years, I tried multiple layouts, formats, even types of back-end software to display it, but most of the core content elements remained the same. Somewhere in there I thought, “What if I posted book reviews too?” After all, I was reading a lot. But I tended to finish the book, throw it on a shelf, and move on. I wasn’t looking to become a reviewer for a newspaper, just some personal thoughts shared, well, somewhere other than a journal.
Last year, I finally said, “Okay, let’s figure this out right this time.” I figured out a layout, I figured out a workflow for myself, and I figured out where I wanted to post them. Plus, just for fun, I started updating my approach to book reviews (i.e. a personal “review” philosophy, if you will). Again, I don’t want to be a professional reviewer, but I also don’t want to be an online equivalent of grunting “Book good”.
I managed to figure all that out, but I didn’t get many posted with the full workflow. My goal for this year was to clear the initial backlog…thirty-six reviews that were written, posted somewhere originally, and relatively ready to go. Just not in the new format. I have been steadily munching away at them, a day here and a day there, a book review here and a book review there, and plowed through a whack of them today to finish it off.
I finally have all 36 up on the site, fully linked to the various review sites out there. I even have an index designed for all the book reviews, just need to populate these 36 in the list. It’s a bit tedious, but it was easier to wait until all 36 were done before trying to populate them all into the multiple indices.
I have a few more sitting in the wings, waiting to be finished, polished, or reorganized from notes into an actual review, but the bulk of the work? I’m calling it done like dinner. Woohoo me! 🙂
I have struggled over the past 15 years with multiple incarnations of my book reviews online. These aren’t your typical amateur string of consciousness reviews, I am far too anal for that. I don’t know how many times I’ve read a review by someone else on a site like Amazon and when I was finished the review, I thought, “What the heck does any of that have to do with the book? Was it good?”.
Some of the worst ones say “five stars, just ordered it, haven’t read it yet”. Or “I’m giving it one star because my aunt Bernice said she heard from a friend that their Minister was told by a parishioner that it has a bad word in it somewhere”. While reviews of those types are easy to dismiss, I am equally troubled by the people who do plot summaries with no review, say only what they like and yet give it 1 or 2 stars, say only what they hate and yet give it 4 or 5 stars, and a host of other equally useless content like “good book”.
And I confess that I have a small dream. Not huge, because I don’t have the time for huge, but small. It is to have people send me their books as advance reader copies (ARCs) because they have read my reviews somewhere else and now want me to review THEM. This isn’t that far-fetched, it has happened multiple times already. I particularly like it when someone reads my review and comments on it. It’s like creating my own time-shifting book club for introverts.
The problem, of course, is if I want to build any sort of brand, I have to actually figure out what that brand is going to be. And I think I’m close. Certainly closer to final than I have ever been before. I have a layout — a link to the book’s cover on Amazon, brief summary of plot or premise, what I liked, what I didn’t like, an overall one-line/tweet review, some boilerplate info on the book’s publication, my rating of course, and some verbiage to address the mandatory US disclosure requirements i.e. if I received the book in exchange for a review or am friends with the author (yep, I’m in Canada, but I think the disclosure is not a bad idea and wouldn’t be surprised if other countries adopt it too, plus as you’ll see below, some of my reviews get posted on US sites, so easier to include it upfront rather than go back and add it later).
Posting it on my own site has always been relatively easy. Figuring out how to create an index, however, which allows people to see the list of reviews by author, title, rating, year, or review order is not as easily accomplished on a simple WordPress site, particularly if I don’t want a lot of back-end programming and data entry nor front-end delays in rendering. The simplest option on both ends is to maintain the various lists as separate static pages that I just update from time to time. I found some nice buttons I like, easily added them, with some bright colour coding, and it’s good to go (Book Review Index). I even managed to include my full approach to book reviews so if anyone wants to know if they want to risk me reading their book and doing a review, they can easily see what I do.
The “building my brand” idea though has frequently overwhelmed my approach as there are lots of places to post reviews, and most of them require the same info for posting, but they all have the info in a slightly different order. I was playing with Microsoft Access to create a simple database for entry and saving of the data, with the idea that I would then generate multiple reports in the format/order that the various review sites needed, but Access was not playing nicely. Part of the problem is that what I’m doing is not really that complicated, and while Access will produce reports out the wazoo, what I really needed was it to produce a single page at a time for the latest single record, and preferably without doing look-up queries to do it. Particularly as there are multiple sites to generate reports for, and I didn’t want to create multiple reports with multiple queries all competing for my attention. I’m sure it can be done. I’m sure it can be made quite simple. But not by me without learning way more about Access than I ever want to learn. There’s something strangely ironic and equally disturbing that I could probably do it in dBase IV or COBOL more easily than I was finding my attempts in Access.
So I switched to Excel. Really, honestly, it’s a flat-file database, and there is no relational element in my usage. Exactly what Excel was originally designed for, albeit I’m using text rather than financial numbers.
My new layout is working AWESOME for me. I have:
a primary page which is my master index…it’s not what I work with most of the time, but it does have the complete list — if I lose everything else, this is the master page;
Sheet 2 is my simple data entry page — 22 fields, although technically 9 of those get combined into a big tag field later, it’s just easier to group the tags separately when I’m writing the review;
Sheet 3 is a temporary paste/staging page — this is a lesson I learned a long time ago to paste into a page that everything else pulls from, rather than pulling from the master or the data entry page…that way if something messes up on the other two pages, or I change some setting or layout, the whole set of subsequent pages are not messed up;
Sheets 4-14 are what would have been separate reports in Access but just are “links” to different sections of the staging page and are in the exact order I need to paste my reviews into:
my PolyWogg pages;
Amazon.ca
Amazon.com (they don’t link and push to .ca anymore)
Chapters-Indigo
Kobo books (a different set of reviews for paper and digital, unlike Amazon)
Barnes and Noble
Nook books (as with Kobo, a different set of reviews for paper and digital)
Google Play Books
Good Reads
Shelfari
Library Thing
I’ve already automated a bunch of stuff on the browser front too so that I can open all those sites with one click, find the book, and start uploading the review. Some of them are already on Amazon, I uploaded them previously, but most of the other sites are new and relatively virgin territory (I’ve only uploaded reviews of four titles so far, and many of them had no previous reviews or ratings). It has taken a bit longer than I would like to upload the first few, but I’m getting a bit faster now that I’m used to the page interfaces.
Once that is done, I copy the final text from data entry over to the master list, and that first page has some calculated fields on it that also generates and formats my index entries for the website and the basic outline for my tweet update that the review is posted on my own site.
Automation should help streamline the review process somewhat, and I had to figure out my business process to get to this stage. Now that it’s done, and I’ve tested the model on the first four reviews, I’m excited to upload a backlog of another 30 old ones and get started on my goal of 50 new ones for the year.
This academic analysis of recent Canadian international development assistance is long on political economy and light on “realities on the ground”.
What I Liked
The text had a strong opening for its goals, even if the administrative context didn’t quite match their estimated / presumed political context. When it came to hard statistical analysis (Chapter 6) and mimicry of other donors, the paper was sound. Chapter 12 on children at risk, and the potential for mainstreaming, had potential but was undersold.
What I Didn’t Like
The book had a lot of rhetoric and assumptions than analysis of ethical consensus and normativism (Chapters 1-3), results reporting and power dynamics (Chapter 4, 5, 10), Corporate Social responsibility (Chapter 7, 15, 16), links to military spending for peacekeeping (Chapter 8, 9, 13,14), and soundbite announcements masquerading as policies (Chapter 11).
Disclosure
I am not personal friends with the editors, but I am friends with the author of one of the chapters.
A collection of 20 solve-them-yourself mysteries, perfect for reading on your break. For context, the stories are all short, suitable for reading one or two on a coffee break. If you have seen the 5-minute mysteries in the back of magazines like Reader’s Digest or remember the old Encyclopedia Brown series, then you understand the premise — you read a short-short story (almost flash length) with a mystery of “who did something”, ending with the narrator announcing that she or he knows the solution. Then, as the reader, you are challenged to figure out the mystery too. Turn the page, and voila, the solution from the story’s narrator to see if you’re right.
What I Liked
Sometimes when you see this type of story presented in magazines, the author doesn’t play fair — they hide a piece of evidence, or they play games with personal pronouns to trick you into thinking the character named “Chris” is a man but is really a woman. In this collection, I was happy to see that all of the mysteries play out completely fairly — in almost all cases, the information you need to solve them is provided completely within the text of the story. (There are three small exceptions to this where you need to have some basic knowledge of American or literary history.) I also really liked the Ask Martha “collection within a collection”. These are all stories with the same narrator — Crusher Davis, an ex-athlete turned sportswriter who also writes an “Ask Martha” column for the newspaper on the sly. It is odd, but the continuing character really helps the stories feel more vibrant, and more easily digestible. Of the six stories with Davis, The Arsonist and the Baseball Mystery are two of the best mysteries in the entire collection. Finally, the last story (Is It A Wonderful Life) is one of the best of the collection, except there aren’t enough suspects or meat to the story. Overall, here are the stories I liked the best:
The Pilgrim Thanksgiving — A holiday pageant at a school concludes with a test — which of the stories was historically inaccurate? Rating: 4.00;
Edgar Allan Poe’s Mysterious Visitor — A group of local Poe lovers want to take over the graveside vigil of the anonymous Mysterious Visitor who comes to Poe’s grave every year, but to be chosen, they must pass a test about Poe. Rating: 3.00;
The White House Ghosts — Four former Presidents decide to leave a gift for the new President’s children…but which President is represented by the gift? Rating: 4.00;
Ask Martha – The St. Patrick’s Day Mystery — Somebody spikes the drink at a fundraiser, but who turned the green celebration blue? Rating: 4.00;
Ask Martha – The Arsonist — Somebody is setting fires around town, and the tipline produces some leads…but only one leads to the firebug. Rating: 4.50;
Ask Martha – The Identify Thief — A group of friends go out for lunch, one comes home without a credit card. Rating: 3.00;
Ask Martha – The Jackie Mitchell Autographed Baseball Mystery — A dying old man has a special baseball on his mantle that goes missing as soon as he dies. Rating: 4.50;
The Miser’s Hoard — An old miser dies, leaving a small treasure hidden in the wall…but when it is about to be divided up, somebody sneaks an early withdrawal. Rating: 3.00;
The Gourmet Mystery — Who was a pig that ate the expensive truffles and didn’t want to pay for them? Rating: 3.00;
Is It A Wonderful Life? — An old man dies of an overdose — was it an accident, or a prescription for murder? Rating: 3.50;
What I Didn’t Like
All of the stories are rated PG — which is only a problem in the sense that some of the characters seem uni-dimensional like they’re stuck in an episode of Leave It To Beaver (one involves naive students pickpocketing people, which is dismissed as a prank because they apologize). At least three of the stories rely on an assessment of character (such as a person’s religious devotion) to eliminate suspects, which hardly registers as “evidence” to the normal mystery reader (in one case, a religious devotee is cleared of stealing a religious artifact because he is too devoted to stealing). The solutions aren’t that complicated, but if the nuance was added that the police/narrator would prioritize their investigation on the main suspect first, rather than the narrator declaring “I know who did it”, it would be a little softer to read. And easier to agree with the solution presented. Often times I had it narrowed down to two suspects and agreed the “correct” one was more likely, but I couldn’t eliminate the other one on the evidence alone. Here are my ratings for the short mysteries that I didn’t particularly enjoy:
Who Poisoned George Washington? — George is poisoned while visiting New York, and there are four suspects. Rating: 2.50;
A Dream of Old Salem — A girl dreams of a witch trial in old Salem, but which of the witnesses is lying? Rating: 2.50;
Stealing Second Base — A baseball base is stolen from a display case and three students had the opportunity. Rating: 1.50;
Lost (Stolen) and Found — A purse of money is found in the woman’s washroom at the diner…but who put it there? Rating: 2.50;
Ask Martha – The Pickpocket — People are losing their wallets around town, and a small pool of suspects has already formed. Rating: 2.00;
Ask Martha – The Shoplifter — Four people write to Martha for help, followed by the police — and all of them are related stories about potential five-finger discounts. Rating: 2.50;
What the Dickens – A Christmas Eve Mystery — A re-imagining of Dickens’ Oliver Twist and his reunion with his family. Rating: 1.00;
The Twelfth Night Mystery — The Three Wise Kings visit a little girl in modern times, bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh — and a kitten! Rating: 2.50;
The Crusader’s Robe — A ship is returning from the Crusades with treasures, and somebody pilfers one. Who was it? Rating: 2.00;
The Geneva Summit Goldfish Mystery — Reagan goes to Geneva to meet a goldfish. Rating: 1.00;
Disclosure
I received a free reader’s copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. I am not personal friends with the author, but I have interacted with them briefly on social media.
The author is a book reviewer for the Washington Post; this is the story of his life up until graduation from university.
What I Liked
Dirda was recommended to me by a colleague from work, whose appetites for reading are far more literary than mine. He actually recommended Bound to Please, which is a collection of Dirda’s reviews of more literary prose from throughout history, but I tripped over this book first. I’m quite glad I did as I probably won’t read the collection of essays until I’ve read most of the tomes reviewed, but An Open Book is a fantastic autobiography.
It reads in some place like Angela’s Ashes without the darkness of Irish poverty. However, it is not without conflict or family dysfunction during the author’s childhood, and he tells the story in places with openness and unashamed personal bias.
The main part of the story recounts Dirda’s intellectual progress as he moved through comic strips from the newspaper (p.49), pun and joke books (everyone sing: “great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts”!), the TAB book club (p.66), the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift series (p.90), a brief stint with romance novels (p.201), and the importance of great literature to challenging society and even changing history (p.290). It also includes his non-literary education – playing with BB guns (p.81), understanding firsthand how hard his father’s job was (p.185), learning about art and music (p.267), the ceasing to care about grades when writing essays and the corresponding improvements in marks (p.310), the contribution of early influences in his life to later character traits (p.320), and looking back at one’s life (p.321).
The book recounts his life relatively linearly in time, yet with lots of interesting digressions that veer away from developments in his personal life and situation with the book he was reading at the time.
What I Didn’t Like
It would have been interesting to see more of the reactions from teachers throughout the author’s life, including perhaps even tracking some of them down. It is hard to imagine exactly how certain ones would have reacted to his precocious reading of more advanced novels, and the existing allusions to some of their reactions are rudimentary at best. As well, the final decision (to become a freelance journalist upon leaving university) is rushed in the story and negates much of the relaxed pace to that point.
The Bottom Line
See the early influences on a literary book reviewer.
