“The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.“
~ Henry James
Tag Archives: books
#50by50ish #46 – Purging some of my library
My #50by50 years have come and gone, both the lead up and the bonus time when I was actually 50. I’m now 51, and there are a couple of items that I started during the period that I haven’t written up yet. One of those was a commitment to purging some books from my collection. To be honest, I have no idea how many books I have in the basement. My educated guess is somewhere between 1500 and 2500. A huge range I know, and a large number of books. I’ve held on to them over the years, and they … Continue reading →
Sharing and ranking my reviews
Back when I started doing reviews, I shared them by email with some friends and other people who asked to be put on the list after seeing other things I emailed out for PolyWogg Trivia and PW-Humour. I was an one-man GoogleGroups of sorts. I had dreams of becoming semi-famous as an online blogger for movies. I tried posting a few reviews to various sites, and a site called Ottawa FilmCan loved my reviews — free content for them! So when studios offered them “press passes” for some premiere, they gave one to me. I went to the theatre, got … Continue reading →
A PolyWogg Reading Challenge for 2019
I have been wanting to do a reading challenge for some time now, and each year I think I’m going to do the Good Reads one (with a 50 book pledge, for instance). But I feel the approach of just counting books is “off” somehow as a raw number isn’t really what I’m talking about. Would I feel twice as good if I read 50 books instead of 25? What about classics, should I only be counting classics? Is there a way to somehow add gamification to the mix? Or when it comes right down to it, is all I’m … Continue reading →
Falling in love again
Back when I was a wee lad, in the home country don’t you know (well, Peterborough, Ontario, population at the time around 55K), I ordered books from the Scholastic Book Club. I loved the SBC order forms, and frequently started out with 20 or 30 books I wanted, and had to whittle down my order to only one or two. One time, something I had ordered wasn’t available, and they gave me a credit plus a grab bag of three free books.One of those free books was part of the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series. Eventually growing to … Continue reading →