Commitments

This is a blog continually in transition. I started the original version in 2005 when I was working through a reading challenge with a couple of coworkers. I was a librarian at the time so I was surrounded by people who had reading habits every bit a voracious as my own. That initial iteration was probably the most successful run I had with the blog. I think partly that was because it was a new idea and I think partly it was because I was surrounded by big readers. Even though I work at a school now, I am the undisputed biggest reader of the campus. Talking books just isn't as much fun as it used to be. Inevitably, I end up talking people into the glassy eye stage.

I've restarted the blog a half dozen times now and through each iteration, except this one, I've had some sort of reading goal usually something like 200 books a year. Even though I probably hit the low hundreds each of those years, I got nowhere near that many reviews written. Part of it is time. When I'm teaching, time to do anything else is sparse. Part of it is the sense that I'm speaking into the void. I love reading for its own sake but having an actual dialog with other book lovers would be nice. I write my reviews and there is some personal value in that, but I miss working with fellow book nerds.

So, this time, instead of a reading goal, I have a posting goal. The inconsistency of my previous blogs mean that even if some random person tripped across my blog, they probably wouldn't keep reading it through my dry spells. The goal then is to post three times a week: Saturday and Sunday for book reviews and Wednesdays as a hodgepodge. If I'm lucky, maybe we'll get some dialog going.