One thing I really want to call out this year is that I think I’ve actually gotten better at writing about books. Obviously, quite a lot of my reviews are still dreck, but looking back I’ve found a few that said something intelligent.

The second is that, somewhat obviously, I’ve really started making an effort to consider the worldview of the books I read. Thus, more discussion of race, of sexism, of moral philosophy. Obviously, I’ve never been a particularly fluffy bunny kind of reader (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but I’m trying to be a little more cognizant of a book’s cultural psychology (for want of a better term).

I started a feature highlighting book giveaways just before last year’s anniversary post, but gave that up in October. Too much work and it didn’t feel like there was much in it for me after a few months. In other words, I started looking for the giveaways to find books I wanted. But I wasn’t finding books I was interested in.

But a few months ago I did add the Seattle Author Readings page, which has been good. I think I’ll keep that one up. The time commitment isn’t small, but it’s limited to a couple days a month. And since I’ve been doing that I’ve gone to a lot more author readings because I know about them.

It’s felt like a good year of books. I’m happy with that.

Image DSC06155_DXO by Luke and Kate Bosman used under a Creative Commons By-Nc-Nd 2.0 license.

Book Giveaways

Before I get into the year in review portion of this broadcast, here’s the fun stuff. I’m going to give away a couple of books from my personal collection. Two separate contests though.

According to the C.I.A. there are 266 nations, dependent areas, and other entities on Earth. Since I installed Google Analytics a little over a year ago, visitors from 116 of these places have visited the web site. For contest #1, the first commenter to intuit the largest country in terms of population from which Rat’s Reading has not had a visitor will win Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity (pre-read).

Year in Review

It’s been a fun year at Rat’s Reading.

I’ve gotten some responses from authors. Joe Abercrombie had something to say about both my reviews of his books that I read in the last year. Former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw, liked my review of an old edition of his textbook. And after I gave K. S. Augustin‘s book a pretty bad review, she quoted the part where I wrote that it wasn’t the worst book I’d read in 2007. Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with that. She ought to get something positive out of risking having me review her work. She’d seen some of my bad reviews.

For most of the last year I’ve been participating at Wordsy, Hans Dekker‘s Digg clone for the book world. The idea is to have a literary focused site where people could vote to prominence the stories they liked. Or was. Participation dropped off during the first half of this year and there hasn’t really been any activity for a month or so. Which is too bad, cause I loved the idea. I got to talk books on the Wordsy podcast a few times. There’s not a lot of things I like more than talking about books.

I added four new features in the last year. First was opinion/editorial commentary not connected with actual book reviews. That’s been somewhat of a mixed bag. I haven’t made it a regularly scheduled thing and I probably should. That would force me to seek out and ponder issues in the book world.

In January I started participating sporadically in the Sunday Salon organized by Deb Hamel. That hasn’t worked out like I’d hoped, mostly because of the large number of participants. It’s become too much of a Week in Review thing for me to care about.

The third feature is My Pile of Books. This one i almost completely for my own benefit. All it is is me periodically listing the books I’ve added to my pretty freaking large (400 books and counting) pile of books I own and want to read. Most of my time lately has been spent in the Bellingham area, where I frequently find free books that intrigue me in front of Michael’s Books. I’m going to miss that place when I return to Seattle full time.

And lastly, I started a Free Books roundup about a month ago. So far that’s been a success. I’ve found all sorts of books that interest me by regularly combing the web for free stuff.

I did change the design of the site as well. With the new features it needed some changes. And sometimes one needs to change things just for the sake of changing things.

I really should mention the reading in the last year, shouldn’t I? I think it’s been one of the best years I’ve had as far as reading quality. Ian McEwan, Michael Chabon, Cormac McCarthy, Matt Ruff, Tobias Buckell, Scott Lynch, Erik Larson and Denis Johnson come to mind. My buying guide post (a.k.a. best read in 2008) in November may prove difficult to write.

What’s coming at Rat’s Reading? I’m not sure. I’d still like to get one other person to write for the site. My attempts to get friends to write haven’t been successful. I want to have the site cover a broader selection of books, and to perhaps develop a discussion dynamic with another contributor for the site. In general, I want to develop more of a discussion feel for the site. What do I mean by more of a discussion feel? I don’t know yet. That’s the tricky thing. There are plenty of web forums for discussing books. There’s no need for something that’s just another forum site. I want something that is personal to me, and yet is still conversational. I’ve got an idea or two I’m mulling over, but we’ll see what comes to pass.

And lastly, thank you to everyone who thought my mental masturbation was worth reading. Without you… uh… well… it’s an awfully nice ego-boost that someone reads this thing.

First, there’s the purpose of the site: 92 books reviewed on the site since last August 20th. All books were freshly read. Just a few books short of averaging two books per week. A few of the reviews have managed to get a bit of attention. Just a bit though. Ted Rall liked my review of his book Silk Road To Ruin and linked to that review from his web site. My traffic doubled. In March, David Louis Edelman, in some sort of self-flagellation, linked to my fairly negative review of his book Infoquake. And last month, Darryl Ponicsan quoted my review of Walla Walla Suite on his site. On one hand, it’s nice to get a bit of recognition. On the other though, I’m sad it’s not from readers. During the last year, I worked in a bookstore for eight months, which gave me access to a number of advanced readers copies. Some of them I’ve even read in advance of the publication date! Let me tell you, I do love free stuff!

Speaking of readers, the site is up to about 10 regular readers now. Most folks seem to search for a specific title via a search engine, come read the review here, and move on.

I did try one thing new. I tried a Harmful Books reading group. Theoretically, some of my local friends were to read these books with me and we’d have ourselves an online/in person group. Sadly, our subject matter was too dense and I was the only person to finish the first book. So that experiment is done for.

I’ve done some fairly significant work on the site over the last year. Rat’s Reading now uses the Simplr theme. I love it! I’ve always been a minimalist in web design, so it fits right in with what I like. I added the Now Reading plug-in as well, for displaying what is upcoming, as well as for keeping statistics on books read. I’ve changed some of the entry formatting as well. The cataloging, book covers, and linking to Amazon are better formatted, and work in most feed readers as well. I’m almost finished with editing all the older reviews to change them to the new format. And lastly, I revamped the categories to be mimic a bit better that which folks would find in major bookstores. Hopefully that’ll make it easier to find stuff in which people are interested.

And one last year in review note: the site finally topped $10 in total revenue from the Amazon links! Which means my revenue is somewhere in the neighborhood of about 2¢ per hour. It’s a grand hobby!

So what’s coming up in the next year? Who knows really? There’s one definite change that’ll be coming up. Shortly, readers will start to see blog entries that are not book reviews. I’d like my ego stroked a bit by links and comments. The reviews don’t spark much in the way of discussion. And I certainly have a lot of opinions to share! Luckily for readers, I’ll keep them confined to stuff relating to books and reading. The point of these entries being to get people to discuss!

Over the last few months, I’ve approached a couple of friends about reviewing books for the site as well. I still haven’t talked anyone into it, but it may happen during the next year. I can’t read as much as I’d like, and I want to get more book reviews up. Particularly, in areas in which I don’t read as much.

Anything else people want to see? Contests? Quizzes? Author interviews? A podcast?

In the meantime, here’s hoping I can get my own reading up to a two books per week average! More books! More books! Damn I love my books!

So what next? Publicity! Time to start posting links to the blog and going from something that people occasionally stumble across to something that a few people might enjoy regularly. Anything else folks want to suggest? New site features? New content? Speak up, keeping in mind that the site is out of the way run by a nobody so I am limited in what I can reasonably do.