The Thin Red Line

Happy Friday!    Back when I was in the eight grade one of our teachers made our course grade dependent upon a special project in which we would strictly limit the amount of television we watched and keep a journal and report on what things we did when not watching television.

I’m pleased to say that this junior high school experiment largely saved me from being a slave to the boob tube the way so many of my generation are.  So I was initially quite sympathetic in my approach to Living Outside The Box—TV-Free Families Share Their Secrets.  Surprisingly author Barbara Brock managed to quite lose me, in spite of my general and long time support of turn off the tv and DO SOMETHING with your life initatives.

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I have to confess that I have been a fan of The Price Is Right since   a small child.   I remember when there used to be "four numbers in the price of the car".   (I feel SO old.)  When I recently came across a copy of Come On Down!  I knew immediately I would have to bring it home and write it up.   Sad to Stan Blits is a better game show producer than he is a book author.   Moderately to Very Interested fans of the show will appreciate the first third or so of the book when Blits shares information about the shows history and reveals some of the details of just how it is produced.    The latter two thirds of the book come across as filler not worth the relatively high grade of paper its printed on.    Not Recommended.

I’ve recently been tagged by bookcalendar with the Six Word Memoir meme.  You can read the meme instructions here.

My Six Word Memoir:

Library Guy That Writes About Books

Since this is a writng meme I feel I have to tag  Tiffany, Dawn, Jamie, Claire and Vienne.

Thanks again to bookcalendar for the tag.

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I get so many great recommendations from people I value and it saddens me that I don’t always find time to follow through with reading all of them, vigilant as I usually am about ordering them from the library when the book is first mentioned.   

And right now I am very caught up in reading Untapped–The Scramble For Africa’s Oil, which is both fascinating and timely and I expect to blog about it next week.   And today I happened to come across something very rare.   A meme I found on Haley Hughes’ The Beacon blog, the Page 123 Meme,  that actually seemed to fit well with my blog and that I actually wanted to follow,  even though I was not tagged with it.

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Over  on Chain Drop I talk a lot about making and keeping friends.   And when a contest we recently tried to run completely flopped because no one entered it, except for one contestant, whose entry was eaten by our entry form, Dane says to me  "what we need is to bring in all those Writers like in Tiffany’s writing group….They would write good pieces about how they use social networking".   So I thought to myself, I’m friends with a bunch of those writers.   And some of them I know read my books blog if not Chain Drop.

Feel free to comment about any entries that have been posted.   Each substantive post about social networking and Each substantive comment about a previous post will count as one entry.    

On February 28, 2008 I will close this post to further comments.   I will remove any comments that are inappropriate or insubstantial prior to selecting the winner by  using a random number generator to select one of the comments  as the winner of 3,000 Entrecard credits to be purchased by Dane and Alan just for this contest.    And if you are not into Entrecard you will have the option of receiving from us via Paypal the cash price we would have topay for the credits on 2/28/06.  All of the entries and comments may also be published on Chain Drop in a special post about this contest.    By submitting your work you grant us the right to pubish your submission on both blogs as described.   You retain all other rights to your work.

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Blogging has truly been an adventure for me.    I started out just wanting to keep up with a couple of old friends (Hi Ron, Hi Bev) and before I knew it I was making a bunch of new friends and learning a heck of a lot and somewhere along the way my project evolved from a personal diary to a book review site and my ambition morphed from staying in touch with a few people to becoming an internet destination for book lovers.

And every step of the way I have gotten help from my friends, without whom None of this would have been in any way possible.   And the thing about putting my focus on networking and making friends with other bloggers is that my friends just never stop surprising me with new and amazing gifts.   Which is how it is that I am now collaborating on a Social Networking site for bloggers with a man I’ve come to respect and admire a great deal.  And who (slipping for a moment into the very personal mode) happens to be an incredibly hot biker type whose face/avatar half the bears in Seattle have drooled over when peeking
at my computer screen to see what it is I’ve been up to since I stopped hanging out on those sites, only to slump away in regret when told that Dane is actually a married straight guy whose world clearly revolves around his family.   (And a big part of why Dane and I are friends lies in the fact that he will either blush or break out laughing when he reads this instead of getting all huffy.)

I hope that all of my friends, new and old, will head over to Chain Drop,  which btw we are going to make into The social networking site for bloggers.    Blogging continues to be quite an adventure for me.   And I hope very much that you will join me as this new chapter unfurls.

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I don’t normally post to this blog on the weekends,  and a second off-topic post within less than a week is for me, unprecedented.    But I have these two very interesting and unusual books that have been sitting in my stack unread for several weeks now,  and my good buddy Saphrym  today commented on my old Einstein’s Brain God Does Not Exist Meme post that he would  Welcome a challenging meme that Really made him think.   And since I today realized that as interesting and important as these two books so clearly are,  I am nonetheless unlikely to ever find the time and intellectual energy to actually read and review them and so decided instead to punt.

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My regular readers who have been with me for awhile already know that I really Hate memes.    Many times, I simply ignore them or give the sender a brief mention and link at the end of an unrelated post.   Once, when Mitch tagged me with a meme I just didn’t want to do (this is a book review site, not a free form blog and I hate to post off-topic) I played a mean meme trick by tagging him right back with the Einstein’s Brain God Does Not Exist meme.   Mitch never did attempt to tackle that very challenging meme on his blog, but he seemed to get the point that sometimes getting tagged is a real pain in the ass.   (And my friend Jamie whom I also tagged with that meme, royally rose to the challenge and did a great post.)     So when my new Entrecard buddy Saphrym tagged me with an Entrecard meme,  I decided to once again turn the tables.

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I was very honored on Friday to be quoted by my friend Rich Becker on his Copy Write Ink blog. As I commented on a discussion over at BlogCatalog about Technorati authority, Google Page Rank and other measurments of a blog’s success

“… most bloggers who have not yet established a large readership and built a solid base of well-tagged content for search engines get very distracted by all of these measurements and allow themselves to become [too] focused on these metrics …”

So when Rich invited me to expand on this as his guest on Blog Straight Talk, I jumped at the chance. Since starting The Thin Red Line in June I’ve spent a great deal of time online meeting and talking to other bloggers, particularly at BlogCatalog, which is a great community site for bloggers. I’ve also looked at and read A Lot of blogs. And all too often what I see are bloggers who have not invested the time and work into creating useful content, who invest a great deal of their time and energy into worrying about their metrics and monetization.

Talk about cart before the horse. If you create a product and don’t sell it you won’t make any money. But you can’t get serious about selling a product until you’ve actually created it. And so many of the metrics and monetization obsessed bloggers I’ve met seem not to get this at all.

My more metrics-focused friends and indeed anyone reading my traffic reports and adsense statements might be shocked to learn that I am operating this blog according to a carefully considered business plan and I actually expect it to produce meaningful cash flow within two–three years.

When I first started I was writing this blog as a personal message to a couple of
friends whose lives I kept up with via their blogs. I included book reviews in my posts because I am passionate about books and reading and wanted to share the books I discovered in my work at the library. Then I noticed something in my SiteMeter reports. There were people reading my blog whom I’d never met and they appeared to be coming in just to read the book reviews.

And then I stumbled into BlogCatalog where I met all kinds of brilliant bloggers and took some good advice and moved my personal journaling elsewhere and focused this blog on presenting books. And it’s starting to take off.

When I’d reviewed only a handful of books, I only occasionally got search engine visitors. Now that I’ve posted a couple of dozen book reviews I regularly get search engine visitors. When I get to a point where I have written and posted several hundred book reviews, I expect to see significant traffic from search engine results. I also work very hard at forming relationships and getting meaningful links from high quality blogs to build up my regular readership, those who come back again and again to see what I am writing now. And my posts to this blog are at different times primarily intended for search engine visitors who want to know about a particular book OR for my regular readers who may sometimes indulge me with their attention when I post off topic, as today.

I also try to be sure no one leaves disappointed so I have taken to making my off topic-posts more and more resemble book reviews, so those readers will still feel they got their daily visit from ‘that guy at the library who knows about all those books’. Which leads me to

One of the things I do as I am shelving books all day is to neaten the stacks and make sure each book is placed evenly in its row so that the title and call number can easily be read by anyone who needs to find a book. But there is just no way to get Tilt to stand up straight. This cleverly designed history of the famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, Italy has been cut on an angle so that the spine of the book leans inward towards the back of the shelf rather than standing up straight. Just like the famous tower that is its subject Tilt has a permanent slant. You may or may not actually want to read the history of this famous structure and learn about the many unsuccessful efforts over the years to right the Leaning Tower. But even if this is too dry for you, it is worth checking out the book just to admire and appreciate the very clever design. At my library Tilt can be found at 945.55.

I think that "flash fiction" or Very short stories is something you either love or hate. Trouble is I can’t decide which side of that I am on. Flash Fiction Forward is a collection of 80 very short stories. Some of them were quite clever and truly impressed me while others left me thinking the very short form is useless. Love it or hate it, Flash Fiction Forward can be found in the adult fiction stacks, in the F’s for Flash.

If you’ve written 100 well-tagged posts and found a niche and theme you can really run with, by all means check your Technorati authority and Google Page Rank and do what you need to do to improve your metrics. But don’t ever forget that you’ve got to actually Create high quality content before you can monetize it.

My thanks again to Rich for having me as his guest on Blog Straight Talk.

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Some days I need to put the computer down and catch up on my reading in order to write about books here every day, and today is one of those days. Sorry, no book reviews today.

If not reading me gives you a couple of extra minutes today, click on the logo and visit the Free Rice web site where a charitable organization will donate free rice through the United Nations food program each time you select the correct definition of the word at the top of your screen. It is a fun and challenging little word game and it’s a nice feeling to watch the little rice bowl fill up as you answer correctly. The software seems to do a good job of switching to easier or harder words so you don’t win too easily or lose too often.

Some folks of course will point out that volunteering at a food bank or donating cash to a reputable relief charity would do more to end hunger than playing this little game on the Internet and of course they will be correct. But it you would likely spend five or ten minutes playing a word or puzzle game online anyway, knowing that you’ve donated a bowl of rice for having done so ‘aint half bad.

Update: Netcritics.info has just posted a side-splitting review of The Thin Red Line. You Have to go read it. It’s a hoot.,

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In yet another excellent discussion over at Blog Catalog, techfun asked the question What Is A Valid Reason For War? And after some excellent back and forth the discussion came around to What Do You Do When War Comes To You? Which led me to the following post quoted directly from the discussion. The linked discussion of Gary Geddes’ Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things was first published in my books blog, The Thin Red Line on June 8, 2007 and is posted today on my new political rants blog capitaL eLs and cross posted to TTRL.

libdrone

I can’t begin to imagine what it would feel like to be living in a country that is suffering a war on their own turf which they have no choice but to in whatever way resist or fight one day at a time as they Can. What frightens me about all of this is that most of us Americans seem to perceive very little about the realities of life in other parts of the world and thus are easily led to conclusions we would see are patently false if we actually knew something about the place and people we are told lies about.

at the risk of shameless self promotion go read my discussion of book called Kingdom of Ten Thousand Things

blog.libdrone.org/2007/06/kingdom-of-ten-thousand-things.html

and pay particular attention to the information about everyday life in Afghanastan just before 9/11 and the much repeated vow to "bomb them back into the stone age". We Americans fail to perceive the reality of life in other parts of the world at our grave peril.

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whew. was very busy for a Sunday today. my manager thinks it is getting progressively busier every Sunday and thinks it will get even busier once school starts back up and I fear she is right. so much for the easy day. i do like the work but my arthritis hurt by 3:30 and I was glad to be off at 5:15. had to go to downtown Tacoma to run an errand after work and glad to finally be home and relaxing.

Today’s most interesting find was Soul Kitchen by Poppy Z. Brite. This novel comes directly before D*U*C*K*. I had not thought about looking for the previous books in the series but decided to give this a whirl, reading the series backwards.

I am also re-reading Boy’s Life and enjoying it immensely. We have a feature at PCLS called Books Plus To Go where we offer multiple copies of newly released trade paperback versions of last seasons best sellers in a big rack at the front. It’s a great place to grab something quick to read on a 30 minute lunch break. Which is how I happened to grab a copy last week of Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse. I remember him as a relatively sober reporter and one of the only ones who reportedly honestly about election 2000. he is still reporting honestly but in this book is also laugh out loud funny with true life tales of shenanigans in bushville.

I don’t know why I picked up a manual on Writing Mysteries, but I did about a month ago and read a little of it. It’s been sitting on the sofa since and my end up going back unread but for the moment is still Here. At the same time I checked out the above, I also got Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting, a mystery set in 1930’s New Orleans. It sounds promising but has yet to grab me and it too is Still Here. Of somewhat more recent vintage is The Naked Brain in which a neurologist discusses "how the latest imaging techniques have changed our knowledge of how we think, feel, remember, socialize and learn in unprecedented and often surprising ways," according to the cover blurb. It would seem to have a better shot at completion.

So that’s what I’m reading now, though at the moment I can focus on nothing heavier than The Simpsons and plan to get to bed early. Happy Sunday

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Working a full day down in Eatonville again today and tired cuz an almost full can of diet Pepsi got knocked over into the bed and flooded us out just as I was getting to sleep. Feh. The summer that I was 19 I spent my days sitting behind a card table in a tiny stall at the French Market in New Orleans, reading tarot cards for tourists and passers by. After paying the stall rent I ended up making even less money than I would have in retail, but it was fun. And it was amazing to me what intimate things people (mostly women) would tell me. I always began by having the seeker look through the cards and pick out one to represent her and it never failed that while doing so she would tell me more than enough about herself for me to be able to do a good reading. Yesterday I stumbled across a site that automates this process, having you complete a short questionnaire then picking a card for you. I’m none to sure about its accuracy, since it picked for me a much more powerful card than the one I have always used, but still I thought it was fun enough to pass along.

You are The Magician

Skill, wisdom, adaptation. Craft, cunning, depending on dignity.

Eleoquent and charismatic both verbally and in writing,
you are clever, witty, inventive and persuasive.

The Magician is the male power of creation, creation by willpower and desire. In that ancient sense, it is the ability to make things so just by speaking them aloud. Reflecting this is the fact that the Magician is represented by Mercury. He represents the gift of tongues, a smooth talker, a salesman. Also clever with the slight of hand and a medicine man - either a real doctor or someone trying to sell you snake oil.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

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