But you already knew that, didn't you?
I'm taking a break from deleting the 2500 or so spam comments and pings that have hit the site since I last went through this process about two weeks ago. Spam is something I've never understood mostly because I don't see how it's a viable form of advertising. I doubt many people click through on purpose, unless I'm underestimating the stupidity of humankind. Well, maybe it's not stupidity. It could be desperation driving some folks to think there really is some over-the-counter product that will enlarge penises and breasts.
Even more stupid and desperate is search string spam. Some moron, who e-mailed me a long time ago about a particular self-published book and didn't get the hint when I ignored her, has been hitting the search box to keep the title in the "top searches" list at the bottom of the left sidebar. The stupid part is that the effort has propelled BookBlog to the number two Google result for the title and author which helps us more than them. The desperate part is that searching for the book here is useless because it has never been mentioned in a post. I'd be happy to review it in exchange for a free copy, but the author better be thick-skinned since I have no problem calling a piece-o-crap self-published book a piece-o-crap and I've already decided, sight unseen, that this one is a piece-o-crap.
I received a very nice e-mail from Brian at Bookland in Keene, NH, saying that he wanted to leave a comment about the U.S. paperback release date for The Da Vinci Code (03/28/06) but was put off by the sex and drug spam. (What? No spam for rock and roll?) He's right about it being a shame how the unscrupulous ruin things for the rest of us.
But, to be honest, the spam problem is really my fault. I haven't upgraded BookBlog's version of Movable Type to one with better spam-fighting capabilities since I've been reluctant to pay for it. The advertising you see on the site, which I hope is unobtrusive, only makes enough money to cover hosting and I do not want to add more. I also haven't been visiting here enough to monitor and delete it due to a shortage of free time in recent months. In addition, the lack of new posts causes older ones to sit on the homepage for months and get hit over and over again.
So I'd like to apologize. I'll try to be better about site maintenance in order to keep BookBlog a friendly place to talk about books.
In the meantime, I'm looking forward to Daisy's upcoming discussion of House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
