Although regular posting has recently been light around here, I have been concentrating efforts behind the scenes. A new post is also about halfway completed and I have several topics on the burner for future content. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, the rest of this post relates to some site business. The following item relates to a confirmation for Burst Media regarding advertising placement on the site:

"Dear Publisher:

Thank you for your interest in Burst Media.

In order to complete the evaluation of your application, we require verification of your association with the web property(s) on the application.

Please post a copy of this entire e-mail message to the domain and reply with a link to its location.

If you do not respond to this request in a timely fashion, we will assume you no longer wish to have a relationship and we will reject the
application.

We eagerly await your response.

Burst Media
Trust counts."

The following item relates to a confirmation for any future advertising being placed on BookBlog:

"Placement of advertising on BookBlog is handled by Joel Sullivan on behalf of Hardcover Blogs."

Welcome to the new and improved BookBlog featuring all CSS, all the time. Although the design and layout haven't changed much, those evil tables (At least, that's what the Internet seems to say.) have been banished. Figuring out how to set everything up using CSS felt like learning another language, so I'm pretty proud of myself even if only the home page is finished. Eventually, the redesign will filter down to the rest of the site.

The best feature, I think, of the redesign is that the text can be re-sized through the browser's "view" menu without messing up the layout. I'm half-blind (a.k.a. old) and often have eye strain (a.k.a. sit in front of the computer for too long), so this nifty change makes me feel like the effort was worthwhile.

As you probably have already noticed, I made a (very hard) decision to place more advertising on the site. Supporting The Gender Genie and its few thousand visitors each day is expensive. I have attempted to make the ads as unobtrusive as possible, and I hope they won't interfere too much with reading entries on the site.

Now that the new code is live, I already see a few things that need to be tweaked. For starters, my (crappy) IE6 has added a scroll bar to the bottom of the page for no good reason other than to annoy me. Add that to the fix list. If you happen to see anything looking wonky or if there's something with the design you really, really don't like, please let me know. The input would be very helpful.

Whew. Three posts from me in one day. I better curl up in bed with a good book before I burn out with web overload.

Thanks to Ana’s post and a lot of kind comments and e-mails, I have finally forced myself to do something about BookBlog. Frankly, there have been two basic reasons why I have allowed the site to languish over the last several months: a lifestyle change and endless spam.

My New Life

Back in October, I finally stepped onto the property ladder. I purchased a house in a lakeside community and left behind my city apartment. The move took several months since I managed it in the most inefficient way possible, one carload at a time. My sister took over the apartment, so I never felt pressure to get it all done at once and it had the effect of allowing me to drag my heels. Having been an urbanite all of my life, I suffered some culture shock as I began adjusting to life in the sub-suburbs. Although my new community isn’t completely rural, I skipped the manicured lawns of the suburbs and am in a home which gets most of its heat from a wood-burning stove. (Seriously, who wouldn’t freak out? One day you’re turning a thermostat dial and the next you’re splitting logs with a wedge and sledgehammer.) And there are the non-stop home improvements: a new water heater, ductwork, electrical, drywall, flooring, painting, decorating, and an enormous list of things still to do.

Over time, living 50 miles away from the day job began to take its toll. I drove at first but was quickly discouraged by traffic (New Jersey’s leg of Route 80 is possibly the worst road in all creation) and a twice-daily, rush hour, white-knuckle, slamming on the brakes crawl over the George Washington Bridge. I switched to the train which meant that, although less stressful, my commute was three hours each way. Each way! Losing six hours a day left me with no desire to devote any precious free time to managing a web site. When the school year ended in June, I gave up teaching fourth grade at a place I loved. It was a difficult decision but my time is now my own. I haven’t done much about finding another job because summer vacation is a vice I didn’t want to sacrifice to hunting. The dog days are winding down, so if anyone out there knows of a job for an unemployed teacher with lots of diverse talents in northern New Jersey, feel free to e-mail me. I’m willing to work for peanuts and all serious offers will be considered.

Spam, Spam, and More Spam

Spam is like a snowball rolling down a hill. If you don’t do anything to stop its progress, it keeps on getting bigger. What can I say? It’s been easiest to simply ignore it.

Steps in the Right Direction

After months of doing nothing, I finally did something. I upgraded to the latest version of Movable Type. Things will look kind of funky around here for a while as I learn how to use all of its features, including the spam filtering. For now, I’ve set the site so that comments have to be approved manually. I realize it will slow things down a bit since it will require me to look at each comment before publishes, but this measure is only temporary since I’m most concerned with slowing the spamball. I’m also resolving to post daily. I probably won’t always write about books even though I read constantly, so please bear with my ramblings as I try to keep the homepage from stagnating. And the there’s the Gender Genie. It will be back…at some point.

Of course, BookBlog’s primary mission is to discuss books. Most likely, the next discussion will take place in September to give everyone time to read the selection. For the moment, I’m thinking about reviving the discussion I bailed on, Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn. If anyone is interested in signing up for October forward, feel free to leave a comment on this thread.

Big Thanks

Finally, I’d like to mention my appreciation of BookBlog’s members, readers, commenters, and e-mailers. I’m especially grateful to Ana, who took the initiative to post and light a fire under my butt. If it wasn’t for everyone’s interest in the site, it would have been long dead by now. You’ve breathed life back into this tired phoenix. And I sincerely thank you.

is bookblog...dead?

I'm sure people are wondering...

a) I can't deal with the spam any longer.
b) Comments on old threads are closed until June's discussion.
c) I have had no time, thanks to a 6-hour commute, to deal with either the site or Gender Genie.
d) BookBlog isn't gone; it's just forgotten until I go on summer vacation at the end of the month.

Sorry.

(On the plus side, my super pain in the butt commute allows me a lot of reading time. I have been plowing through books at unprecedented speed.)

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. I've already finished it and found it to be the most interesting experimental novel I've ever read.

Before we get into tomorrow's discussion of Fight Club (which probably won't begin until late in the evening since I have a class after work), I wanted to post about a few things I've been neglecting recently.

Next month's discussion will be on The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. Maya, a member-in-training, volunteered to host. Since I've been so incommunicado recently, I still haven't set her up with a login. I e-mailed her to make sure she still wants to join and moderate the discussion, but I haven't heard back yet. If she decides not to join, I'll jump in and post the conversation starter.

If you've e-mailed me recently about joining and I haven't responded, please feel free to send another message. I've been purging my inbox like crazy and may have lost some e-mails.

We have moderators set up now for the next several months (Yay!), but no titles. I'm itching for a book shopping trip, so please let me know as soon as decisions are made. I'm curious to find out what's going to be on the list.

A new kind of spam has begun showing up: advertising for other literary sites. I generally delete crap comments as soon as I find them, but book blogs don't bother me as much since I'm interested in what else is out there. However, as soon as the stuff starts to sound spammy, it's gone.

I've been trying to stay on top of eradicating comment spam and plan on upgrading to Movable Type 3.0 which includes comment registration. However, I thought I'd let members know that they can also fight against spam by deleting unwanted comments.

When you're the author of a post with a valid e-mail address in your author profile, you should receive an e-mail whenever anyone leaves a comment. If that comment is spam, you, as the post's author, can delete it yourself.

1. Log in and navigate your way to the post in question.
2. Scroll down to "Advanced Options."
3. Check the box next to the unwanted comment.
4. Press the delete button.
5. Press the save button to republish your now spam-free post.

In addition to deleting comments, you may also edit them. This is especially helpful in fixing typos, which I constantly do because my typing is nearly always riddled with mistakes. You can only correct comments on posts you author, but at least you have the ability to appear smarter in your own threads.

boop bee boop doop poop clunk

check check booba booba, bop

If you're reading this, BookBlog has successfully been moved to its new server. Thanks a bunch to Elena at HostMagik, the greatest hosting company in the world, for being so patient with us, and we promise to try to not do to this server what we did to the last one. :)

We're also able to accept comments once again. Please feel free to hop back into the discussion of Harry Potter. Woo!

I’ve been trying to make an effort to post here since I’m on vacation, but I know the regular updates will dry up once work starts up again. Members, if you have any bookish news or useful information you’d like to share, feel free to post it. This isn’t my site; it’s our site, and I’d love to hear from you guys every once in a while as well.

And to further the chick lit topic, here is a link for you:

chicklit: for women who love words

(They have a book club, too.)

Does anyone happen to have a copy of A Confederacy of Dunces? If so, I’d appreciate someone leaving the last line of the book in the comments.

If you scroll down to the bottom of the main page, you’ll notice that the last sentence of each BookBlog selection randomly pops up. It’s a sort of last word bonus for copyright readers. Since I generally give my books away after I read them (sacrilege to collectors, but I don’t have the shelf space), I no longer have a copy of Confederacy. I’ve managed to acquire last lines from all our selections except this one.

Thanks!

I’ve been doing a lot of housecleaning around here.

Besides rearranging the layout, RSS feeds from member sites have been added to the sidebar on the right. If you’re a member and have a feed I don’t know about, leave a comment. I’m not sure yet if it’s going to be a permanent feature since I haven’t determined how much bandwidth it sucks up. Although I’ve asked the parser very nicely to only cache member sites every 12 hours, it seems to refresh itself whenever the main page is accessed. If it turns out to be a drain, it’s gone.

The little ads on the right have also changed to randomly rotate through links to sites that link back to us from an index page. Friends of BookBlog, so to speak. I created the buttons from screen shots, and if you don’t like yours, sorry. I tried.

Members, ever wonder why your name on the right doesn’t link to your home page or e-mail address? You need to log in and update your author profile for it to happen. Adding your e-mail address will also turn on a nifty feature that e-mails you whenever anyone posts a comment to one of your entries. So, how about taking care of that now while it’s still fresh on your mind? The member log in box has been moved to the bottom of the right sidebar.

And while I’m asking for things, someone PLEASE volunteer for July. Being a moderator isn’t all bad. Sure, some members will choose not to read your book and give you lousy excuses as to why. Of course, some members will bash your selection and question your taste in literature. Yes, you will start to think everyone hates you. But look at it this way: you will eventually recover your self-esteem and be a stronger person for it. Come on, you know you want to.

According to the Quixotometer (thanks to Kathy for the ingenious name), I’m winning. I seriously doubt that’s the case, since I’ve only been reading about 12 pages a day. Don’t forget to update your standing by either commenting here or sending an e-mail to mistress[at]bookblog[dot]net.

Also, please log in and update your author profile to fill in the boxes for "Email Address" and "Website URL (if any)."

Thanks to falling asleep before 10:00 p.m. the last two nights, I woke up abnormally early and frighteningly energetic this morning. I decided to be industrious and used the wee hours to add some enhancements to the site.

Author Profiles: Your author name at the bottom of each of your posts will now either link to your personal web site, e-mail address, or nothing. I’ve primarily done this because I’d like to eventually get rid of the hard-coded e-mail links to the right as a means of keeping spambots from culling our e-mail addresses. In order for it to work, everyone needs to log into MT and edit your profiles to fill in the boxes for "Email Address" and "Website URL (optional)." If you have no personal web site, leave that box blank. When I dump the links on the right, your e-mail address will only be stored inside MT and won’t be readable from our html source by spambots.

Search Box: I’ve added a search box to the bottom of the left sidebar. It’s not its permanent home or the final version of how it will work, since I quickly slapped it up so you can have fun looking around (if that’s something you like to do to have fun).

Extended Entry: Extended text will now expand and collapse right on the main page rather than take you to the individual thread. Thanks to scriptygoddess for providing the code.

The Don Quixote Progress-o-Meter: As promised in my last group e-mail, the link at the top of this column will give you a popup box showing our progress on Don Quixote (thanks to Mike95 for the applet). At 32 pages, Kara is in the lead. If you’d like to add yourself to the bar graph or update your page count, send an e-mail to mistress[at]bookblog[dot]net.

No, I still have not created a FAQ. Get off my back.

Welcome to our new home!

Now that we're set up in our new digs, I'd like to ask everyone for a couple of favors:

1. Please click around and let me know via the comments if anything is broken.

2. If you have a web site and are linking back to BookBlog, please update the link.

Due to an unexpected change in my host's user agreement, I've had to upgrade our version of Movable Type and convert our database files over to MySQL. For the most part, you shouldn't notice changes except for a brief message that you'll get when publishing a post. However, please let me know if anything seems a bit wonky.

I'm actually going to have a bit of free time this weekend, so I'd like to put together a BookBlog FAQ. So far, I've come up with three sections:

BookBlog: Questions about the site and the club.
Members: Info on using MT and stuff members need to know.
Moderators: Helpful hints for moderators.

Now I need some questions to answer. What do you think the most frequently asked questions for each of the above topics would be? Please post your question suggestions in the comments.

Any other ideas for the FAQ?

Okay. I think we're a go on reading a book by the middle of the month and saving the discussion for the end of the month. I've added the dates over on the left by the book image as a reminder to everyone.

Recently, Andy and I were talking about the blog format. (He's actually excited about the club despite his lack of posting and commenting thus far.) He thought that the discussions might be a bit easier to read if the page was laid out more like a bulletin board with the main post at the top and all of the comments on the same page below it (rather than in a pop up box like it is now).

Tonight, I finished building the individual entry pages and realized Andy's suggested format is already built into the site. If you click on the "link" below each post, it will take you to a page for that entry. The comments and a form for adding a new comment are on the same page below the entry. The gray box above the post houses a little navigation bar for scrolling through the entries or returning to the main page.

Whichever way you prefer to read the posts and comments, it's there for you. Thank you, Movable Type!

Let's see...just have to build the monthly pages. Then there are those few lines of code to fix on the category pages. Of course, I need to get the moderators to pick their books for the upcoming months. And I should also work on the random pic thingie. Well, the site will get done one of these days.

To post, click on "new entry" after logging in. This will take you to the editing menu which consists of the following fields:

Title = the title of your post.

Primary Category = the category of your post. Currently, the active categories are Club News (for book club-related posts), Invisible Monsters (this month's book-related posts), My News (stuff about you), and Site News (for technical stuff related to the site, like this post). Assigning a category to your post will ensure that it is sent to the appropriate archive page. For example, clicking on "[jun 2002] invisible monsters" at the bottom of the left-hand column will take you to a page of all the posts about Invisible Monsters.

B = bold, i = italics, U = underline, and URL = create a link. Let's say you want to italicize a book title you mention in a post. Simply highlight the text then click on the appropriate button. Movable Type will add the appropriate html tags to the highlighted text.

Main Entry Text = the main body of your post. You'll use this field most often.

Additional Entry Text = extended text for your post. Let's say you're planning to write an entry early in the reading month which contains a lot of spoilers. If you don't want to give the spoilers away, you can write an introduction in the Main Entry Text field and put the spoilers in the Additional Entry Text field. The readers will then have to click on "MORE..." to read the rest of the post. An example appears below.

Exerpt = ignore this field. The Exerpt field is not used in our blog template.

Post Status = whether to publish or save your post as a draft. Your post will only be visible on the main page when you've changed this field to publish. Otherwise, it will be saved as a draft for you to edit later.

Allow Comments and Convert Line Breaks = leave these boxes checked.

Preview = preview your post.

Save = save your post. If you do not press this button when you're finished with your post, it will not be saved.

While navigating in Movable Type, you'll also notice (?) links scattered throughout. Clicking on them will open a new window and take you to the appropriate explanation in the user manual.

Questions?

MORE...

This is an example of where the Additional Entry Text goes.

While you're experimenting with Movable Type, you might accidentally post something that you'll want deleted. Although you've checked the "delete" box and hit the "delete" button on the "edit entries page," you'll notice that the post disappears from your entries list but not from the web site. In order to have deleted posts truly disappear from the site, it will have to be rebuilt (republished for you Blogger users). It's something I'll do once a day.

This is mostly a bandwidth issue. I'd like to get a look at how much bandwidth is being used on a monthly basis before giving everyone the ability to rebuild. Since I'm paying for it right now, I'd like to stay within the limits allowed by my current hosting plan. If it turns out we're using a lot of bandwidth (that'd actually be great), I will probably move the book blog over to its own url and hosting plan.

For those of you not familiar with using Movable Type, I'll be posting more information on how to post over the next few days. In the meantime, feel free to use it. You can't break it, so have fun.

Although I haven't finished building all of the pages, I decided to make the site live since I'd like you to have a chance to experiment with posting, play around with Movable Type, and introduce yourselves to each other. As of right now, the following pages haven't been built: individual archives (the page you get when you click the link button at the bottom of each post), the stuff about us category (the test post will disappear as soon as someone posts something else to it), and the monthly archives (the link at the bottom of the right column). They'll be all pretty and looking like the rest of the site over the course of the next few days.

Welcome to book blog! A long weekend, 400 Diet Cokes, and a couple of cartons of cigarettes later, it's arrived. The launch was delayed by unexpected server maintenance on Memorial Day, but at least it's mostly finished. There's still a bit of coding to be done, but I wanted to make it live so everyone could start posting and get their feet wet with Movable Type.

If you've never read anything by Chuck Palahniuk before, be prepared for something wild. I sort of liken Invisible Monsters to riding a loopy rollercoaster. Fast-paced with plenty of twists and turns make it an experience unlike most other conventional novels. You simply need to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Unlike Palahniuk's previous efforts, Fight Club and Survivor, Invisible Monsters does suffer from a few plot problems. Those being, it doesn't have much of a plot. However, I don't want to give all of it away until everyone's had a chance to read it. I'm looking forward to reading and commenting on your posts about one of my favorite authors.