Saturday, April 12, 2014

The Book Trolley Rolls Again!

Alas, the Book Trolley is no longer a feature on the Harry Potter fan website MuggleNet. As of the latest version of the site, my review column is out, though most of my reviews—going back to the year 2003—have been archived on MuggleNet's WordPress blog. I also had the foresight, starting way back in 2008, of republishing all my reviews on this blog. Since then all new reviews were posted both here and on MuggleNet (in a whole succession of formats), as well as Shelfari, GoodReads, FaceBook, etc., etc., etc. I'm not worried about my reviews not getting "out there," though I would be gratified to see them getting more page-views. And I'm still involved with MuggleNet, to the extent of posting my reviews on their blog. But in a sense, a decade-long labor of love has come to an end. And so I sigh.

I've been living with this changeover to the WordPress format for some time now. Lately it's been getting frustrating. Searching for related book reviews on a blog (whether mine or theirs) is a pain in the diodes. Also, there was no longer an index anyone (say, teachers or parents) could consult for a quick-read list of book recommendations. The loss of the Book Trolley's web-page format, with its handy "Index of Authors by Last Name" right up front (as opposed to a bottomless pit of blog posts), has brought on feelings of uselessness and failure about the whole project.

The remedy for this has long been obvious. But I've been daunted by the hugeness of the task of rebuilding the Book Trolley's long-gone (and even longer out of date) index. But now I've finally done it. I've built a whole new Book Trolley page RIGHT HERE on my blog. I blew a whole Friday night and Saturday morning on it. Please show me your appreciation by bookmarking the new page. Consider it your gateway to TONS of books you never considered reading before. Check out what I had to say about them, and consider giving them a try!

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