Reader’s Diary

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Today is the eighth birthday of Reader’s Diary.   The previous review is the 500th book review I’ve written in that time.  That’s 62.5 books a year almost evenly divided between fiction and nonfiction.

Reader’s Diary is probably the longest-lived unread blog on the Web, though at times the readership has jumped to as many as a half dozen.   It’s a good thing that popularity wasn’t my aim.   Reader’s Diary has achieved its goal, which is to help me keep track of the books I’ve read and to give me a way to exercise my atrophied writing skills.  Its unintended effect has been to make me a more thoughtful reader, one more conscious of the writer’s craft.  I’ve benefited from the effort I’ve put into it.

Kudos to Jessica Livingston, author of “Founders at Work” for noting that some of the information in her book was in error.  See my  updated review for details.

“Non-fiction”? See the updated entry for “Bringing Down the House”.

If you love to read you have to see this movie. “Stone Reader” is a documentary about one man’s search for the author of a forgotten book. There’s some deep sadness in it, but I was smiling much of the time I watched it. It’s a lovely film. For me to say any more would spoil it for you. Watch the trailer, but don’t Google for it, don’t look at the rest of the film’s web site, just get it, watch it, and post a comment telling me what you thought of it.

This observation by Edward Pettit rings true:

There are so many books out there to choose from, but there is a finite number of books that I will be able to read in my all too-short, smoke-filled, hoagie-eating lifetime. I figure that every book I read means there is another book that I won’t get to read. So each one has to be worth the time it takes to read, worth the other book that I won’t get to read.