an ingenious device
"Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought."
Sir Arthur Helps
I've never really been happy with the all consuming book list site. In principle, it's a good idea but I've become accustomed to tagging everything and it doesn't allow you to file books according to whatever complex mental filing system you have for them. Also, the amazon linkage means the person running the site gets lots of amazon referral credits whilst those of us reading the books don't.
The reading list I created using blogger worked, but I still didn't like it because navigation was still difficult. It's easy enough when you have fifty or so books in a list, but when you want to look for them via catagory you're stuck with searching for the catagory code letter. And whilst I like MT, I don't have time to switch right now.
So today I fiddled about with my del.icio.us tags to create reading lists:
- http://del.icio.us/magslhalliday/reading.current
lists the books I'm currently reading. - http://del.icio.us/magslhalliday/reading.read
lists what I have read. (I have read a lot more than The Dark is Rising, just not put them all into del.icio.us yet.) - http://del.icio.us/magslhalliday/reading.kid.lit
currently lists various kid.lit stuff.
So, as the lists expand, I can navigate to a single book via various keywords. There are also author based links such as writers.orwell for when I can't quite remember a book but can remember the author. I believe there's some kind of library-based filing system which uses a similar tag function (and I know there are two librarians reading this so if there is a helpful site explaining it, let me know). There is a reading.to.be.read tag as well.
Then I used RSS Digest to create a feed to here. It's on the right-hand side although I suspect there may be wrapping issues if you have a screen res of less than 800 x 640.
All that remains is to start transferring everything from all consuming and blogger to the del.icio.us system and it's sorted.
I'm off work sick: workings on software test scripts, the current chapter of Warring States and trying not to fall into a half-doze. You can tell from the ingeious device of doing this instead.
--
Posted @
6:45 pm
on
Monday, November 08, 2004
| | #