Welcome to my little bookshelf on the internet. My name, obviously, is sean. And this, hopefully also obviously, is my shelf.
So the first question is why a website? I’ve been reading since I was a child, cataloguing my books on the Goodreads.com website since 2008, and that’s been working well. What’s changed?
Firstly, Goodreads were bought-out by Amazon, and the accessibility to me as a blind person hasn’t gotten any better. Second, the flexibility to use my reviews as I like has decreased, and finally I wanted to extend what I could do with my content. I’ve been pondering exactly what for a while now, and realised one of the things I was missing was being able to share when I finished a book with my friends on the Fediverse. That, coupled with my relatively new hobby of book trailing, meant this website became a reality, not just an idea.
So here we are, a little site of my own. What’ll be here, you ask?
Initially, not much. But there are 3 sections to the site.
##Reviews
The reviews will be my largest output, because that is what I do. I read books. I’m still tweaking the layout and the style; I want to be able to add them with minimal effort on my part but make the storage work so that I can eventually do more, such as grouping reviews of series together, having pages for particular authors and so on. Then there’s the backlog from Goodreads to add in, which i want to do sustainably but sensibly.
##Trailers
Trailers are one of the fun things I started doing probably about the summer of 2023. I find a book description and a matching bit of music, and put them together.
It’s obviously nothing more complicated than that, but I find that listening to the synopsis of a book with a voice that really makes it sound good and music that brings out the tone is quite nice. And they federate really well, because they’re short and people have easy access to them on mobile. So look out for more of those, not with the regularity of reviews but with the understanding that I do them to both books I have already enjoyed and those I like the sound of and intend to read someday.
##Blog
Finally, the third strand is posts of my own that aren’t reviews or trailers. Author appreciation commentary perhaps, analyses of how much and what I’ve read in a given period, my general bookish thoughts come under this section. And that, I think, will do for starters.
##Joining in
You can hopefully join in by being a subscriber to as much or little of the site as you want. Each of the links in the navigation bar will take you to the appropriate section of the site. You’re welcome to revisit these as you choose, but also subscribe to each feed by email, RSS/Podcast, or follow on the fediverse.
##How often will I update?
That’s something I can’t promise. I’ve read fewer than 50 books some years, as many as 220 in others. It’s just me here, I’m not making a review machine or anything, this site is purely for my own thoughts. That said your comments are very welcome and, if I’ve set things up properly, whichever channel you’re receiving through should be bidirectional, that is, if you see a post in your Mastodon client you should be able to reply. If you get something in your inbox, ditto.
So thank you for your interest, and I hope something here catches your eye and you revisit as things appeal.