“The library is not a shrine for the worship of books. It is not a temple where literary incense must be burned or where one’s devotion to the bound book is expressed in ritual. A library, to modify the famous metaphor of Socrates, should be the delivery room for the birth of ideas — a place where history comes to life.†~Norman Cousins
I’m trying something new this week. I’ve seen those nifty linkies at other blogs where there is a picture next to your link, and I thought we’d try it out. A picture of the book that you’ve reviewed would be appropriate, but if you’d rather have a picture of yourself or of a hippopotamus, I won’t complain. I think the instructions in the linky will be self-explanatory.
If you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.
Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.
After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.
I couldn’t get the book image for Lion of Babylon to come up. But I think it is a neat idea to post thumbnails! Thanks, as always, for hosting.
Love the thumbnails!!!
I read Athol Dickson’s “The Opposite of Art” this week. It’s outstanding. Thanks for hosting.
I have to approve each of the thumbnails for some reason, so it takes a little while for them to come up. Be patient.
The new format hides the book titles and makes the post visually confusing. You are probably already aware of this, but I thought I’d add my input. I love the Saturday Review of Books!
Thanks for all you do for the readers in our corner of the web.
Hi, I’m new to this so I hope I’ve done it right! Thanks for hosting. Liz
I second Hope’s comment above. The titles don’t show very well with the thumbnails.
I like your quote for today. I’ve only ever seen the last sentence before — nice to see the context.
No problem — I just kept getting a window that about a “missing op” or another one which I can’t remember the content of, so I thought it wasn’t going through. It wasn’t a matter of patience or lack thereof. 🙂 I do see what the others mean about the thumbnail obscuring the title underneath and not always being visible on the thumbnail itself.
oops! I probably should have put the book cover as the thumbnail, not my gravatar …
I hadn’t before read that quote about “literary incense,” Sherry, I really like it! It’s so true that books are meant to come down from the shelves and be read, not just kept up there as “trophies” or decoration.
Yes, I see what you mean about the titles being obscured. Perhaps I’ll go back to the old kind of linky next week. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.
i like it! 🙂 though for some reason, the thumbnail wouldn’t load in the pop-up so it kept asking to open up in the same page. just more steps. not sure if it worked though – let me know!
oh – all my images are “pending” – what does that mean?
Oh my! I’m going to have to start posting pics of the books I review! It’s a neat idea, though.
An interesting experiment, but took ages to load on my computer. I do prefer the ones with book images to blog author images.