I was a part-time library school student from 2006-2009, while working a day job for IBM. See, I loved books and had to find a way to mesh it with my lesser love for code to make a living. It was the heyday of Web 2.0 and the library blogging community was on fire. I started book blogging and got picked up by Random House as an “official” blogger, which means little except that I could request a free book from them, with a soft hook to review it.
Book bloggers need to insert book cover images and bibliographic data into their posts. I objected to the idea of always linking to Amazon. I became an open source book coder, creating a WordPress plugin for Open Library. It became a favourite of System Librarians who were experimenting with social catalogs. It had thousands of downloads over ten years and branched into new plugins before I retired it.
This month on my new website I am posting thirty or so of my best book reviews. They range from literature to books on literacy, libraries, and psychology. Others are about technology or physics. A number are about Buddhism. I am also posting them on my new Essays and Reviews Substack to which you can subscribe for free. I invite you to follow along.