Shelving decisions, small arguments with myself, and the occasional obituary for a URL.
9 March 2026
Shelved The Spare Room this week, over the objection of two correspondents who say an unfinished blook isn't one. I've come around to the opposite view. A print book that stops mid-sentence is a defect; a diary that stops mid-sentence is a document. The form's honesty about time is the whole reason this site exists. The novel pretends to be finished. The blook doesn't get to pretend.
17 November 2025
Annual check of the private link file behind the shelf: of 61 entries, 9 have moved, 4 are dead, 1 now redirects to a casino, which is at least thematically consistent with self-publishing. This is why the shelf stopped carrying links in 2022 — titles and handles outlive domains. The dead four are all findable in web archives; I keep private copies besides, with the authors' blessing where I could get it.
2 June 2025
Another month, another dozen suggestions that are newsletters. I keep them in a drawer, not on the shelf, and the FAQ now says so in bold. Short version: a blook needs a spine — an archive you can walk from the beginning. An inbox is a place writing goes to be forgotten in order. Some newsletters grow spines later. Then they qualify, and two have.
3 February 2025
A reader wrote to say the tomato chapters of The Allotment Letters got them through chemotherapy, and did I know how to reach the author. I did, and I don't pass such things along — the two rules exist for the writers, not the catalogue. But it went in the folder of reasons to keep doing this, which after ten years has become surprisingly thick.