Narcissism

Ain't it fun?

Um. As you can see, if you aren't in an RSS reader and you pay attention to these sorts of things, I've tweaked a few of my page elements. I've added the lovely Tolkien quote at the top of the page, and then moved the "About Me" to the side, as it wasn't playing nicely otherwise. (There's symbolism in there, somewhere?)

I added "Currently reading:", though if you have an adblocker, you may need to disable it on this page to see what I'm currently reading. That's what I had to do. ("Why isn't it working? Why does it hate me? __ Oh.")

I probably won't update what I'm currently reading every time I start a new book, but I'd like to change it at least once a week. That's the plan. Every time I change it I'll link to the last book I was reading that I haven't yet finished (on this readthrough). Because I'm highly distractible, even when it comes to my Biggest Addiction (books, duh), so the last thing I started will probably change quite a bit, whereas finishing the books is slightly less common. Though of course it happens all the time, too.

Book reviews, now... I should get back to doing more of those.

La, la la...

Unless the last book I started is Highly Embarrassing. I reserve the right not to tell you I'm reading a book if I don't want to tell you I'm reading a book. But that probably won't be very common.

I added the "Popular Posts" widget. Here's where I feel especially narcissistic. But I'm hoping that if strangers wander onto my blog, it will help them to find some of my best writing. I hope. It feels... a little idealistic. (Strangers? Here? Where?)

And if they're so popular as all that, do they really need the extra promotion?

Yes, they do. I know that from bookselling, and bestsellers.

I'd actually played with the idea of creating a page for my most popular posts before I saw there was a widget. I was thinking of updating it every month. For the fun. Even though it seems a little silly. I guess I'll let Blogger do it, instead.

There are also a couple issues with the stats, though nothing very serious. These are supposed to be my "all time" ten most popular posts, but Blogger's stats started in May 2009, whereas my blog started in December 2004. The tendency is for each post to get the most hits right after I publish it, so... meh. I hope my readership has gradually grown, which renders that... at least slightly moot.

Can something be "slightly moot?"

And then secondly, the posts that were imported to facebook have a disadvantage, compared to the ones where I only put a link on facebook. Since people didn't have to click through to my blog when a post imported, in order to read the thing. But again, meh.

If I had created a page for my popular posts, I also thought about "featuring" an eleventh post every month, one that I felt wasn't getting as much attention as it deserved. But meh. And then featuring some excellent post from my Google Reader, alternating the blog it would come from. You know, to make me feel better. About the narcissism. And every time I updated, I could also write a post for it, to have a history of some of the ups and downs and features and such... I am so idealistic. I so wouldn't have done all of that. I mean... I would, I would! It would be fun!

And then the rest of my page elements remain the same, below the popular posts. For now. I do intend to update my blogroll at some point (I want to make it more closely reflect what's in my Google Reader), and maybe start tags for my book reviews (native tags, not LibraryThing tags), possibly all prefaced by "book review:" in order to keep them all together in the labels. Unless I can figure out a better way. I want sub-tags, dang it!