Looking Back In Order To Look Forward

It's a light week intellectually speaking here at The New Dork Review of Books. If you saw my post from Monday, then you know I'm currently on vacation in Hawaii. Aloha, jerks! (Sorry...)

Since vacations are good times for reflection, I'm looking back at my first ever post from Oct. 1, 2009 (for the record, I did this post before I left, lest you think I'm a total geek blogging on vacation). Believe it or not, this is actually the first time I've read it since I posted it, and I'm pretty excited to see the blog's remained relatively true to its mission — except I think this first post is the only time I've ever referred to the blog as NDRB. Dork, I am. 

Anyway, I remember thinking that if I ever got as many as 100 readers and 3 to 4 comments per post, and I'd be friggin' tickled. And then when my fourth post about Angela's Ashes got a whopping eight comments, I almost pulled a Costanza (Seinfeld reference) and quit on a high note. In the 15.5 months since, this thing has grown to something beyond what I could've possibly hoped (well, it hasn't made me rich yet, but that's okay). So, going forward I vow...not to change much. Perhaps a re-design is in order, but as we say here in the media world, the content is still king, and that's always what I'll spend the majority of my time on. As always, thanks for being a reader! 

Welcome to NDRB!
So what are you reading?  Have you read anything good lately? Those are two of my favorite questions - both to ask and answer. I love talking about books, learning about new writers others admire and exploring undiscovered literary landscapes. (You should see my amazon wishlist - it's terribly out of hand!) So, I'm starting this blog not just to tell you about what I'm reading, but also to find out what you've stumbled across that I should check out too. 

But the blog will be more than just discussions about and reviews of books, it'll also keep you informed on the most interesting, topical news in the book publishing industry. Furthermore, the blog will feature random thoughts every now and then about publishing-related issues.

(For instance, here's a post from the LA Times book blog about Dan Brown's new book not being quite the boon to e-book sales it was expected to be. Even so, the book's swift sales were no-doubt a boon to many other things: Dan Brown's massive ego, the annoying Dan-Brown-guidebook industry, and the confidence of hack writers everywhere who think that they, too, can follow a generic template, invent some silly conspiracy, and get published.)

One more thing: As we all know, the best way to ruin a joke is to explain it — but for the benefit of those who aren't familiar with the stuffy, uptight, very-far-from-the-mainstream world of literary criticism —  the name of this blog derives from The New York Review of Books, which is "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language." Ah yeah, nothing like a bad pun....

So, check back often - or enter your email address in the sidebar to the right, or sign up to "follow" the blog, or subscribe via RSS with the links at the bottom. Happy reading!