If I may draw your attention to the sidebar, down there somewhere in the sections of links to other sites, there's some links to certain tags under my del.icio.us account. The fifth one, "suggested reading", I figure warrants some explanation: the links you'll find on that page aren't about books I necessarily suggest you read. They're about books that someone is suggesting someone read. Or more specifically, they're links to pages that suggest books for reading, said descriptions or books having caught my eye, and leading me, personally, to be curious about the books described; ie, if there's a literal to be read pile--the stack of purchased but unread books or queued library books on my coffee table, for example--then the books described in the pages linked off that del.icio.us page constitute a slightly more metaphysical sort of to be read pile. IE, had I but time and more time, I'd likely read everything linked there, or at least give them a fair shot. And then a few of them would likely make their ways through my mental filters to receive posts here of the "Oh Em Gee! Read this!" category. Plus maybe when books do reach that status, that del.icio.us tag will help me remember who to give credit for when credit is due for book recommendations.
If that all makes sense. Mostly I just wanted to say that the tag name is sort of a misnomer, or at least potentially slightly mis-leading. And that you can use that tag and the links it presents to maybe find stuff you might want to read, if you're looking for a good random sampling of what other people think is worth reading. It's in no way meant to be comprehensive. Had I my way, all of us here on the web would start tagging stuff to del.icio.us via that tag, and then maybe there'd be something like comprehensiveness. Of course then it would also be overwhelming, seeing all the books people out there are recommending all the time, the knowledge that there's no way anybody can stay on top of that sort of thing being depressing and possibly causing people to stop reading altogether. That would suck.
The other four del.icio.us links right now are fed into the links page but I think, unless there's some kind of huge outcry against it, I'm going to just trash that page and suggest that, if you've become reliant on the information presented therein, you just go straight to the source del.icio.us pages. Those all have RSS feeds, too, incidentally, so if you just need to immediately know what articles and essays about books I'd like to read if I had 987987 hours each day to read, you can add the RSS feeds to your RSS eaters and we can all be happy as clams.
Also, I'm doing a little community service right here for you. Lakewood, my Cleveland 'burb, is really surreal, if you check the layer just beneath the surface. The police blotter presents that layer. I add the link to the police blotter web page each week, usually on Thursday evenings, so if you subscribe to that particular RSS feed, well, you'll get the link to that page, and, yeah. Rock on. I'm a big fan of the blotter. I'd love to see other del.icio.us tags devoted to other cities' blotters, if they're on the web. News you need and all.
And in conclusion, if you have no idea what any of this means: this right here is a fantastic primer on what del.icio.us is and why it rocks your socks off. I've probably hyped it before but I'll hype it again. Del.icio.us, like tabbed browsing, has fundamentally changed the ways in which I interact with the Internet and the information it contains. I imagine there's other ways to achieve what del.icio.us has done for me personally, but I care not to consider them, because I'm lazy like that. Think of del.icio.us as being your own sort of personal Internet file drawer, except its one in which you can just kind of toss things in somewhat haphazardly, and still have a decent to great shot of finding particular bits of information again later, and quickly. Plus then due to its social nature you can offer up the information to anybody else who might care to see what's grabbed your eye. Recently. Or ever. Nevermind the fact that I'm not using it even half as effectively as I probably could or should. Of course, many people probably don't use the Internet as much as I do, as often as I do, and probably don't require this level of interacting-with-the-Internet service, and I think maybe I envy those people. Maybe.
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