Shelf Source: Bats

When You Finish a Book That Moves You, What's Your First Instinct?

Well, first I've gotta pace around my room a bit while I process everything, then I wanna go tell someone about it. Thing is I don't always have somebody to tell about it, which is part of why I started the site. It's also just generally a lot easier for me to communicate over text. I like to yap but I'm kinda bad at talking lol.

Has A Book Ever Inspired You To Build Or Change Something On Your Site?

Absolutely. When I decided I wanted to try longform reviews alongside my liveblog archive, I knew I had to have an aquatic horror section. Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant was the catalyst for my love of the subgenre, and I knew I wanted to explore it more and help other people see how cool it is too.

There are a couple of other places here and there where I've wanted a space to talk about something that didn't fit into one of my pre-established categories and I had to cook something up to make space for them.

What's A Book You've Recommended The Most, And What Does That Say About You?

I think the book I've recommended to people the most is A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. I was planning to run a Monsterhearts 2 game based on the book, which of course required pitching the book itself.

It wasn't required reading for the game, but reading it would help my players understand the vibes I was going for. Not all the players read the book, but those who did seemed to really enjoy it. The game itself went pretty well, too.

I think it's a book where you look at it and you look at me and you're like, oh yeah, that makes complete sense. It's got fun Halloween monsters, it's generally pretty light-hearted (though with a few gorier bits), and features a fun game with interesting mechanics. Really the only thing missing is a scary fish lol.

How Do You Decide Which Books Deserve a Place on Your Site Versus Staying Private?

Usually it's just a matter of categorization.

I like to keep things (somewhat) organized, and if I don't already have a spot where it could go I have to think long and hard about whether I want to go through the trouble of establishing the architecture for a whole new category that may end up including only a single book, or if I should just let it go.

How Has Having a Personal Website Changed the Way You Read?

I definitely read a bit more I think, because I'll have these moments where I really wanna go play with my website, but in order to do that I have to have a book to talk about. Plus, there are the two month-long challenges I do for the site, the November Nancython and Murder She May, that take over my reading life a little while.