Over the weekend, I spent time sprucing up my Bookshop store page. I’ve had the store for a few years, but I hadn’t publicized it, and the only list I had were the books I read in 2020. A few things prompted this activity: I love buying my books at Bookshop.org, and I hate how few books I’ve read this year. So I came up with an idea I’m not sure will work forever but works well enough now, and that’s using my store page to both track some of my reading and to promote those books that I love, those books that have shaped who I am today.

I’ve broken up my page into several lists:

• Currently Reading
• Up Next
• Essential Fiction
• Essential Non-Fiction
• Year in Reading: 2021
• Year in Reading: 2020

The first section is made up of two lists: the books I’m currently reading and those books I would like to read next. The latter are books that are sitting on my shelf behind my couch, and they’re books I had hoped to get to this year but didn’t. They also include recent purchases, like The Passenger Box Set by Cormac McCarthy, books I pre-ordered back in March. These two lists will also be the only two lists I will keep updated regularly, as long as I feel like this activity holds any value for me.

Bookshop makes this very easy to maintain. All I have to do is find the book on Bookshop, scroll down until I find the Your Affiliate Link section, then click on Add to My Book Lists. There, I can add or remove books from my lists. I feel like this removes just enough friction that maintaining my lists will be easy.

The second section is made up of two more lists: the fiction and non-fiction books I’ve read that I love and have influenced me in some way. Admittedly, my fiction list is dominated by male authors, mostly Cormac McCarthy and Dennis Lehane, and I wouldn’t have noticed that if I hadn’t made up this list. That is one thing I would like to change about my book selection. If you have any recommendations, email me and let me know. I’m always looking to expand and grow as a person.

My essential non-fiction selection is a bit better on that front, but it’s still a bit sausage-heavy. They are still books that I’ve loved and have shaped my thinking in ways I can’t explain. Book lists and recommendations are inherently personal, which jives with the theme of my website. I mean, this website does exactly what it says on the tin.

Finally, my third section contains and will contain all the books I’ve read in any given year, going back to 2020. My personal reading log goes back to 2010, but I didn’t want to have that many lists on my page, so I’m focusing on just 2020. That also happens to be the year I both started this blog (again) and wrote my first Year in Reading post.

Each one of these “Year in Reading” lists has a short description linking back to my respective blog post, and that is why I don’t have my 2022 list up yet. I have created it, though, and that’s another cool thing Bookshop allows you to do: it allows you to hide lists from your store page. I’ve created my “Year in Reading: 2022” list and have added the books I’ve read into it, but I won’t make it visible until the end of the year sometime, whenever I write my Year in Reading: 2022 post.

I believe all of this will allow me to better track my reading, to help me decide what to read next, and to display my reading journey in a visually appealing way. This also provides one more thing:

The one and only way you, my one reader, can support me.

I’ve never been one to ask anyone for support. I’ve always just done things on my own and asking anyone for help literally gives me hives. But I figured that promoting those books I love can also help someone else out there, if only a little bit. Maybe you’ve never read Cormac McCarthy or Marcus Aurelius, and maybe if you used my store page to buy one or two of these books and read them, then maybe these books would have helped you like they helped me. That’s a pretty cool thought, right?

If anything, this method of tracking my books will help me get reading again. That’s always the ultimate goal.

Oh, one more thing: I have removed all links back to Bookshop.org on any previous blog posts that had them. I feel like linking to books using my affiliate links whenever I write about a book is both tedious and a bit disingenuous, like I’m only writing about the book so I could make money off of it or something. That’s not how I roll. If a book is worth writing about, it’s worth writing about, and if it is, I will have added that book to one of my “essential” lists. Check back to my store if you’re ever considering buying a book I’ve written about here. There’s a good chance I will have included it into one of my lists.

And as always, thank you again for reading. That’s really cool. You’re really cool. (Now go buy some books! From my store, preferably, but it’s cool if not. No pressure.)

As I’ve been redesigning my school’s website and learning more about web development, design, and Hugo, I’ve been applying what I’ve learned to my site. Unfortunately, in an attempt to clean up some code and simplify some things, I broke some things and inadvertently posted a draft of a post I’ve been procrastinating on for a few weeks. Those subscribed to my RSS feed might’ve seen it in their feed reader. If you did, please know it was just a draft and all it had were notes and some code samples. I’m still working on it! I think it’s going to be a really cool post and a useful one for people. If you didn’t see it, then nothing to see here, please move along!

Over the past week or so, I’ve been redesiging my school’s website from scratch. I’m using Hugo to build it because that’s what I’m most comfortable with (as dense as it can be sometimes), and even though I’m weeks and weeks away from finishing it, I’ve been enjoying the shit out of the whole experience.

I love design. I love building things. I love trying to solve problems and trying to design something that will be critically important for so many people (parents, students, and staff). The whole experience has been incredibly fun, and it inspired me to make some changes to my personal site. So I cleaned some things up:

• I cleaned up both my header and footer and am mostly showing my About and Archive pages in my header and a simple copyright in my footer
• I updated my homepage to show a list of all my posts instead of breaking them up into sections
• I merged my Colophon page into my About page
• I removed the related sections from the end of my posts
• And I cleaned up a lot of code

I want to redesign the whole thing after I’m done with my school’s website, and I want to clean up the content folder in my Hugo project, as well as the code in my layout folder. I haven’t blogged as much as I’ve wanted to because of how I split my posts into two sections (journal and stream). Sometimes I would want to write a journal-type post but I didn’t have a photo to attach to it, and I didn’t feel like it should go in my stream. I don’t think that split works for me anymore, so I want to merge that and not think about it anymore.

I’m also thinking of removing my Typekit fonts and instead going with something more simple. I’ve been using Public Sans on my school redesign, and I’ve been really enjoying the look and feel of it. I don’t know what font or fonts I would use instead, but I find the search for them super exciting.

Finally, I bought Nova yesterday, and holy shit it’s amazing. What a beautiful and well-made app. I had been using BBEdit for the longest time but Nova is definitely my preferred code editor for now. It makes coding so much fun. And coding is so much fun.

I finally updated the look of my tags on my archive page. I broke it out of the <details> tag, added counts, and put it all in a grid. This really helps me get a nice overall picture of what tags I’ve used and what I like to write about. I’ve been slowly going back and updating tags on my previous posts, and even though I still have lots more I want to do, I’m really happy with my output so far. My website really has become my second brain, and I’m having a lot of fun blogging, more fun than I’ve ever had online before.

I finally found a reason to use Font Awesome on my site: for my link posts. I added a nice link icon that helps me spot them on my site quicker. I also went back and updated some of my older posts with the new layout, and I dunno, I like it!

Update 5/10/21: Just kidding! I didn’t like how it took half a second to load the icon, so I’m using a ★ instead. You know, because it’s the same thing as a bookmark, and definitely not like that other guy.

I removed all of my reading posts from my site. I felt like they cluttered up my stream, and I didn’t feel like they added value. I still have my reading page, though, that I’ll keep updating as I continue to read books. I also removed Cloudflare’s analytics script and my webmentions endpoint. I also didn’t think they added value, and, in some ways, felt like a distraction more than anything. I prefer the quiet.

I added my reading page today, but I haven’t added it to any part of my navigation yet. Not sure if I want to, so consider it a “secret” page. I’ll try to keep it updated as I read more books.

Okay, I think my site redesign is done. Phew. That’s more of a statement to myself to stop fiddling with it now and move on. My goal was to have something minimalist, with a focus on typography and photos. As a non-designer, I think I did okay. Now to back away slowly…

I finally had some time to update my Colophon page today. I quite like it!

Last month I said that I wished I knew more about CSS. Well, since then, I’ve taught myself enough to build a website I’m proud to call my own. After weeks of hard work, I think I’m finally done with my redesign. I need to stop and focus on my writing and photography again.