All Intensive Purposes

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?

Hamlet: Words, words, words.

Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2.

When I first started this blog, I got in the habit of writing short pieces about the books I read. In part, I felt that the blogosphere can become too caught up in ephemera, and I thought I would do my own little part to work longer texts into the mix. But mostly, I did it for myself. I found that I paid more attention to books when I expected to write something about them afterwards, and I liked having a record of what I had read. I enjoyed my book blogging, though I never got a sense that many readers were interested.

Since last fall, for a variety of reasons, I've fallen away from writing up the books I read. Now I've decided to do it again, but because I think it would detract from the flow of this place, I've started a separate blog for the purpose: Words, Words, Words. I've just put up the first post over there, about John Lukacs' latest book on Winston Churchill. When I run into something in a book that seems worth a post over here, I'll keep posting it here, but the longer posts about what I've been reading will go there. At least that's the plan for now.