Why a Website?

· Because I’ve got a stack of reviews on my hard drive

This is not so much why are there reviews – I wrote most of them before I even thought about having a website. But since they were already there I thought I might as well publish them.

· Because I can

I had some holidays, an uncharacteristically contemporary computer, and a visiting IT guru brother who showed me that if you don’t care about nice code and flashy graphics it’s not that hard to do. And the web space comes with the standard ISP package.

· It’s not slides, Tupperware or Amway

That is, it’s not something ugly you force on your friends where they feel obligated to respond positively to obey all the social rules you’ve just broken. It gives them the opportunity to browse, study or totally ignore according to their own preference – websites are nice like that. It’s also a way to make my personal library more open to friends.

· Curiosity

Just what might happen if I put some of this stuff in a potentially public forum?

· Mutually beneficial exchange of recommendations

A way for people ‘out there’ to find some authors they would enjoy but otherwise don’t know about.

A way for people to recommend authors to me that I would enjoy but otherwise don’t know about.

· Self-aggrandisement

To at least give a slim chance of some positive feedback/contact from people with common interests, or who want to say something encouraging about something I’ve written. (I have written a lot to myself over the last couple of decades, much not even vaguely for publication, but there is a lot of stuff that it would be nice to have others read. Even a hint of Kundera's Graphomania.)