Friday 02 August 2002
The books Norm Jenson’s read
Norm Jenson “started keeping a list of [his] reading in 1980”:
I have told others of the joy I’ve found in keeping the list, a connection to my past, and many have started their own lists, and related a similar satisfaction. Perhaps like the marks on the wall measuring our growth as children a reading list measures our intellectual growth or perhaps the growth of our humanity.
Norm’s list comprises the book title, author, the year he read the book, and a rating (from 1 to 5). I trust Norm won’t take this as a criticism but, as I scrolled up and down his fascinating list, I found myself wishing I could click on the column headings to sort the list by title, author, year, or rating. I wanted to see all the books he’d read by Kozinski or Simenon (particularly since he read Striptease, one of my favorites, in 1990). I wanted to more easily see the order in which he’d read books by a particular author. I thought that by seeing Norm’s list ordered by rating I’d get a much stronger sense of his taste in literature. (I was pleased A.S. Byatt’s Possession rated only a 3.) And I’m curious about what was happening in Norm’s life in 1990 and 1991 to make him read an above average number of detective stories.
This kind of sort, though not possible with a static HTML table, is a trivial task with ASP or ColdFusion (or PHP I imagine, though I know nothing about it). I guess I’m curious as to whether Brad Choate’s MT SQL plug-in, that Mark Pilgrim is having so much fun with, could be extended or modified to take a delimited text file of Norm Jenson’s list and display it in a Movable Type post in a sortable table.
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Would need to parse Norm's reading list into a MySQL table and then should be piece of cake. In fact, Norm should put his list into an RDF format, which would make it easily parsable with pre-existing APIs. With this, you could use whatever technology your tool supports to pull the info in.
Not that I'm pushing RDF or anything...
Jonathon
Thanks for the post and thanks for the constructive criticism. What great ideas. Now if I could just figure out what Brad and Mark are talking about. I do understand in general, but my learning curve for new material seems to get longer as I get older. I create the pages using a Database called Panorama actually works pretty slick for creating static pages with information from the database. That is interesting that you would agree with the rating of Byatt's Possession actually I would have rated it a two, but everyone I know loved it. I thought it must just be me. As to the mystery of 1990 - 1991 I've been thinking about that ever since I saw your post. I'm not sure actually. I tend to get a little obsessive when I discover something I like. If I read a new author that I like I often go back and read most of what they've written. I read mysteries to relax so perhaps 1990-91 was a stressful time in my life. I don't recall that it was however, so the reason will just have to remain a mystery. I have added the ability to list by author, and could add the other functionality quite easily, but I suspect the MySQL solution using Brad's tool and Mark's ideas would be better and easier in the long run. Time to learn something new.
Wow, Panorama! I had no idea it was still around (and when I checked their Web site I see that there's a Windows version too). What an excellent idea, to have the database generate a static page, though it won't offering the sorting capability that your (non-paying) customers are demanding.
I would have rated Byatt's Possession a 1, so you may care to downgrade it to the 2 you'd originally intended.
Interesting that we share similar reading habits: I read spy novels for relaxation and I also tend towards obsessively reading everything by a particular writer. At the moment I'm reading all six of Alan Furst's espionage novels set in Europe before and during World War II. Today I started the third, The Polish Officer.
Oh Oh a new author for me. Alan Furst, hadn't heard of him, and since we seem to share reading habits I'm going to give him a try. Thanks.
I used Panorama on a Mac back in 1984 when it was called OverVue and for several years afterwards. I was then drawn to the dark side, some chess programs I just couldn't live without. I was thrilled when Provue released a version I could use on a PC. I'm seriously considering going back to my first love the Mac, now if a couple of thousand dollars would just drop into my hand.
I've been adding features to my reading list since Jonathan orginally made his post. The features aren't as slick as they would be using his suggestions, but until I learn some more about MySQL etc. they will have to do.
This discussion is now closed. My thanks to everyone who contributed.
© Copyright 2002-2003 Jonathon Delacour
Would need to parse Norm's reading list into a MySQL table and then should be piece of cake. In fact, Norm should put his list into an RDF format, which would make it easily parsable with pre-existing APIs. With this, you could use whatever technology your tool supports to pull the info in.
Not that I'm pushing RDF or anything...
Posted by: Shelley Powers on 2 August 2002 at 06:43 AM