Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Your best guess? (morphing into a tagesblatt)

W.Boudville hasn't posted anything since May 10. What's coming? 5? 25? Please make your best guess and we shall see if we've acquired a predictive capacity by now.

(Gunny came alive too, btw, but he's only inching forward, one book a day, very careful.)

W.Boudville followup: Today (May 15) W.Boudville broke his silence and posted fifteen (15) reviews. That would mean he read fifteen books between May 10 and May 15, which is four days, so he was reading at the rate of 3.75 books a day.
Robert Morris did four (4) books today. Read and highlighted :-) ...
Grady Harp got 27 votes in four hours; that is extreme even by his usual standards. We should now start tracking his votes not only during the initial few days, but afterwards too -- just to confirm that most votes he ever gets happen within a couple of days from postings.
MM now speaks normal English, have you noticed? I told you so!

9 comments:

Susiq2 said...

I will guess 7(seven).....Good luck everyone..........

Malleus said...

You lost! He posted twelve reviews today. :-)

Deborah Hern said...

That's ridiculous. I will admit to procrastinating on writing reviews, so sometimes I'll post two or three at once. But that's after three or four (or more) days have gone by with no posts.

Here's something Harriet never seens to suffer from: burnout. It happens to EVERYONE at one time or another and you just have to take a break. But not Harriet. She just churns out those reviews by the dozens. It's.... amazing, might be a good word for it, I guess.

Malleus said...

Well, he was quiet for a few days.

Deborah Hern said...

True. But, even by your math, that means he read and reviewed four books per day. Is he a super-speed-reader, too?

Malleus said...

I had asked him many times, but he wouldn't tell. He no talk to me. :-) Or -- let's not over-inflate my importance -- anyone else.

Barbara Delaney said...

Easy there, moderator. It sounds like MM is affecting your English skills.

Deb, you are correct about Harriet never suffering from burnout. It's one of the things that makes me believe that she has an enormous ego investment in her #1 position. People have said very sneeringly to me that "reviewers don't get paid" and "do you really think anyone would go to this much trouble for some free books?"

I've told them that there is no way of knowing if in fact money has changed hands but that I believe HK originally became involved in book reviewing not out of any love of books or reading but to self-aggrandize.

Deborah Hern said...

Barbara - I have no way of knowing if Harriet is paid or not, but I am certain that this whole thing is one big ego trip for her. The fact that she never seems to slow down, only speeds up, tells me that she's got some huge emotional/ego investment in keeping that all-important #1 position. Most likely with the help of a staff of ESL people.

If you do it enough, and I've been reviewing for several years now, reviewing books becomes just like any other job. There are plenty of times when it really stops being fun and starts being an obligation. That leads to burnout. In anyone. And you need to take a break, even if it's just a week.

Harriet never seems to get burnout. If she doesn't post for a week, you can bet that her next batch of reviews will number 50 or so. Meaning, of course, that she didn't take a break at all.

Stephanie said...

"MM now speaks normal English, have you noticed? I told you so!"

I do believe you are right! I feel stupid for falling for it to begin with. Maybe MM herself is getting burned out trying to come up with incoherent sentences. It eventually takes a Troll, I mean, toll on her.