Peter, I agree. The last two I've read mainly deal with crime in rural or small-town Sweden, yet they manage to incorporate WW2, contemporary fascism, Jonestown, 9/11, Christian terrorists, international Christian cults, and even more. The remarkable thing is it doesn't seem forced at all. Best wishes, Jim

Thanks for the feedback, yellojkt. Your approach makes perfect sense. I guess I felt that there is so much negative stuff online that I didn't want to add to it unless I really felt strongly about something.

Maybe I should do more negative reviewing. At the moment, mentioning that I will not review a book is an indication that the review would be negative (unless I give some specific reason, like my over-saturation with Dennis Lehane reviews at the moment),

Two sets of comments on one post: intense debate (no invisible except by logging in as me to the intense debate site) and "normal" blogspot blogger comments. The url is http://nearlynothingbutnovels.blogspot.com/2008/0...

My readers can't see the intense debate comments any more. What do I do? (or what can you do?) Thanks, Jim

Frank, this was a little odd for me but I deleted the code for the blogrush widget which shared a sidebar box with an Amazon.com advertisement. Then, there was a ghost of the blogrush page that I could not get rid of until I deleted the entire page element, even though no BlogRush code was visible anymore. I just copied and pasted the Amazon code into a new page element and BlogRush was finally gone for good. I definitely don't like code that tries to stay alive like HAL in 2001 A Space Odessy.

Frank, thanks for the response. I'll have to read up more on EntreCard. I like the blog carnivals a lot, but I wish I could control the widget better. Some carnivals I'm not too keen on advertising. Oh well, perfection is rare (present company excluded). Best wishes, Jim

Isaac, Intense Debate was installed and working fine on blogspot (after your help), but today I received a standard blogger comment on a post that had prevously accessed intense debate, and I can't see the earlier Intense debate comments from the blog any more. The specific url is http://nearlynothingbutnovels.blogspot.com/2008/0...

Any comments/suggestions? I have a thread of conversation that is now broken over two commenting systems, and some of it may be lost. This is not encouraging. Thanks, Jim

Thanks so much, Chhaya! Yes, definitely friends. I'll reply in blogcatalog, too.

Thanks, Patricia. I feel I can handle books that are realistic and dark as long as everything works together as part of the story, but when exploitation is involved, when the violence is too severe and unnecessary, I find it troublesome. It isn't that I want to censor the work, I just wish I hadn't read it. And it was a shame because there was a better story waiting to be told using some of the great characters that did appear, but this story didn't turn out great at all. Far from it. I almost never write negative reviews, but I made an exception here. I appreciate your taking the time to read and offer feedback. Best wishes, Jim

Thanks again.

Thanks! I stumbled, DUGG and HUGGed your post. Scary stuff, but important to know about. Best wishes!