Blog Spotlight: The Second Pass

A few weeks ago a friend of mine, John Williams, he of the linked blog A Special Way of Being Afraid (which helped inspire my very own blog), launched a new web site called The Second Pass. It's been a labor of love for him and the result is, quite frankly, outstanding.

So what is The Second Pass all about? The short answer is books, books, and books. If you're a book lover, it's the kind of web page that should immediately become your daily portal into the literary world. In addition to well-written reviews of new books, The Second Pass---as the title suggests---also examines older books which may have been forgotten or neglected. They have a small army of reviewers to keep things fresh and constantly updated, and a blog which is updated several times a day with "features, links to noteworthy reviews published elsewhere, great opening sentences, book covers both lovely and horrific, excerpts from books we admire, “anti-blurbs,” and roundups of what’s happening on other blogs."

The page itself, as you can see below, looks as professional and as well organized as anything else out there. Web pages come and go, and it can be murder keeping them up to date and fresh when the traffic is low (as things tend to be in their infancy), so I encourage you all to check it out and spread the word if you're as impressed by it as I am. This is an independent venture and it's the kind of thing that deserves attention. It's also the kind of web page that makes for a great supplement on Sunday mornings to the New York Times. The Second Pass and a cup of coffee. Try it.



P.S. I've now added The Second Pass to my blog links on the right-hand side of this page.