Wednesday, June 20, 2007

The last few steps

So, it's 1am and my wife and kids are sleeping soundly. That means I have a bit of free time to tie up a few loose ends.

The reading is done. I still have a few things that I need to go back over, but this afternoon I finished off the last of the books. It was, of course, Ptolus, my nemesis who stayed with me to the end.

And so I sit here in the middle of the night, surrounded by my conquests, each of the 200+ products that have occupied my days and nights for the last two and a half months. Tonight I begin the preliminary paring down of nominations. My plan at this point is simple. I'm going to go through my notes and each product one at a time, and then take several pieces of paper, each devoted to one of the 21 categories, and where I think a book qualifies I will write down its name and a very brief note on why.

I have no real hope of getting down to my top five this way, only narrowing the field a bit. Tomorrow I think the other judges and I will engage in a little real-time chat, and I'd like to have an idea of what I like, and why, so I can add to the conversation. Hopefully I'll be able to narrow the list down a bit further after our talk tomorrow.

Either way I still have a couple weeks left for my final votes, but it would certainly be nice if I had at least some idea of what those votes might be.

2 comments:

Fred said...

Exciting to make it to the other side of the mountain, isn't it?

Unknown said...

Terrifying really :)

Now I have to try and narrow down 239 products into 5. 21 times.

As a side note, I was weak last night. An hour after writing this post I gave up and went to bed, only 13 products into the process. I'm back at it again this morning.