"Soapbox Week" has ended and from the many posts linked to in my initial entry on Monday, I would say that lots of folks had lots of things they wanted to write about. I have been adding to that list daily so if you haven't checked back you should (and I include quotes from all the posts so you can get an idea what they're about).

I am delighted to report that following my "Green Idea" post a couple of days ago, I have contacted three publishers and already heard back from two. The biggest surprise was Harper Collins where I not only was set free from the unrequested ARC mailing list but also was given an email contact to request future review copies from.

That's right - after more than 100 books in the past year I did not want and did not review from HC, I now have someone I can email and make direct requests. It is like my own little bookish miracle and all I had to do was request not to receive any more of their book. Go figure.

It is the response to yesterday's post on class in literature that I'm most pleased about. Gwenda put up an amazing and indepth post on that issue yesterday as well and I highly recommend reading it. This is a subject I will be returning to in the coming weeks and months I'm sure and I hope that others will pick it up as well. It will be particularly a big subject next month where I plan to write a lot about books on political topics as I first suggested back in May. For those of you who might have missed that post, here's the gist:

Last August we did Recommendations Under the Radar week and it was pretty awesome. As we all know, August is a pretty slow month for literary news so what if we spent the month blogging about political books? What if we did a concentrated effort across the lit blogosphere to write about books that make us think, make us consider new ideas, make us commit to becoming politically involved. They don't have to be nonfiction - Jo Walton is one of the greatest political writers I know - so go with what works for you. But if enough of you are excited about this, then I'll run a master schedule here and the only thing I ask is that every review you post on a book that fits the political description you let me know about and you link to the schedule in your post. That way your readers will be able to find out about other political books and by the end of the month we will have an absolutely killer list to spread around.

I just sent my post on political books into Jessa so no idea if it will be edited a bit and cut for size (and if it might get bumped due to other features) but either way, I'll be writing here about all the books I covered in that piece. I'm not going to post anything specific on any given day - I thought about doing that to make it easier for folks but that is just too structured. So in no particular order, expect to read here about books on class and race; war and peace; the Middle East and Africa; the environment and how we build cities and New Orleans. It will be an eclectic mix of reviewing and recommending and discussing. If you have something to say on any of these subjects, I'd love to hear it.

Before all that though I'll be writing about an Antarctic explorer and why Jenny D. is my research hero. More soon, after a good night's sleep. (I'm finishing up Week 3 of running tomorrow. And then...Sunday begins Week 4 in which I have to run for 5 whole minutes. I still can't believe I'm doing this. I'm alternately pleased and exhausted by my progress. I don't think I've run for 5 consecutive minutes since junior high.)

I'm shaking my head in embarrassment now; you just can't see it.