I made the final push to get all the books on my list loaded into the database, some 119 [Edit: missed three..] titles in all, and took the time to tweak the templates a little more. For the sidebar (picture on left), I moved the current book to the top as it was a little lost between planned and finished, though the original layout reflects a transition better. Additionally, I added the sums of each book into the header with the stock function call found in the library template (I’m grateful for Rob’s well laid out code!) to add a sense of perspective–if I read a little over a book a month I have seven years remaining!

One of the coolest things about Now Reading is that it is fairly extensible, the functions are well documented and data is stored in separate tables which will allow me to do all sorts of different things (RSS feeds, sorts, groupings, etc.). I just need to take the time to hack at it. One thing I would like to do is to be able to associate comments to books and authors as it would be neat to have the potential for a dialogue to emerge on those topics. My inital thought is that it would have to be separate from the regular WordPress commenting system as if I ever decided to deactivate Now Reading or it breaks with a later version of WordPress I’d be left with one hell of a mess. Things to chew on.

Back to reading!