For Zompist: two small website update comments

[Dune]

Per your website update, one tiny comment and one less tiny (but well-meant) comment:

1) It looks like, although your review of Iain M. Banks's Excession was one of the two pages you took down, the link is still there, it just 404s now. (The link is still under "Books.")

2) I wish you hadn't taken it down! I know it's an old review of an old book, but I distinctly remember that for whatever reason, it was what motivated me to read Banks's Culture series (probably 15 years ago now). I'd heard of his books, but hadn't read a review that inspired me to take the plunge.

(Oddly enough, this often happens with negative reviews for me. Someone gushing about a book is less convincing than someone gushing about an author's other books and then dumping on the one they're actually reviewing.)

Your website, your call, obviously, but I wanted to drop that note. You never know if one of the handful of people to land on a random page from the 90s will actually read it and get curious enough to check out someone who'll end up becoming one of their favorite SF authors. (And, of course, if that happens, they'll likely never bother to tell you about it until you take the page down—but that happened at least once!)

[zompist]

Thanks for finding the typo!

I kind of dislike having a bum review being the only reference to Banks. What I should do (though I don't promise this will be very soon) is re-read the books I like and review those. Or catch up; I see that he wrote a bunch more Culture novels.

Oh, and if you're really jonesin' to re-read the review, it's in the Wayback Machine.