To the Forum!

by

Lauren Roberts

BookBalloon is a place I have mentioned before because while it is not the only online book discussion group to which I belong it is the one where I spend the most time. The combination of good talk, a beautiful design, ease of registration, and respectful dialog among members—not to mention the opportunity of discovering great reads—is appealing. I thought it would be fun to get to know the brains and brawn behind the forum.

Lauren Roberts: Gary, it's hard for me to believe it's been more than three years since BookBalloon began. Let's go back to the beginning. How did the idea of the forum come to you?

Gary Glass: It grew out of Readerville.com. I was a member of Readerville for several years before the site ran into financial difficulties and was forced to embark on a substantial format change, but I liked the old format and I wanted to preserve it. It was as far as I knew a unique way to structure a discussion forum and I thought it still had potential. I thought it would be possible to offer similar functionality at a low cost. A number of other Readerville members came forward and encouraged me to go ahead—so I did!

Lauren: What was involved in building the forum in terms of time, technology skills, and design?

Gary: As usual with such things it was a good deal harder than I expected. I started by looking at available forum software. I wanted to minimize costs and avoid getting locked into a proprietary technology, so that pointed me toward open source solutions. There was nothing out there, open source or not, that offered RV-style functionality out of the box, so I knew I needed something I could customize. I settled on what was then a hot new project called Fireboard. That gave me something to start with, but Fireboard was really intended for implementing a traditional bulletin-board-style forum. It took me about a week of long hours to customize it to the point where I really had something that looked and behaved more or less the way I wanted. I have continued to improve the code over the years as well as added a number of enhancements. At this point I’ve made so many changes that there’s not a lot of the original Fireboard code left.

Lauren: Other than the technology, what was involved in the creation from initial thought to opening day?

Gary: I was fortunate to have a group of people involved who were passionate about creating the site. Everyone had ideas to offer. There were lots of arguments of course, but for the most part those debates were conducted in the same spirit we hoped the forum would have—spirited but civil. It really wasn’t too hard to settle on that basic approach.

Lauren: Did you have any pre-conceived notions about what you wanted the forum to achieve while you were building it? 

Gary: Yes. The Internet is a notoriously uncivil environment in which to debate anything. I knew I wanted BookBalloon to be free, and that if I was going to run a no-cost discussion forum I couldn’t do it if it meant that I dreaded logging in every day because I had to deal with another flame war.

Lauren: Did you ever have second thoughts while you were in the middle of a difficult section?

Gary: Sure. There were the inevitable growing pains. You can’t help but wonder sometimes '”What the hell was I thinking?”

Lauren: What role did your wife, Elizabeth McCullough, have in its development?

Gary: Elizabeth and I jointly manage the site and together we constitute the entire staff of BookBalloon Enterprises, LLC. I do the technical stuff and most of the site management. Elizabeth is the content editor, runs the reading club, and keeps the books.

Lauren: Are you satisfied with the result of your efforts?

Gary: Yes. BookBalloon is fun. The members are smart and funny as hell. It’s a great place to share your love of books and find out about great new books and writers you might never otherwise encounter. And not just books. I’ve learned a lot about movies and politics and science and all sorts of things. Every topic is welcome.

Lauren: Let’s talk about you a bit. Who are you? What role have books and reading played throughout your life?

Gary: I was an avid reader from the beginning. I was the kid who refused to stay in the children’s section of the library. Naturally I wanted to write too and in college I studied English lit and creative writing. But eventually I also had to make a living, so, after bouncing around a while, I settled into software development. I helped build USAToday.com’s content management system, for example. So, combine a love of literature with programming skills, add a dash of opportunity, and voila, the best damn book discussion site in the galaxy!

Lauren: What childhood books were your favorites? And why?

Gary: You know how I said I wouldn’t be confined to the children's section? I think I missed a lot of the usual stuff kids read. I remember that I loved Bambi, and Daniel Boone stories, but that’s about it. Whenever people on BookBalloon talk about classic children’s lit I feel left out. Maybe I just have a really bad memory. That’s what Elizabeth says anyway. If I recall correctly.

Lauren: Were you one of those children with your nose always buried in a book and your relatives always annoyed because “it’s a beautiful day outside and why aren’t you out there?”

Gary: I was always writing a book! I used to type them out on both sides of half sheets so they'd look book-like. My parents indulged my obsession. I went through I don’t know how many typewriters.

Lauren: Tell us about your juvenile bookshelves, Were you always buying books or did you use the library a lot? Did your parents read to you?

Gary: My mother read to us when I was young. I read somewhere that parents reading to kids is a strong predictor of later academic success. Once I started school and we had these book club things—I forget what they were called. The teacher would pass them out every few weeks I guess, and I’d pour over the book descriptions trying to decide which ones to get, and usually pestering my parents to let me buy more. My dad put bookshelves up over one entire wall of my room, and I filled them with books.

Lauren: What is your fondest memory of your youthful reading?

Gary: The two standout books I remember are, in childhood, Bambi, and, later on, Lord of the Rings. I also loved sci fi, especially Arthur C. Clarke.

Lauren: What is the first “adult” book you remember reading? What struck you about it that you remember now?

Gary: That's a tough one. I don’t remember when I started reading grown-up books. But nowadays grown-ups read lots of YA lit, so I’m not sure I even know how to draw a line around 'adult' lit.

Lauren: Did you read to your children when they were smaller?

Gary: Oh yeah. Most every night until they learned to read for themselves. Then it was over!

Lauren: What types of books do you favor? Are there any you don’t like?

Gary: The trouble with fancying oneself a writer is, at least in my case, it’s hard to read anything I think I could have written better, I guess because I can’t stop editing the prose and just enjoy the story. Now, I’m pretty full of myself, so this eliminates a lot of material.

Lauren: That naturally brings up the question of what are you writing?

Gary: I have some improvements to make to a thriller called The Nirvana Plague, and I’m in the early stages of plotting a possibly multi-volume SF story which I think of as the love child of Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and the TV series Lost.

Lauren: What are your top ten favorite books? Is this list different from one you would have made ten years ago? Twenty years ago? If so, in what ways and why?

Gary: I can’t answer that one. If I try to think what my top ten list is my mind goes blank. I suppose it’s my inbred contrariness. When someone would ask me questions like what’s your favorite color it really bugged me. I don’t have to have a favorite! Though I’m not very fond of brown. But I can tell you some of the books and authors that come to mind as having made a special impression. The usual suspects like Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Melville. Dickens’ Bleak House. Hemingway, Fitzgerald. Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson. Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. I guess it's a pretty conventional list. I started reading Proust a few years ago, but I’ve been putting off finishing the last volume. Maybe I don’t want it to be over.

Lauren: What is the last book you finished? And what are you reading right now?

Gary: I read a YA novel by my friend Lauren Baratz-Logsted, the first volume in her Sisters Eight series. It was really fun. Speaking of reading to your kids, that’d be a great choice.

Lauren: Do you enjoy interacting with other passionate readers on BookBalloon? Are there ever times you roll your eyes at someone else’s reading recommendations?

Gary: BookBalloon is a blast. It’s always fun to be around people who share a passion for literature. I never roll my eyes about anything they say about books. They’ve all read a lot more than I have. Also they’re smarter than me, though I try not to let on.

Lauren: Do you have a favorite part of the forum?

Gary: I like Current Events and Science and Grammar the best. And the main writers’ thread, Pencils.

Lauren: Is there any part that is not as active as you wish it was?

Gary: I look forward to all of it continuing to grow.

Lauren: Moderating a forum can be . . . unpleasant at times. How do you deal with controversies when they arise?

Gary: There’s just one rule for participation on BookBalloon, and that is, be civil—treat everybody with respect. It really takes very little moderation from me. On the rare occasions when I have had to put on my moderator cap and remind someone about the one rule, it’s over right away.

I actively solicit feedback from all members about how I’m doing and how they feel about how the site is doing. I really appreciate it when I get that feedback. It tells me that the members care about the site and have a sense of ownership about it. As a result of that feedback, I’ve changed many things about the site and how I run it. For example, on the theory that posts by the proprietor tend to carry extra weight I had been making a point of limiting how much I joined in on discussions, but some people have said they wanted me to have a higher profile so I’ve tried to be somewhat less restrained.

Lauren: What does BookBalloon mean to you personally?

Gary: It'’s been a very enjoyable experience. It’s more than a hobby. It’s a virtual family.

Lauren: How do you see BookBalloon’s role in the migration of talk about books (reviews, etc.) from print to online?

Gary: I think this is a very interesting moment in the evolution of the book. We have members who are established print authors, book sellers, reviewers, and of course avid readers. We’ve all got front row seats at the most significant revolution in publishing since Gutenberg, and we’ve all got plenty to say about it. BookBalloon itself is one small example of the changes under way. You can log on and chat with people from all over the world about books. That kind word-of-mouth reach was impossible before the Internet.

Lauren: Do you think the expansion of opportunities that the Internet provides for reviews, discussions, websites, blogs and other forms of discussion about books has been good for readers? Is there any downside?

Gary: I don’t see any downside except that there is so much information it can be overwhelming. I think services like BookBalloon help people sift the best material from the rest. You can go there and ask for reading recommendations on any subject and you’ll get informed responses from people who have seemingly read every book there is. Or you know, you can just hang out and gab about American Idol or Michelle Bachmann or whether there should be two spaces after a period. (There shouldn’t.)

Lauren: How many discussions are there?

Gary: I think there are around a hundred subject threads. Maybe? I haven’t really counted them.

Lauren: What is your newest discussion addition? How did it come to be added?

Gary: A brand new member suggested we should have a thread for talking about audio books. Two or three others agreed, and so it was done!

Lauren: People may not realize the range of discussions in a forum devoted to books. Topics devoted to current events, culinary discussions, pets, movies, television, sports, and more are active here. Even if they often get off books on those subjects, why do you feel they are important?

Gary: Because it’s more than just another book site. I like to say that Twitter is fun, and Facebook is friendly, but BookBalloon is a community. It’s like the neighborhood pub. Where everybody knows your name. It’s really important to me personally that BookBalloon should be what its members want it to be. When they come across a new author they love and want to tell their friends about, I hope that BookBalloon is the place they think to go. Or they want to rant about the coaching of their favorite football team, or ask somebody for advice on buying a stir fry pan, or laugh about a politician's malapropism—I hope they feel like BookBalloon is a good place to share these things.

Lauren: What always amazes me is the huge variety of sub-topics that books engender. (Not that I should be surprised; if there’s a book about it, it’s germane.) These include but are not limited to book art, book clubs, book title associations, bookstores and libraries, e-readers, literary games, milestones (deaths, etc.), re-homing books, music, even a “help me” thread. Do they really all fit into a book discussion forum?

Gary: Yup. Because, as I say, it aspires to be more than just a book forum. That’s the focus, but not the limit. Earlier I compared it to a neighborhood pub. But imagine it’s a pub inside the world’s best bookshop. It’s going to attract people who love literature, and also love to socialize, and while they’re there they're going to talk about books a lot, because that’s the kind of people they are, but they’re not going to hesitate to vent about whatever else is on their minds too.

Lauren: BookBalloon isn’t just about books, though. You have a gallery where members can post pictures of readers, There is also a Writers’ gallery and a Places gallery that makes me swoon. But my question is this: why are all the paintings of women, a fair number of them naked, reading? Where are the men, especially the naked men?

Gary: Do painters paint men reading? The sexism of it! I see this being a hot new topic of discussion in the Forum!

Lauren: Tell us about BookBalloon’s Movie Club and Reading Club. Are these specialized discussions that differ from the regular discussions? How do they operate?

Gary: We pick a specific book and movie to talk about each month. The other threads are ongoing and subject-specific (though there’s lots of meandering).

We also have a weekly short story selection. Actually I'm hoping to find someone who’d like to act as discussion leader for the weekly story—so if one of your readers would be interested in doing that, they’re invited to drop me a note.

Lauren: How does one become a member?

Gary: Just sign up! It's free and comes with a 100% no-spam guarantee!

Lauren: Are writers welcome? Do you welcome visiting authors?

Gary: Absolutely. Several authors are active members. We also host special events for visiting authors from time to time. Actually along these lines we're hoping to start a new regular feature inviting authors to drop in and promote their latest work. Another stop on the virtual book tour kind of thing.

Lauren: Is there anything I have forgotten to ask?

Gary: I don’t think so. Thanks for supporting BookBalloon, Lauren. And thanks for giving me this opportunity to talk it up. It’s been fun.

Almost since her childhood days of Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, nearly 1,300 bookmarks and approximately the same number of books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) as well as a longtime book design judge for Publishers Marketing Association’s Benjamin Franklin Awards. Contact Lauren.