One of the many excellent add-ons to LibraryThing is the Early Reviewers group. Members sign up, are entered in a monthly draw for a limited number of titles donated by publishers, and, if successful, are encouraged to write a review. Publishers and authors get free publicity for their new titles, readers get free books, and LibraryThing is enriched by the reviews added to bald catalogue records.
Some of the titles are only available to North American readers, but I was pleased to see in the March list of titles for British users the late Sandra Koa Wing's Our Longest Days: A People's History of the Second World War by The Writers of Mass Observation. I expressed an interest and was even more pleased when I had an e-mail telling me I had been successful. As soon as the book arrives, and taking advantage of the time afforded for reading by my new commuting life-style, I shall read and review it as quickly as I can, and post the review here, against the book's entry in my LibraryThing library and in the Early Reviewers group.
Sandra Koa Wing worked in the University of Sussex Library's renowned Special Collections before her early death last year. There is a fund in her memory. I met her when I worked at the University, through the Library and a study day in 2004, Our Hidden Lives: Publishing Everyday Diaries organised by the Centre for Life History and came to know her blog, which survives her, A Glimpse from the Attic
