Introduction

The few people who've bothered to look at the pathetic bloglet I set up a few years ago, Dull in a New Way, will have figured out I'm not the world's most conscientious blogger. The ever-increasing demands on my time make it harder to update the blog regularly, and Facebook and now Google+ have let me get most of the smartassery out of my system.

But I'm working on a new book, You Could Look It Up: The Reference Shelf from Babylon to Wikipedia, and I'm keen to share some of the goodies I've come across in my research. So I'll be profiling some of the weird and wonderful reference books I've discovered in my work.

I hope to be able to update this at least every few days — but can't promise I'll be disciplined. Oh, well. You get what you pay for, right?