Book Format Available

The blog format has many advantages for the effort I am engaged in; however, a disadvantage is that it is not organized for ease of coherent reading. Books (usually, and particularly non-fiction) are organized, written and edited to present material in a way that intrigues, informs, satisfies, educates, makes sense to, the reader. Narrative and history, of course, have the obvious choice of being chronological to make sense. And blog entries can be scattered, and are often in the reverse of chronological order.

Fortunately, the blog format I use has a remedy for that. It allows me to set up a table of contents (TOC) to make my entries available to a reader in any order I wish. I can attach blog posts, no matter what date I created them, to that TOC in order by chronology or subject matter or any relating theme I choose. Posts can be attached to more than one part of the TOC. For instance, one part could be a chronological telling of the Havasupai land repatriation. And I could also have a section dealing with conflicts between tribes and federal agencies, using some of the same entries. The point, for each section of the TOC, is to bring together related posts to approximate how they would appear in a traditional printed book. 

The advantage of the blog format comes up again because I can edit a blog entry or add a related one, and then update the TOC, keeping book-form readability. However, I am not now taking the time to edit each blog entry to read as smoothly as in a print book, removing any digressions or repetitions. Nevertheless, a reader interested in the history of Grand Canyon National Park will be able to start at the beginning and read through to, well, to however far I have gotten in the story. For, of course, most subjects are not completed yet, since I have skipped around; many subjects have not even been started. However, as I add new or amended material, I will update the TOC, indicating the last date it was changed. As of this writing, I have set up the Havasupai land story, and will shortly add the Park history, the Park boundary, the dams, and so on.

To get to the Table of Contents page, click on the tab "CELEBRATING THE BOOK…GO TO TABLE OF CONTENTS". The TOC page includes an explanation and directions for using it. 

Please let me know if it works, if it doesnt, and of the need for corrections, changes, additions.