What will the next incarnation of the blog be?

Who's asking: Tom Ehrenfeld, Cambridge, MA; Moira McLaughlin, Los Angeles, CA

Wow, it's the end of July already -- and the end of this version of the blog. As usual, some questions remain unanswered (literally and figuratively), but isn't that always the way?

The next incarnation of the blog, starting September 1, will be "The Books I Kept."

On the back wall of my living room is a massive bookcase, inherited from my parents' house, filled with books I've carried with me through close to a dozen moves over the past 25 years. These 200 or so books represent the distillation of a lifetime of reading. They're books signed to me or for me, books that thank me in their acknowledgments, books I worked on, gifts from parents and friends and old boyfriends, books that changed my life and books I -- in some cases -- haven't even read. In most cases, they're books I'll never read again, but I keep them, and God willing I'll leave them to my own children.

So I'm thinking that once a day, I'll take one off the shelf and write about it: what it is, how I acquired it, why I kept it.

Now, the idea of this seems overwhelmingly personal -- much more revealing than anything I've ever done -- and it may take me a while to find the right balance of information about the books vs. information about myself. I'm also going to ask people to submit their own books, just to lighten the load.

This year's been a lot of fun, and thanks to everyone who submitted questions. If you know me personally, you know that the question-answering never stops -- so feel free to keep sending them, and I'll respond by e-mail when I have time.

Although I take August off from blogging, I don't take August off, and it's going to be a busy month. Joseph Finder's next book, POWER PLAY, launches on August 21, and I'll be doing a lot of online promotion for the book over the next three weeks. If you're in the Boston area, come out for the launch party: Borders-Back Bay, 7:00 p.m., August 21.

And of course, if you're in central Maine, come see Crimes of the Heart at Gaslight Theater, Hallowell City Hall, August 16-18 and 23-25. It's shaping up to be a great show, if I do say so myself.

Thank you all for reading and commenting, and for being my friends and my endlessly tolerant family. Have a great summer, and I'll see you in September.