Welcome to c2lem.com

Who?

My domain name explained:

• “c” = Charles
• “2” = to
• “lem” = “le magne” (French) = “the great” (English)

So, Charlemagne — just Charles really — and, no, I am neither French nor Norman nor Great.
This is the internet; I could be a dog for all you know.

Be that as it may, you are visiting my small internet domain/empire; my pied-à-terre, if you will.

What?

Whatever I am interested in that’s worth posting — for now this includes:

• Books: For newer books, these posts are (no spoilers) reviews. Otherwise, these are just observations for my own memory.
• Now Reading: Pretty self-explanatory — books currently in progress.
• Blog: Weekly posts: a bunch of links that I find topical, distracting, or otherwise interesting. (YMMV.)

How?

• This site is hosted on Cloudflare Pages because its free tier is free!
• The site is built using the blog generator, Eleventy, because both ChatGPT and Gemini suggested it.
• Consulting, coding and design assistance is (currently) provided by ChatGPT at the $20 a month tier.
• Human readable content with opinion is, ya know, created by me, myself and I edit the files (content + code) on my mac mini. All the files are managed using git source control and they live online in github.com.
• More details of the origin story.

Why?

The first thing I started doing was finding interesting links that I can share. I am always finding stuff to share and nothing gives me joy like finding an article just right for someone else’s interests. I was emailing and texting these and decided that a blog was the next logical step. Duh. And that’s what I was putting up into wordpress. Also, the less attention I pay to our current political conundrum the better,(2025-05-04) and here is a positive thing I can do with the vast swathes of time that stretch before me.

The second reason to keep a blog, is to post my reading which I was already doing on goodreads.com. But goodreads forces me to go to their pokey website in order to post and I am fundamentally unimportant and unnoticed on goodreads; my reviews just bolster the data that drives their little tollbooth on the internet superhighway. Folks that receive attention on goodreads are deserving, no doubt, I don’t begrudge them the love, but I get no feedback on the site so why bother? Here, also, I have no readership to speak of but being my own unread institution/site/brand just feels better than helping goodreads. Even with no readers, my notes and reviews make me go through the thought process of writing, an exercise that has value for me.

But regarding my opinion of goodreads, maybe that’s just spite talking. Maybe. Whatever. Fuck those guys.