Happy Birthday to the Complete Review

Back on April 5, 1999, the Complete Review published its first review, giving Nicholson Baker’s The Everlasting Story of Nory a “C” for being “too cute for its own good.” Well, 2,250 reviews and ten years later and CR is still going strong.

Michael Orthofer has a nice write up about his first decade running the site, and his desire to do even more:

The mix of books covered at the complete review remains eclectic (mostly my fault/taste), and while best-known for coverage of translated (and, occasionally, not-yet-translated) fiction, I’m more or less satisfied with the range of books covered. I’d always like to cover more — far more — but the logistics are too daunting. (The grand irony of the site for me also always remains that since it takes up so much of my time I actually read less than I otherwise might.)

He’s already averaging 225 reviews a year—for one person that’s absolutely amazing. And yes, it really is just one person:

After all these years I also figure it is time to abandon my hopes of creating an independent institutional identity for the complete review. I’ve always tried to stay in the background (and would, of course, prefer disappearing completely unrecognized behind the scenes, an entirely anonymous puppet-master), but despite my best efforts to de-personalize the site it has become futile to avoid the obvious: complete review, c’est moi. Not that it’s always been that way, not absolutely entirely, but by now I figure some ninety-five per cent of the reviews, and near as much of the weblog-content can be ascribed to me, and all of it in recent times, and so I might as well do away with any pretense of there being anything more to the complete review than me for now. (There’s always hope that the complete review-as-institution concept can be revived, but between my ‘vision’ for the site, and my taskmaster-skills … don’t count on it.) Hence one minor change: posts and reviews will now be signed ‘M.A.Orthofer’, as I might as well lay claim to (and accept blame for) them.

Congrats to Michael and best of luck for the next ten years.