In her keynote speech at last month’s Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, Arianna Huffington tossed out a good point on the way to her explanation of why she doesn’t pay bloggers. (“Self expression is the new entertainment…. We never used to question why people sit on the couch for seven hours a day watching bad TV. Nobody ever asked, ‘Why are they doing that for free?’ We need to celebrate that moment rather than question it.” I think she might actually want them to pay her.) What got glossed over in the mad rush to jump all over Huffington’s pay scale was her assertion that the “magical pub date”—the window of time in which a book was launched, reviewed, featured, and then forever left to its own devices—is obsolete.

And it’s true, and it’s a good thing: The new endless playing field of online reviews has stretched out the conversation about any given book to however long someone wants to talk about it. For anyone who uses the library, who loves used books or just wants to wait for the paperback to come out, the review factory is limited, to say the least. One of my favorite things about the shift to online formats has been the freedom of breaking away from that.

A bit of an obvious point, maybe, but it does address my endless question of what exactly makes literary websites valuable and viable… aside from the fact that self-expression is the new entertainment, that is. Most of the blogs and electronic journals I keep coming back to give both old and new books equal respect; selections come from the bookshelf as well as the bookstore, which is, mostly, how real people read.

The Second Pass, a perfect example of what I’m talking about, celebrates its first birthday today. And in the spirit of what makes reading online reviews worth your while, proprietor John Williams has invited a dozen guests to offer up Tales of the Unread, a selection of their favorite out-of-print books. The mix is tempting and eclectic—not just proof that there’s an infinite world of undiscovered treasure out there, but that The Second Pass has plenty of interesting friends with good taste. Happy anniversary, and here’s to many more years to come. There are a lot of books left to talk about.