A quick addendum to the timeline I posted here.
Day 57: The galleys being reviewed in this issue go in a cabinet, where we can access them if there are any questions about the review. They stay there for five weeks.
Day 92: Those galleys have hung around long enough. I put the ones I don't want on the Free to a Good Home cart near the office front door, and stack the ones I want on a shelf over my desk. That shelf fills up about every four to six weeks (since I also snag interesting galleys from other sections off the cart), at which point Josh and I bring in a bunch of sturdy cloth bags and haul it all home at once. This is why we keep buying new bookshelves.
This week I put the galleys for issue 1 of 2008 in the cabinet and took out the galleys from issue 47 of 2007. One of the books reviewed in 47 was Wastelands, which I've been dying to get my hands on ever since our reviewer emphatically starred it (you can read the review if you scroll down the Amazon page to the lowermost blog entry). Finally, three months after it first arrived in our office, I can sit down and read it in the comfort of my own home. Yay! Now I just have to find time for reading.
Those of you who envied me for getting to see nifty books way before everyone else may note that Wastelands is already in stores. The reviewers are the ones to envy. Thanks to the sitting-around-in-a-cabinet phase of the process, I end up reading things on pretty much the same schedule as everyone else.
