There have been some very interesting book club recommendations and discussions that have been hosted here at TPMCafe.  Unfortunately I have not been able to follow all of them in real time and find it extremely difficult, really practically impossible, to go back post-by-post through the archives to find where one discussion begins and another ends. 

None of the archived posts include the book title or subject of discussion in any header so one is forced to read into the posts a good deal in reverse order just to figure out where the conversation began. 

It is even worse trying to sort out an old discussion found through a search.  For example, this morning I looked for an old discussion on heterodox economics, a very lively discussion among many, many well-known economics bloggers.  The hits were not even in date/time order.  They did not include book, author, subject or even the poster's name.  An expanded search that included the name of a specific poster produced a longer list of posts that were less specific to the discussion I was seeking.  What a pain.

An indexed archive would be beneficial for authors as well as late readers..  Authors would benefit because their books would continue to be promoted beyond their alloted week and late readers of the discussion could follow the conversation more easily in sequence and may end up buying an interesting book. 

It should not be that hard to create an indexed archive, just initially time consuming.   For an example, see how Cato Unbound links and tracks their current and archived discussions on their right sidebar.  And for something really useful, see how Cato creates a separate web page of links for each archived discussion.

Whether this is something that TPM thinks would be worthwhile will depend not just on the merit of the idea itself but on its usefulness to its general audience.  What do you all think?