So, to read something, please use the list of recent posts, categories list to access the archive or check out the pages…
The technical details:
I am using the following code in my index.php file:
if (is_home()) if (in_category('99')) continue;
if (is_home()) if (in_category('4')) continue;
This posts all categories to the front page of the blog, except categories 4 (healing tools) and 99 (book summaries). I have tried other methods, such as the Ultimate Category Excluder. But they either re-ordered the posts – nicely displaying the oldest first – or didn’t do anything. I am suspecting that there is a WP 2.3.2 bug that reorders posts since the same effect happens when using the My Recent Posts widget. Using the “order_by” statement didn’t help (I might’ve used it in the wrong place, of course 
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Have you tried Mr. Lao’s Category Posts plugin? I’ve found that one to work better.
Thanks, Justin! I think that plugin won’t work for me since I am not trying to display from a single category but rather exclude some categories…