bloggy mcbloggerson

I scrolled through this week's New York Times Sunday Book Review again today, and decided to read the review of Sarah Boxer's "Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web" by David Kamp. I found it to be quite an interesting review, since I'm new to the public blogging arena. (I've spent some time MySpace blogging, but that doesn't count.) I've scrolled through the Blogspot blogs a time or two, and have found the majority of them to be either artistic photography galleries or drawn-out versions of family newsletters. I've read other kinds of blogs before, mostly the sort that coincide with a particular Web site or are part of a friend's MySpace page, but I have yet to find any to read religiously.

Kamp says blogs are "frisky, naughty, inflammatory, overly confessional [and] scarily paradigm-threatening." I suppose he's right, because a blog can be anything you want it to be. He realizes this, and acknowledges that the trends and styles have evolved, and expresses that Boxer should've done the same. The admitted non-blogger is quoted as saying she thought the idea of a blog anthology was "dreadful" because books and blogs are not meant to mix -- but if you can blog about books, you should be able to successfully book about blogs. Kamp says Boxer's hesitation is evident in the book, despite the obvious pains she took to collect a variety of samples. Some, he says, are interesting, but some are boring, and overall the book fails to live up to its name.

I'm enjoying the NYT book reviews, and I'm glad they come free to my e-mail. No, that's not some paid advertisement. I'm genuinely thankful to have found a weekly, intelligent collection of reviews. I like them because they're so well researched. The reviewers are knowledgeable about the subject matter, or research it enough to seem that way, and they place the books in context with a critical eye, not just saying "I like/don't like this book because ... ". I have also read a bit of the USA Today book section, which I discovered while searching for inspiration on what book I think might be a bestseller in the year 2020 (for a publishing-school application). I ended up deciding on Anne Rice's final vampire book, which she has said she may or may not write. So I figure it could take her 12 years to figure out how to bring together the undead and redemption.

I'd like to find some other book blogs, but I haven't taken much time to look for that specifically yet. I did, however, initiate my Google Reader with two photography blogs, one about Polaroids. And that reminds me, too, that I also recently found out about Microsoft Reader and downloaded a couple of books to check out on there, and about the Google books search, which was amazing. Searching within books, mapping locations mentioned in books -- it's like heaven.