- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Vintage Books (12 Feb 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0307278069
- ISBN-13: 978-0307278067
- Product Dimensions: 15.4 x 2.1 x 20.5 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,694,691 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Ultimate Blogs
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Product Description
Product Description
“What are you working on?”
“An anthology of blogs.”
“I didn’t know you had a blog.”
“I don’t. It’s an anthology of other people’s blogs.”
“How do you find good blogs?”
“I read. I surf. I look at blog contests. I follow links. I ask people about the blogs they like.”
“Is a good blog hard to find?”
“Yes. Very.”
A Book of Blogs? WTF!!
Sarah Boxer, a former New York Times reporter and critic, travels through the blogosphere (more than 80 million blogs — and counting) and finds some masterpieces along the way. Among the bloggers in the anthology are:
two fashion critics mocking the inexplicable “fugliness” of celebrities
a Marine Corps lieutenant stationed in Fallujah in 2006
a 19-year old student in Singapore cheerfully pining for her ex
an illustrator’s tiny saga of a rodent and his ball of crap
Odysseus’s sidekick telling his side of the Iliad and Odyssey
Revealing and deceptive, grand and niggling, worldly and parochial, these blogs comprise a snapshot of life on the wild, wild Web.
“An anthology of blogs.”
“I didn’t know you had a blog.”
“I don’t. It’s an anthology of other people’s blogs.”
“How do you find good blogs?”
“I read. I surf. I look at blog contests. I follow links. I ask people about the blogs they like.”
“Is a good blog hard to find?”
“Yes. Very.”
A Book of Blogs? WTF!!
Sarah Boxer, a former New York Times reporter and critic, travels through the blogosphere (more than 80 million blogs — and counting) and finds some masterpieces along the way. Among the bloggers in the anthology are:
two fashion critics mocking the inexplicable “fugliness” of celebrities
a Marine Corps lieutenant stationed in Fallujah in 2006
a 19-year old student in Singapore cheerfully pining for her ex
an illustrator’s tiny saga of a rodent and his ball of crap
Odysseus’s sidekick telling his side of the Iliad and Odyssey
Revealing and deceptive, grand and niggling, worldly and parochial, these blogs comprise a snapshot of life on the wild, wild Web.
Inside This Book
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4 reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Some Ultimate Blogs
19 Feb 2008
Format:Kindle Edition
With 15 million active blogs to choose from, Sarah Boxer has picked 27 genuinely interesting examples. She brings a generalist's curiosity to the task, and has clearly read thousands of blogs to come up with this set. She is an intelligent, interesting friend, handing you links to outstanding bloggers, and explaining why you might like them.
(I've noticed that reviewers are already adding examples -- WNYC listeners have already added several examples in their discussion of yesterday's show.)
Boxer asks an interesting question: is there such a thing as blogger art form. She points out that a "growing stack of books has pondered the effects of blogs and bloggers on culture (We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture), on democracy (Blogwars: The New Political Battleground), on privacy (The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet] and We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age), on professionalism (The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today's user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values), on business (Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers), and on all of the above ("Blog!").
But what about the effect of blogs on language? "Are they a new literary genre? Do they have their own conceits, forms, and rules? Do they have an essence?"
Boxer makes a compelling argument that at least one style of blog writing does have essence. She excludes large numbers of types of blogs, the miniblogs that frequent Amazon Reviewers produce for example. One major reason: as a Reviewer I can link only to URLs in the Amazon system. Bloggers typically link to other stories, by way of commenting, informing or complicating their own writing.
Boxer's project seems almost infinite. Most blogs are updated regularly -- some multiple times a day. Boxer has pulled excerpts of just a few pages from each, sometimes spanning several years. Much, by necessity, is left out. Nonetheless, she has discovered some very interesting blogs, well worth exploring, and built an excellent case for her thesis:
"Blog writing is id writing--grandiose, dreamy, private, free-associative, infantile, sexy, petty, dirty. Whether bloggers tell the truth or really are who they claim to be is another matter, but WTF. They are what they write. And you can't fake that. ;-)"
Robert C. Ross 2008
(I've noticed that reviewers are already adding examples -- WNYC listeners have already added several examples in their discussion of yesterday's show.)
Boxer asks an interesting question: is there such a thing as blogger art form. She points out that a "growing stack of books has pondered the effects of blogs and bloggers on culture (We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture), on democracy (Blogwars: The New Political Battleground), on privacy (The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet] and We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age), on professionalism (The Cult of the Amateur: How blogs, MySpace, YouTube, and the rest of today's user-generated media are destroying our economy, our culture, and our values), on business (Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers), and on all of the above ("Blog!").
But what about the effect of blogs on language? "Are they a new literary genre? Do they have their own conceits, forms, and rules? Do they have an essence?"
Boxer makes a compelling argument that at least one style of blog writing does have essence. She excludes large numbers of types of blogs, the miniblogs that frequent Amazon Reviewers produce for example. One major reason: as a Reviewer I can link only to URLs in the Amazon system. Bloggers typically link to other stories, by way of commenting, informing or complicating their own writing.
Boxer's project seems almost infinite. Most blogs are updated regularly -- some multiple times a day. Boxer has pulled excerpts of just a few pages from each, sometimes spanning several years. Much, by necessity, is left out. Nonetheless, she has discovered some very interesting blogs, well worth exploring, and built an excellent case for her thesis:
"Blog writing is id writing--grandiose, dreamy, private, free-associative, infantile, sexy, petty, dirty. Whether bloggers tell the truth or really are who they claim to be is another matter, but WTF. They are what they write. And you can't fake that. ;-)"
Robert C. Ross 2008
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Ultimate Blogs: a video review
19 Feb 2008
Format:Paperback
Greatness and Unruliness Are Often Interchangeable
12 May 2011
Format:Paperback
What a great selection of blogs, from the silly to the sublime! It's a shame some of the authors are no longer blogging, especially El Guapo in DC. Actually, not all the bloggers are writers: some are cartoonists, one is a photographer and one is an animator. One of them is Samuel Pepys, who lived in the 18th century but whose famous diary can be found in blog form. My favorite line is from Alex Ross: "Greatness and unruliness are often interchangeable." This book is full of surprises.
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