Today’s LA Times runs my review of Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wide Web. The book, edited by Sarah Boxer, can be thought of as an anthology of great web writing, focusing on 27 sites, all of which I found deserving, too.
The book itself is somewhat problematic, because gives so little attention to non-text media. There are no video blogs — which means the masterful zeFrank is left out; only one photoblog is included. Only a handful of the included blogs use photos in their posting, whereas many bloggers use pictures and youtube clips to tell their stories (why am I telling you this? you know this). All links are stripped from the entries, so what used to read as an engagement with a greater conversation sounds like straight narrative. The blogs’ designs are ignored (except for popping the header image at the top of each blog’s chapter), which seems to duck the issue of how much content and design come together on the web. And, in some sense, to miss many of the elements that make blogs blogs.
Nevertheless, the blogs are all wonderful to read. I couldn’t link to them in the paper, so I do so now, roughly in the order in which I enjoyed them.
El Guapo in DC – my favorite, and now the fellow has gone and stopped blogging. El Guapo, mucho amor.
Ironic Sans – words and graphics. I know, I could be more specific, right?
Under Odysseus – the Iliad and the Odyssey, from a soldier’s POV. “Oh, fuck the horse, Odysseus! Do you really think the Trojans are going to fall for that?!”
The Diary of Samuel Pepys – a genuine diary from an upper-class Brit in the 1660s, posted in blog form.
Go Fug Yourself – fashion snark at its best
Click Opera – Momus lives.
Cosmic Variance – musings on the universe from theoretical physicists, plus the occasional Sesame Street video.
The Old Hag – an iconic litblogger who doesn’t litblog as much as she used to.
The Rest is Noise – Alex Ross is still blogging, even though his book of this title is now on shelves
The Smoking Gun – FOIA geniuses. Goodbye, James Frey
Get Your War On – clip-art comics without mercy
Language Log – linguists online. watch your Ps and Qs.
How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons – life in Sweden, from a man who moved there for his husband, with a funnily relevant Swedish word or two at the end of each post.
julia {Here Be Hippogriffs} – a mommy blog that for a long time was a miscarriage blog. Commentors galore.
Eurotrash – blogging from the UK
Micrographica – teeny comics, about rats and turds.
Midnight in Iraq – Now that this soldier is home from Iraq, the blog is called The Midnight Hour.
Johnny I Hardly Knew You – a blog. Kinda arty.
Angry Black Bitch – says it all.
Nina Paley – the cartoonist has been chronicling her longlasting animation project, which was recently admitted to the Berlin International Film Festival.
Rootless Cosmopolitan – politics, with an internationalist take
The Becker-Posner Blog – a Nobel prizewinning economist vs. a federal court judge.
Radio Urugay – street photography
Matthew Yglesias – blogs for The Atlantic
It’s Raining Noodles – the far too cute diary of a 19-ish girl in Singapore
I Blame the Patriarchy – defunct now, except for the occasional election season rant
Raed in the Middle – a little bit middle eastern, a little bit American. Justifiably frustrated.
Thanks for that. I’m excited to be reading Momus again–my first encounter with him was at the Whitney. He was cruising through the galleries blurting things through a megaphone, disturbing and confusing everyone. It was awesome.
And the Under Odysseus blog is awesome.
Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw not long ago in Playa del Rey:
“Zeus is God, Read the Iliad.”
Cheers A
well done – I liked “…this introduction of blog masterworks is as timely as fine wine.”
It was great to see Lizzie’s blog Old Hag in there because she certainly has a distinctive voice (and is a friend), but (as is always when non-bloggers write about blogs), glaringly, Lizzie’s is not an active blog so at best demonstrates (as you did in other ways) that ‘This is not like That’ or at worst that the book’s editor didn’t really bother.
Nice. You did a good job of explaining the book and of explaining how difficult it is to describe the Internet without the devices of the Internet itself.
“I Blame the Patriarchy – defunct now, except for the occasional election season rant”
Not defunct! Merely in a coma! Thank you.
I can’t tell you how amazing it was to read what you wrote about my writing in the LA Times. Please send me an e-mail.