I’ve been puzzled by exactly what to do here on my personal blog. I used to write about books, but now I write about books on Jacket Copy. I write a second blog for the LA Times, which is kind of technology-green-hipster-culture, which covers a lot of stuff of other than books. And I do some other work that, when I began, I was asked not to discuss online.
So if I’m not writing about books (which I love), or contemporary culture (which I like), or the other stuff I’m doing (which is mine), what do I write about? Since I Twitter, what’s the point of blogging, anyway?
Some people use blogs to vent bile. Throw mud. I’m torn. Do I throw mud back at the person who threw it at me last week? Do I point out inaccuracies, exaggerations, and reveal the short and rather pathetic backstory?
Meh.
I will tell you this: in my new rental, which is sandwiched between an apartment building full of gang kids and one of LA’s most beautiful residential streets, I can hear birds singing in the morning, and have tried to to save a fledgling from the neighborhood cats.
People came over to see this new place this weekend. It’s like you, they said. But my last place — a tall 1920s brick apartment building with a chilly pool and a bar on the ground floor was like me, too.
I think I’ve fooled them into thinking any place is like me by filling them all full of books.
Currently reading: a book for review & Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City for fun.
I always figure you can never have too much good writing about books . . .
Yeah I know what you mean about Twitter. It’s definitely cut down on my blogging imperative since I can say just about anything I want to say with a Tweet. Twitter is easier than blogging, less complex than Facebook and more immediate – like an all-day, running conversation with friends. Or at least the people you’re following.