Thursday, 5 February 2009

In the blogosphere.

I do occasionally read a couple of blogs, and one thing I particularly find them useful for is that some of the contemporary writers I work on keep up blogs which reproduce articles, reviews etc. they may have recently published within print media. It's a lot more convenient than searching in diverse places for this stuff.
A couple of good ones:
http://bevaristo.wordpress.com/
http://www.harikunzru.com/archive/books

However, I always still remain a little bit sceptical about blogging, for two reasons. So here are a blog I dislike:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/
and one that confuses me:

http://www.chickenblog.com/

The first is intended as an illustration of the reason I most often find myself looking at blogs; my Google searches inevitably lead me to right-wing lunatics.

The second is a random choice, and, to be fair to the author of Chickenblog, I only read two posts. However, each of these started by suggesting that there was very little to say of interest. And this is my greatest fear of blogging, both in terms of reading and writing: might it not just be boring?
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7 comments:

  1. Anonymous5 February 2009 at 13:49

    Viz the spectator blog, it claims to be 'champagne for the brain'. Is that as in full of fizz and leaves a horrible taste?

    The chicken blog looks something like blog-as-therapy/family album. Personally, in terms of pics of the kids etc, this finds my own limits of how much of yourself to put out there!

    Might there not be boring books? The trick is to be ruthlessly selective and only read the blogs that are of use to you - and to write for an audience that appreciates your own blogging skills.

    Why not go in and comment on the blogs you found here, I'm sure it's appreciated!

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  2. Oliver Mason5 February 2009 at 16:36

    I read some blogs which are mainly techies commenting on current issues of programming and software development. And I waste lots of time reading blogs about improving your productivity!

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  3. Tom Davis5 February 2009 at 20:54

    Yay, the productivity blog, I do that too. I just checked: I subscribe to precisely 108 blogs. Look, I don't have a TV, OK? Mac, iphone, GTD, Lifehacker, Wired, Google, Guardian (newspaper), friends, family, and so on. The professional stuff is more from email subscription lists (forensic scientists don't blog, they're a secretive lot). I skim a lot of headlines, and that cuts out the boredom factor.

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  4. cruscello8 February 2009 at 16:13

    I don't read blogs, apart from Beppe Grillo's famous political one. I want to take up Oliver's point on timewasting. Email subscription lists keep you up to date, but take up less time, right?

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  5. Oliver Mason11 February 2009 at 14:16

    I find reading blogs via RSS is better than email lists. For starters, they don't clog up your inbox, and you can decide to look at them when you have time. Also, using Google Reader, you only need to look at things when there's something new that has been published. The only problem is if you've read all your feeds, and are bored enough to look around for other feeds to subscribe to!

    And I hardly watch any TV these days. I can't even keep up with the regular podcasts from Radio 4's Friday Night Comedy...

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  6. Monica11 February 2009 at 18:25

    Oh at last, So cruscello is you Clodagh! and OL is Oliver! So this is the space where we all get talking but God knows why it had to be called 'The Roar the Other Side of Silence', I have found a very useful blog called Creative Midlands or something along these lines and I THINK I have earmarked starred some of the info there but that remains to be seen!

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  7. Monica11 February 2009 at 19:39

    Sorry Dave, I understand this is your blog now!I just could not work it out earlier!!!

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