|
|
Joeychgo.com Book Store > Joeychgo.com books beginning with B
|
The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs: the new literary force |
Author: Catheryn Kilgarriff
Published: 2007-09-01 |
List price: $17.95
Our price: $14.00
|
Usually ships in 24 hours
As of: November 20th, 2008 04:50:35 AM
|
|
|
Customer comments on this selection.
 a book that reads (almost) like a blog
OK, I admit it. I got this book because of its cover. It featured several of Adele Geras' books and since her Ithaka has been looking at me reproachfully from my "To be Read" pile, I had been hoping for a review of Geras' work. I didn't get it.
br /
br /What I got instead was a wonderful tour through the literary blogosphere that really captures the issues of writing, publishing, selling books, and reviewing in the age of the blog on the one hand and huge corporations on the other. (And yes, amazon is discussed at length.)
br /
br /In the process, I was introduced to blogs that help writers get published (e.g., Miss Snark, the Literary Agent), writers' blogs (e.g., Toby Litt and Jeanette Winterson), book sellers' blogs (The Bedside Crow had me with this post: "I put a customer's credit card into the PDQ machine He punches in his four digit number. There is a long pause while the machine thinks. We both wait and wonder; does the bank have any money?") and review blogs (e.g., bookninja). In the process, I learned about Virtual Book Tours and online book clubs. I also learned that small, independent publishers scout websites such as frontlist.com for talent but I hesitate to recommend frontlist in this review.
br /
br /But most of all, I learned about where to go to at least begin to find quality book blogs. For, in the literary blogosphere, the problem (for me at least) has not been one of separating the good blogs from the bad but of finding the good to begin with. In this regard, Rebecca Gillieron's and Catheryn Kilgarriff's recommendations have been invaluable. I didn't always agree with them--but they were an excellent place to start and since most blogs have a blog roll that's all I needed, really.
br /
br /The only reason this book gets four, rather than five stars is the ridiculous number of typos in it. Given that Gillieron and Kilgarriff represent a publishing house, they should have been able to catch the "aa" instead of "a" and the sentences missing verbs (or having two verbs where one was plenty). And since they didn't proofread their own book, I deducted a star.
br /
br /Otherwise this is an excellent book. I recommend it.
br /
A blog for every bookish taste
Gillieron and Kilgarriff present an array of book blogs for every taste from erudite to off-the-grid. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, at least in the bloggers' minds.
br /
br /Despite an unconscionable number of typos (especially considering the authors are editor and publisher respectively at the British publishing house Marion Boyars), this is an entertaining and informative survey, steering readers to sites they may never have heard of, from the thoughtfully appealing Dovegreyreader to the in-your-face Social Disease.
br /
br /The authors organize their chapters by type of blog, i.e., Author Blogs; Booksellers Blogs; Fan Blogs, Obsessives and the Extreme; The Literary Establishment and Its Blogs, and also by theme, i.e., Review Pages vs. the Internet; Alter Egos or Inflated Egos: Why Do People Blog?; The Internet and Its Uses: Dialogues about Freedom of Expression and Personal Interest.
br /
br /They include background material on how and why the blogs got started and plenty of quotes, some of them extensive, to give readers an idea of style and substance. There are blogs that stick to what the blogger is reading and blogs that venture out to the latest literary parties and gossip; blogs that fulminate and blogs that promote; blogs that shock and blogs that inspire.
br /
br /They discuss the role of genre blogs, the influence of the Internet on reader's choices and the future of print reviews. These discussions are thoughtful enough but the meat of the book is the helpful introduction to the vast seething sea of book blogs out there. You could spend all your time reading blogs and never get to a book or you could use this handy guide to steer you to those that appeal and avoid the rest.
|
|
Our Joeychgo.com book picks:
|
|
LCS Amazon Store 2.4 © 2008
|
|
|
