Other Web Logs

The origin of the whole book log thing, for me, anyway, was a conversation with Teresa Nielsen Hayden over the summer, when she asked Kate Nepveu and I what we'd read recently that was good. Not only did we both blank on what we'd read that was good, we generally blanked on what we'd read recently. As a remedy to that, Kate hit on the idea of a book log, recording each book she read with a few comments about the book. I soon followed suit, leading to the pages you're now reading.

Since that time (early August 2001), we've discovered that a number of other people have been doing the same thing; indeed, many of them beat us to the book log idea. Such is life on the Web. This page is intended to provide a rough index to a few of the other book logs out there, with particular emphasis on logs that I read with moderate regularity. As is usually the case on the Web (and really, in some sense, it's the glory of the Web), the quality of the writing and Web design vary wildly. In other words, I won't be held responsible if one of the links here leads you to a page where the text is in 2-point purple type on a mauve background, and you go blind trying to read it (and what is it about weblogging that leads so many otherwise intelligent people to use neon paisley backgrounds for their writing? What's wrong with black text on a white screen, damn it?). I'll try not to link to any of those pages, but caveat emptor all the same.

Blogs which are specifically book logs:

As long as I'm doing this (I'm tempted to try to figure out how to put all these links in a nice useful menu-type bar on the side of my main booklog page, but that would cut out the chance for my witty commentary), I may as well throw in some links to the non-book-related weblogs that I read. Booklogging is really a subset of weblogging, which is an evil and addictive phenomenon-- I kill even more time reading people's blogs than I used to on Usenet.

Non-book-related blogs:

I've done a little re-arranging, as my list of regularly read weblogs has changed. Since the Nielsen Hayden's recently changed URL's, and I had to update anyway, I though I would change things around to reflect the new reality. Weblogs which have dropped down the to-read list include:

As usual, because I link to something doesn't mean I agree with it (Marshall and Sullivan link to each other all the time, and they rarely agree). And while the blogs above span enough of a range that my employer must agree with one of them, don't blame them for any of the stuff you find there, either.



Last updated: 6 May, 2002
orzelc@steelypips.org