sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Top of the Blogpile?
Andrew Sullivan and Kurt Andersen email about weblogs. Which is way better than blogging about blogging.

Am I "daily ... frank, pithy commentary on trends and important news interwoven with vivid personal glimpses of metropolitan life" or "...incestuous, smug-but-needy..." It's so hard to tell these things; it's like trying to work out if you're fat compared to the woman in front of you at the bus queue. It's all about perspective.

This is who these people are (as if you didn't know): Kurt Andersen, the author of Turn of the Century, is now at work on his second novel. He's also the host of the public radio program Studio 360. Andrew Sullivan, a senior editor at the New Republic, writes daily for andrewsullivan.com. Slate has asked them to discuss the Weblog phenomenon as well as two new books about blogging, We've Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture and The Weblog Handbook.

Oh, and I've read We've Got Blog, and I don't get the point either. While I don't think books will ever go out of fashion (dead tree edition, Andrew calls it), I agree with Kurt; there's no point in just collecting together a bunch of articles already published on the web. There's no editorial thread; there's no point, there's no argument. It's not interesting, and it's silly having hypertext links as footnotes. The point of the web is immediacy and instant-gratification, not making a mental note to check a personal website later. Tut tut, Rebecca, you're just bandwaggoning on the book thing, without adding value. So you're a respected weblog commentator; so do something useful with it. Dunno what, though.