Literature Isn't Dead, It Just Smells Funny

April 16, 2008 8:12 AM

Those big, wonderful book blogs like Paper Cuts, Guardian Books, and Poetry Foundation haven't totally satisfied your book blog bloodlust?

Well, maybe you could start with the lit blogs updated throughout the day, like Blog of a Bookslut, Conversational Reading, Quick Study, GalleyCat, The Millions, Bookninja, and The Elegant Variation.

Perhaps you'd rather lit blogs that offer a more classically bloggy style? Old Hag, Maud Newton, ENotes, Pinky's Paperhaus, and After the MFA might be up your alley. And of course, there are a variety of blogs offering a smattering of lit talk: Silliman's Blog, BookFox, Literary Kicks, and Syntax of Things.

"Pft, I'd rather just stay at home, ready my New Yorker, and count my short story rejection slips," you say? Well, there are even a few blogs for you, too!

posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches (14 comments total)

Thanks for this. I was just saying how I was afraid I might be too productive in the coming weeks.
posted by khaibit at 8:35 AM on April 16, 2008

The best blog out there for books on books, on archives, and on libraries is Richard Cox's Reading Archives. The entries are timely; the book reviews are exceptionally well written; and the books are not often well covered in other review sources. See for example the review of The Library at Night by Alberto Mangual.
posted by mfoight at 8:49 AM on April 16, 2008

Book blogs with a genre bend (that I keep up with):
Pat's Fantasy Hotlist
A Dribble of Ink
Agony Column
Andrew Wheeler
Bookgasm
Fantasy Book Critic
Jeff VanderMeer and Omnivoracious (Amazon)
Blog of the Fallen
Sandstorm Reviews
SF Signal
So Many Books
The Bodhisattva
The Wertzone
UK SF Book News
Torque Control
Making Light
Now does anybody have a good blog that reviews new history/biography books regularly?
posted by i_am_a_Jedi at 8:52 AM on April 16, 2008 [1 favorite]

Filed under "unfortunately there aren't enough hours in the day".
posted by DreamerFi at 9:45 AM on April 16, 2008

I posted some of my faves here.
posted by mattbucher at 9:59 AM on April 16, 2008

Self-promotion filter: I have a collection of over 30 works of original fiction available as unrestricted downloads, viewable via Web or eBook.
posted by CheeseburgerBrown at 10:01 AM on April 16, 2008

Its coverage is pretty scattershot, but The Complete Review aggregates book reviews similarly to how metacritic used to.
posted by whir at 12:11 PM on April 16, 2008

I love that The Complete Review (and -- not sure how I forgot this one -- The Complete Review's books blog, Literary Saloon) and their Web 1.0-or-die aesthetic. In fact, I think Lit Saloon was one of the first books blogs I checked on a regular basis (along w/ the now-defunct Moby Lives. I'd feel bad about ML going down under, but I was walking around in DUMBO a few weeks ago and stumbled into Melville House Publishing, run by the Moby Lives guy.

I can only hope that David Walentas is giving them one of his famous $0/yr leases.
posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches at 12:39 PM on April 16, 2008

thanks to jedi for blog list - paper cuts etc just too safe and predictable
posted by blimp77 at 12:56 PM on April 16, 2008

I'm bloggy!

A few more great bookish reads: shaken and stirred and largehearted boy and moorishgirl and chekov's mistress.
posted by paperhaus at 5:41 PM on April 16, 2008

A few frequently lit-relevant ones I like very much: Joshua Clover's Jane Dark's Sugarhigh!, Elif Batuman's Life and Thoughts, Helen DeWitt's Paperpools, and Josh Corey's Cahiers de Corey.
posted by Cucurbit at 6:22 PM on April 16, 2008

Oh, and the BookForum blog, which is updated three times every weekday with links to book reviews around the web (as well as other articles of interest), is great.
posted by Cucurbit at 9:45 PM on April 16, 2008

Three Percent is a good blog about international and translated literature.
posted by mekanic at 2:07 PM on April 17, 2008

err...that link should have been: Three Percent
posted by mekanic at 2:08 PM on April 17, 2008