Peeps, Eurotrash, and ‘Dooced’:The editor of Ultimate Blogs shares some of her good and bad discoveries.
Blogs read over six months:
Around 2,000.
Most overrepresented topic:
Political blogs, which Boxer spent a mostly wasted month reading, and which tended to be too timely and unoriginal to include.
Most overrepresented oddball topic:
“The handful of blogs devoted to scientific research on the marshmallow Easter candy Peeps.”
Most underrepresented topic:
“Military blogs that are not in some way censored or gung ho stuff.”
Blog she most wishes she could have included:
Dooce, a “mommy blogger” who was fired from her Web job for blogging about it, leading to the new verb dooced. Boxer pitched the book with a sample from Dooce, but the mother “had a book deal going and couldn’t do it.”
Most ridiculous blog:
Snakes on a Blog, “devoted to getting invited to the premiere of Snakes on a Plane, still active.”
Most intriguingly ridiculous blog:
One Red Paper Clip, “by a man hell-bent on trading up from a paper clip until he got a house to live in. He did it, and is now in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most successful Internet trade.”
Best conspiracy news:
Conspiracy Theories, focusing on “the long tentacles of Google, Google Earth, Microsoft, airport security cameras, Diebold voting machines, etc.”
Most revolting post:
“Eurotrash’s fictional send-up of prostitute blogger Belle de Jour, in which she takes a dump on a table for a client. Eurotrash is in the book. The post is not.”
Dead writer most likely to have blogged:
Others have suggested Karl Kraus and Jack Kerouac. “I would go with Plato.”
Blogs she still checks very frequently:
The Times blogs, because “I’m just fascinated by the ways in which newspapers are trying to get bloggy. Journalists don’t make the best bloggers, and bloggers don’t make the best journalists.”
The review of Ultimate Blogs can be found here.
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