Blog Log: Books
A window into the wonderful but overwhelming world of the blogosphere. This time around: books and blogs get along
BY Ron Nurwisah
The literary world and the internet shouldn’t get along. After all, the internet has led to advances like online retailers, teased us with the idea of print-on-demand and unleashed the forces of Google—whose plans to digitize the contents of whole libraries threaten to make traditional book-selling and literary culture obsolete.
Or will the internet save literary culture? Online discussion groups and blogs actually help Canada’s seemingly shrinking population of writers and readers get to know one another. A site like Bookninja, started by poet George Murray but now run by a small group of contributors, scours book news from mainstream media sources in Canada and beyond to give us an opinionated look at Canada’s active literary scene. Murray and the Bookninja crew owe a lot to Jessa Crispin’s blog, Book Slut, which was one of the first book blogs and has become a must-read for those wanting to keep up with the literati.
We’d also be remiss if we didn’t mention the blog from book-industry publication Quill and Quire. The print version of the magazine gets into the nitty gritty of the book trade, with stories on agents and distribution, but their blog is more playful than that, trading in the whispered gossip and heated discussion that fuels much of the blogosphere.
