Marilag Angway
Senior Reviewer
Blogs, blogs, blogs. What is so special about them? Better yet, why write a book about them? In the attempt to answer these questions, I perused through the book Sarah Boxer has edited and worked on: Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web.
The compilation of blogs—because that is what I find this to be more so than a book—is definitely not a comprehensive list. There are millions more that can be found on the Web, but the ones found in Ultimate Blogs share literary merit (or at least, we are told they do).
From most of the excerpts in the compilation, I would say blogs are typically diary-styled entries, while some can even go as far as essay-type submissions. They encompass a wide variety of topics including political views, historical renditions, reviews, pictures, rants, and random musings.
What I find admirable about Boxer’s work on this book is that she took the time to browse through thousands—I hardly believe she would go through millions—of outrageous material online just to put certain blogs together in her book. I only wish, however, that her choices of blogs spanned out to other genres such as science and fashion.
Most of what I read focused largely on politics and war. Now, politics isn’t exactly a horrible thing to talk about, but I felt the space in the book could have been better used had it equally covered the topics previously mentioned. There must have been at least one blog about music, and one blog about science in Ultimate Blogs. The only other abundantly present topics were reviews and random musings. It’s a bit disappointing, considering the vast number of well-written blogs out there that encompass music and science (among other things).
Boxer includes notes about each writer with the blog excerpts, many of which are more interesting than the writer’s blog itself. I did not care about the writing of Samuel Pepys; I was more intrigued by the fact that Pepys is known to be the oldest “blogger”—dating back to the 1660s. Pepys’ chronicles have been uploaded online for readers. I certainly didn’t find the pictures of rats rolling around a ball of fecal matter to be entertaining, but I was quite amused at how the artist came about with the idea for the photo-blog.
There were noteworthy blogs that held their own and needed no supplemental material. Under Odysseus was the historical retelling of a soldier serving under Odysseus, mythological mastermind behind the Trojan horse. Cosmic Variance—the lone science blog—follows a physicist in his musings about dark matter, planetary definitions, and other scientific topics. How to Learn Swedish in 1,000 Difficult Lessons contains interesting Swedish words or phrases translated into English at the end (or beginning) of the writer’s short and concise pieces. Furthermore, the fashion reviews of the blog Go Fug Yourself bring humor and entertainment to those interested in reading about the “fashion don’ts” of celebrities.
Other blogs don’t quite reach the “ultimate” factor that the book claims. It’s Raining Noodles reads like a teenager still trying to refine her writing abilities, which completely contrasts with the other works in Ultimate Blogs. By the time I reached Rootless Cosmopolitan, I had already had my fill of politically-inclined blogs, and was no longer interested.
In short, though a somewhat entertaining compilation to gloss over, Ultimate Blogs is nothing more than Boxer’s list of favorites—in which case, she could have just posted the links to her own online profile.
