Our Pals at Bookgasm Need Your Vote!

Rod Lott, the editor of Bookgasm, is one of the four other book bloggers who I recruited last year to help pick up the pace on this blog while I’m off being a professional blogger at GalleyCat. All the hard work he and his colleagues have put into writing about pop literature has paid off, as the site is one of twelve finalists for the literary category of this year’s Weblog Awards. But if the site’s going to win, it needs your vote. More than one, if you’re so inclined after you’ve had a look—you can go back to the ballot and vote again once a day from now until Thursday. It’s not going to be easy surpassing the McSweeney’s fan base, let alone Neal Gaiman’s throng, but let’s make a respectable showing!

4 November 2007 | uncategorized |

Stephen Fry Has a Blog Now

Yes, it’s true, British actor/author Stephen Fry is blogging, but, so far, not about literature or even acting. Instead, in his first entry, he’s talking about technology: “I have gorged myself on electronic gismos, computer accessories, toys, gadgets and what-have-yous of all descriptions,” he writes, “but most especially what are now known as SmartPhones. PDAs, Wireless PIMs, call them what you will.”

And damned if the guy doesn’t know his geek down cold.

This reminds me that I have been meaning for ages to say lovely things about Fry’s most recent book, The Ode Less Travelled, which came out in paperback earlier this summer, and I just never seemed to get around to it, which is pretty sucky of me. Because it really is quite a good book, and although I generally consider myself somewhat intellectually well off, I’m the first to admit that my poetic appreciation skills are underdeveloped, and Fry has actually given me a little more confidence that I have enough historical and technical context to better understand what the heck it is I’m reading.

(Thanks to Nat Torkington for clueing me in!)

20 September 2007 | uncategorized |