Thursday, February 12, 2009

Blog love

btt button

Suggested by Barbara H. A comment on someone else’s BTT question this week inspired this question:

Do you read any author’s blogs? If so, are you looking for information on their next project? On the author personally? Something else?

Yes. I read Terry Teachout's blog About Last Night, he's the theatre critic for The Wall Street Journal, but has also written several books and an opera libretto. I read him and his two colleagues who share that space because they have intelligent things to say about what's going on in the theatre. I read the wonderful Alex Ross, author and music critic for The New Yorker at his blog The Rest is Noise because of the interesting performances that he attends around the world and the recordings he discovers, and because he is obsessed with the late, great Lorraine Hunt Lieberson too. I started reading blogs by reading two 1) Andrew Sullivan's, former editor of The New Republic and author of several books including Virtually Normal and Love Undetectable, for his provocative thinking about politics and society. I don't always agree with him but I am always interested to hear what he thinks and how he will argue for it. 2) My dear friend Sheila, who is a brilliant and funny writer and has had a story published, and her first book will be when someone gets smart enough to snap it up. I read The Frontal Cortex, Jonah Lehrer's neuroscience blog and his book Proust Was a Neuroscientist wasn't too bad either. Hopefully I will get to the new one soon. I read Neil Gaiman's Journal, not for any voyeuristic reason, just because it's a good read. He had a great post of the First Amendment, for instance. And I discovered it through Sarah Salway's blog, which I started reading because I am crazy about her book Tell Me Everything and learned on her blog that she is a creative process nut like I am, continually thinking about and practicing ways to ignite the spark and prime the pump.

I suppose, with all these authors, I am interested to know when they have written a new book,if it is books they write, but mostly if I read their blogs, it is because I enjoy what they write there.

9 comments:

Yvonne said...

You read some interesting blogs!

Happy Thursday!

jlshall said...

Andrew Sullivan's was probably the first blog I read, as well. I suspect he was an introduction to the blogging phenomenon for many of us.

SFP said...

I didn't even think about Sully when I claimed I read only one author's blog! He's a daily read for sure.

gautami tripathy said...

You got some great links here. Gonna check those out..


Authored, are we?!

SmilingSally said...

I just KNEW you'd say yes and have some links! Thanks for sharing. Happy Vintage Thingy Thursday!

SmilingSally said...

duh I meant Booking Through Thursday!

Anonymous said...

This week’s question unearths the truth that I do not have many favorite authors. Most of the authors whose works I continue to re-read and explore are dead. I have favorite books. The books have to speak for themselves.

Oh...mind me, I forgot Andrew Sullivan probably because he doesn't write fiction. But I have enjoyed reading his blog and his books.

I read Alex Ross's reviews on the papers but not his blog.

Beth F said...

I'm beginning to think I'm missing out on something by not reading authors' blogs. Maybe on weekends?

Robin M said...

Wow, what interesting blogs. Thanks.