Too busy to blog

Picks of the Week

Adam Thirlwell: Politics: A Novel (P.S.)
One would think this book is about sex, And while it is, since the characters have so much about it, some of it is kinky, and threesomes play a big role in the narrative. mostly POLITICS is about everything else: the mechanics, the logistics, the emotional minefields, the awkward questions, the moral dilemmas, and, well, the politics of what it is to be with someone you love or someone you don't, and how an act that should be simple is anything but. Thirlwell was disgustingly young when he wrote this but he absolutely understands that to make this book work, there must be an underlying sweetness and sincerity to the entire story. Now I want to see what he's up to more recently. Amazon | Indiebound | B & N | Borders | Powell’s
Jennifer Mascia: Never Tell Our Business to Strangers: A Memoir
Years ago I was blown away by Mascia's Modern Love piece describing her parents' secret past: her father was a mobbed-up convicted murderer, and her mother not only knew all about it, but aided and abetted her husband when life required being a fugitive, selling drugs, and living at great highs and crushing lows. Mascia's book tells a more whole story about her peripatetic life, and even with every new shocking revelation what remained consistent was how much she loved her parents, no matter how deep those lows went, and how much she misses them now that they are gone. Unconditional love never goes away, no matter if those who receive it deserve it. Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | B & N | Powell’s
Juli Zeh: In Free Fall
Give me a novel of ideas and if the story is good and the characters are believable and entertain me, I am there. Give me a crime novel of ideas, where two physics professors, friends and rivals, opposites but startlingly similar, do emotional battle on an intellectual canvas, raise the stakes through betrayal, the possible kidnapping of a child, and embroil a romantic-leaning police detective in the complicated machinations of quantum theory, and holy hell, I think I have myself one of my favorite books of the year. Powell’s | Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | B & N
Simon Lelic: A Thousand Cuts
It appears to be a crime with an easy solution: a disgruntled schoolteacher shoots up his place of employment and kills several students in the process. But really, Lelic's novel is about the catastrophic consequences of bullying, and how this act is hardly limited to kids turning on other kids, but burrows deeply into adult relationships as well. He evokes empathy for the killer and sympathy for Lucia, the investigating officer who has to fight for every scrap of dignity as she pieces together the far more complex truth of what really happened at the school. Powell’s | Amazon | Borders | Indiebound | B & N
William Lindsay Gresham: Nightmare Alley
I cannot stop raving about this book to people. The circular narrative structure, the demented feel of a traveling carny troupe, and the extraordinary rise and precipitous fall of Stan Carlisle give off the persistent, raging feeling that hell is always with us, and success is basically a sucker's game. No matter what the biographical evidence on Gresham's state of mind leading up to and after the book's bestseller (and movie basis) status in 1946, I don't think we can really know what demons plagued him to produce this marvelous noir gem. B & N | Indiebound | Amazon | Borders | Powell’s

April 12, 2005

Maud links to this story in the SF Chronicle where Alan Greenblatt wonders why bloggers always put excuse notes on their sites -- does anyone really care?

In all the blogs I read regularly, there are frequent dog-ate-my-homework postings in which the writer sheepishly announces that he or she has something better to do today and simply can't come out and create.

He is busy writing something for print publication (Alex Ross, "The Rest Is Noise"), is sick or traveling (Terry Teachout, "About Last Night"), or hung up by jury duty (James Wolcott, in the eponymous jameswolcott.com). "Distracted by all sorts of busy-bother," Wolcott informed the world the other day. "More later."

Who cares?

I'm sympathetic to the idea that bloggers might have something else to do with their lives. After all, I've had live human beings tell me over lunch that the demands of daily blogging put a real crimp in their ability to perform more lucrative or at least more hopeful work such as drafting book proposals.

Greenblatt does go on to offer an explanation, but he misses the main point of these apologies -- which is that readers refresh expecting daily (or at least, regular) content, and when it's not there, they are free to leave and try someone else. Or get antsy waiting for something new to arrive.

If blogging is a conversation, as some have surmised, then when one party drops out due to an unexplained absence, the conversation is at least temporarily aborted, and if it's possible, it's a courtesy to explain why.

Posted at 09:30 AM in Metablogging | Permalink

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Comments

Exactly. You leave the note so the readers know what to expect, if there's about to be a change in routine. One reason is so they don't get bored of waiting and forget to come back (after all, not everyone uses feeds...). Second reason: a few months ago, the author of one of my favourite blogs, who usually posted at least a couple of times a day and responded to comments regularly, suddenly went quiet for a few days. I think it turned out simply to be work overload, but in the meantime there were people leaving anxious comments saying, Where are you? Are you OK?

Posted by: sharon | April 12, 2005 at 10:14 AM

And there's always the ever-present horrors of the computer crashing and burning and not being able/allowed to blog at work... oh yeah, I still have the day job.

Great topic, Sarah.
Sorry I'm late with this but -- the computer crashed and burned again...

Posted by: Candace Wiggins | April 26, 2005 at 09:55 PM