I'm so glad I've got thick skin, 'cos here's yet another drubbing to add to the list!
Remember the shitstorm that ensued after I pissed off most of the "elite" litbloggers about my post on the pitfalls of receiving free books? Now it looks like the mainstream media ain't too happy with me either -- at least one mainstream journalist from the national press thinks my blog is a little on the dull side.
You see I came in for a bit of a drubbing in today's Observer, as did Grumpy Old Bookman and Dovegreyreader scribbles, two sites I respect and visit on a daily basis.
Here's what Rachel Cooke said about us:
...I went to a site all bloggers recommend, Dove Grey Reader, which is written by a 'sock-knitting quilter' from Devon. I was pleased that she was 'truly hooked from the first line onwards' by Arnaldur Indridason's thriller Silence of the Grave, and it does sound good - but I have friends to recommend thrillers to me. Grumpy Old Book Man is, according to the Guardian, one of the top 10 book blogs. Eh? Even its author admits it's an 'acquired taste' (here he is on Jeffrey Archer: 'Good old Jeffrey. He's always good for a laugh, isn't he?') Finally, to Reading Matters by 'kimbofo', an Australian in London. Do we really need to know that Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go has been on her TBR (To Be Read) pile for a year, or that she bought it as part of a discounted set of Booker novels? Pooter lives!
The thing is, I don't entirely disagree with Cooke, because I do think there's an awful lot of "populist warblings" which clutter up the blogosphere. And, as I eluded to in my "pitfalls of free books" rant, I agree with her statement that "so much of the stuff you read in the so-called blogosphere is so awful: untrustworthy, banal and, worst of all, badly written".
But, by the same token, there's a lot of truly wonderful, thought-provoking, insightful stuff being written and discussed by book bloggers -- it's just a pity Cooke didn't find any examples, but then she's probably never even heard of Metaxucafe.
Book blogs also offer a sense of community that the mainstream press really can't offer. Visiting certain blogs is a bit like sitting in a friend's living room, perhaps curled up by the fire with a warming beverage at hand, where you get to discuss books and other bookish-things in an open and receptive environment -- you don't have to be an academic or a literary scholar or a professional critic, you just need to love books.
I've been reading book blogs for a couple of years now, and there are certain bloggers I trust. I take note of what they're reading and what they think of certain novels and certain authors and often I go out and buy books based on their opinions. I much enjoy the fact that book blogs allow me to gain recommendations from across the globe. When was the last time the Observer reviewed a book by an unknown Australian author or someone from Latin America, for instance?
I think Cooke is very fortunate to have friends who "recommend thrillers to me". Some of us are not that lucky. None of my immediate friends or colleagues are fiction readers. I cannot recall the last time someone I know in the "real" world thrust a book in my hand and said "you must read this". I gain most of my recommendations from book blogs, because I find newspapers review the same small circle of books, very few of which are fiction titles, and I like to discover the "secret" stuff that's slipped under the radar and hasn't got a costly marketing push behind it.
Finally, Cooke said that she "devoted an entire day to book blogs, trying to give them a fair chance" and that she found the experience not particularly edifying or interesting. Funny that -- because I could say exactly the same about reading the Observer's review section, which I might add, I stopped reading at least a year ago. And guess what, I don't miss it.
<Thanks to Crimeficreader for alerting me to this article, I would have missed it otherwise.>
