A Book of Blogs?

This occurs frequently throughout. Boxer includes Get Your War On-which, let's be honest, is a comic strip, not a blog. The content is laugh-out-loud funny. But the jokes included here begin with the American invasion of Afghanistan and don't get much fresher. If you want current GYWO humor, you'd be better served by simply bookmarking the site on your computer at work. Then there's the Smoking Gun. It's a compendium of damning investigative journalism, dirt unearthed by a former Village Voice reporter with the aid of the Freedom of Information Act. The writing is witty and breezy, yes, but does printing celebrity mug shots and State Department lists of gifts to federal employees by "foreign government sources" constitute a blog? Or is it an online news source with a tabloid bent, à la Drudge Report or TMZ? Hard to know.

Boxer has gone out of her way to seek out content that can make the leap from one medium to another. But the question remains, is it a leap forward, backward or sideways? Sure, she has succeeded in reducing the boiling cauldron of the blogosphere to 27 worthwhile reads. Imagine how much garbage she must have sifted through to find these gems. Imagine the gems she was forced to leave out. In the end, the beauty of the book is that if you discover any bloggers that absolutely thrill you, chances are they're still online doing their thing. Which is exactly where they belong.

© 2008