Sunday, September 06, 2009

Symposium on Book Blogging

There's a very thought-provoking symposium under way on "The Function of Book Blogging at the Present Time," conceived and hosted by D.G. Myers of A Commonplace Blog and Patrick Kurp of Anecdotal Evidence. Myers & Kurp have put a series of questions designed to provoke reflection on "the past, present, and future of this youngest of literary genres" to a number of book bloggers. Six responses have now been posted, and I understand that there are more to come.

You can find Myers' introduction to the symposium here, and the first six responses from participating bloggers at the links below:

Miriam Burstein (The Little Professor);
Frank Wilson (Books, Inq.);
Benjamin Stein (Turmsegler);
Michael Gilleland (Laudator Temporis Acti);
Mark Athitakis (American Fiction Notes); and,
Walter Aske (Elberry’s Ghost).

The symposium has me mulling afresh over some of the big questions of book blogging and has also exposed me to some bloggers of whom I hadn't previously been aware and whose blogs I'm now keen to read. If you haven't already, I encourage you to stop by A Commonplace Blog and Anecdotal Evidence to read the contributions of the participants and to chime in with your own views in the comments sections.

3 comments:

rhapsodyinbooks said...

Wonderful questions posed. And very good blogs, about which I had not known. Thank you very much for all the good info in this post!

Liz said...

I love, love, love boog blogs. I get so many interesting suggestions there, plus I like it when people pose questions about favorites, book covers, plot tricks, whatever. I will have to go take a look at this discussion.

Trish said...

Very cool. I love the comparisons a few of the bloggers made between print and blog book reviews -- essentially they're the same, but you also get to write about whatever you want whenever you want on your blog. I like that! Thanks for the links.