The Bookaholics' Guide to Book Blogs: the new literary force (Paperback)

~ Catheryn Kilgarriff (Author), (Author), Meryl Zegarek (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

As more and more bloggers write about books and with some of their Web sites receiving thousands of hits a day, this is an easy-to-follow guide to the top, book-related blogs.

With the current craze for blogs, the phenomenon of book blogging is of interest from an objective standpoint as well as to those keen to read book reviews. How much influence do these bloggers have? Is there any kind of censorship or quality control? Are booksellers aware of them? Does Oprah Winfrey take note?

Many people develop a real fondness for book bloggers who write reviews for love and not money. Taking in small, quirky Web sites like Book Slut, dovegreyreader, Bluestalking Reader, and MoorishGirl as well as large, well-known sites like salon.com, this book will show readers how to investigate literature from distant lands, to find the sites of authors who are yet to be discovered by the mainstream, and to find the pages of book industry pundits who have opened their daily lives to a wider world. Welcome to the honest world of book blogs.

Catheryn Kilgarriff and Rebecca Gillieron are editors at Marion Boyars Publishers, and Meryl Zegarek is a book publicist of many years standing. All three have seen the book industry from the inside and are happy that blogs are now opening this world up to ordinary readers.

About the Author

Born in 1957 in Shrewsbury, England, Catheryn Kilgarriff studied English and philosophy at Bristol University, and then did a full time year long Diploma in Book Production at the London College of Printing.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd (September 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714531510
• ISBN-13: 978-0714531519
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #676,336 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A blog for every bookish taste, February 27, 2008

By	Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Gillieron and Kilgarriff present an array of book blogs for every taste from erudite to off-the-grid. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, at least in the bloggers' minds.

Despite an unconscionable number of typos (especially considering the authors are editor and publisher respectively at the British publishing house Marion Boyars), this is an entertaining and informative survey, steering readers to sites they may never have heard of, from the thoughtfully appealing Dovegreyreader to the in-your-face Social Disease.

The authors organize their chapters by type of blog, i.e., Author Blogs; Booksellers Blogs; Fan Blogs, Obsessives and the Extreme; The Literary Establishment and Its Blogs, and also by theme, i.e., Review Pages vs. the Internet; Alter Egos or Inflated Egos: Why Do People Blog?; The Internet and Its Uses: Dialogues about Freedom of Expression and Personal Interest.

They include background material on how and why the blogs got started and plenty of quotes, some of them extensive, to give readers an idea of style and substance. There are blogs that stick to what the blogger is reading and blogs that venture out to the latest literary parties and gossip; blogs that fulminate and blogs that promote; blogs that shock and blogs that inspire.

They discuss the role of genre blogs, the influence of the Internet on reader's choices and the future of print reviews. These discussions are thoughtful enough but the meat of the book is the helpful introduction to the vast seething sea of book blogs out there. You could spend all your time reading blogs and never get to a book or you could use this handy guide to steer you to those that appeal and avoid the rest.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars `Alter egos or inflated egos?', November 27, 2008

By	J. Cameron-Smith "Expect the Unexpected" (ACT, Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this book when I first picked it up:

Would it be a list of the author's favourite book blogging sites, a guide to the multitude of sites appearing all over the web?

Would it include any of the book blogging sites I am already familiar with?

Would it give me new sites to explore?

Would it give me food for thought about different ways of presenting opinions about books, and the role of the web in presenting these views?

The answer to each of these questions is yes. I don't always agree with the opinions expressed by the authors but I am grateful to them for taking the time to write and publish them. This is a book of suggestions and opinions, not a prescriptive guide to what might be considered `good' or `bad'. We each can make our own subjective assessment based on taste and coverage.

Perhaps the aspect I enjoyed most was the observation that each of us who occupy space in this virtual terrain has an alter ego, and some of us have inflated egos as well. We may choose our own alter ego but others will make a decision about whether they consider that ego to be inflated. A humbling thought, perhaps.

I'd recommend this book to those who are interested in a wider view of the world of book blogging and on-line reviewing that is larger than our own individual contributions.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a book that reads (almost) like a blog, October 15, 2008

By	I. Tysoe "Inna Tysoe" (Earth) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

OK, I admit it. I got this book because of its cover. It featured several of Adele Geras' books and since her Ithaka has been looking at me reproachfully from my "To be Read" pile, I had been hoping for a review of Geras' work. I didn't get it.

What I got instead was a wonderful tour through the literary blogosphere that really captures the issues of writing, publishing, selling books, and reviewing in the age of the blog on the one hand and huge corporations on the other. (And yes, amazon is discussed at length.)

In the process, I was introduced to blogs that help writers get published (e.g., Miss Snark, the Literary Agent), writers' blogs (e.g., Toby Litt and Jeanette Winterson), book sellers' blogs (The Bedside Crow had me with this post: "I put a customer's credit card into the PDQ machine He punches in his four digit number. There is a long pause while the machine thinks. We both wait and wonder; does the bank have any money?") and review blogs (e.g., bookninja). In the process, I learned about Virtual Book Tours and online book clubs. I also learned that small, independent publishers scout websites such as frontlist.com for talent but I hesitate to recommend frontlist in this review.

But most of all, I learned about where to go to at least begin to find quality book blogs. For, in the literary blogosphere, the problem (for me at least) has not been one of separating the good blogs from the bad but of finding the good to begin with. In this regard, Rebecca Gillieron's and Catheryn Kilgarriff's recommendations have been invaluable. I didn't always agree with them--but they were an excellent place to start and since most blogs have a blog roll that's all I needed, really.

The only reason this book gets four, rather than five stars is the ridiculous number of typos in it. Given that Gillieron and Kilgarriff represent a publishing house, they should have been able to catch the "aa" instead of "a" and the sentences missing verbs (or having two verbs where one was plenty). And since they didn't proofread their own book, I deducted a star.

Otherwise this is an excellent book. I recommend it.