"What are you working on?"
"An anthology of blogs."
"What?"
"An anthology of blogs."
"I didn't know you had a blog."
"I don't. It's an anthology of other people's blogs."
"How do you find good blogs?"
"I read. I surf. I look at blog contests. I follow links. I ask people I like about the blogs they like. I look at their favorites, and then at my favorites of their favorites."
"Is a good blog hard to find?"
"Yes. Very."

A Book of Blogs? WTF!!

Former New York Times reporter and critic Sarah Boxer travels through the blogosphere (roughly 71 million blogs) and finds some masterpieces along the way. Among the bloggers in the anthology are:

• an 18-year old woman in Singapore who likes pink, a lot
• an editor of American dictionaries who picks apart the freshest words of the day
• a Marine Corps lieutenant who was stationed in Fallujah in 2006
• an illustrator who draws a tiny saga of a rodent and a ball of crap

Revealing and deceptive, grand and niggling, worldly and parochial, these blogs comprise a snapshot of life on the wild, wild Web.

Boxer, who was the first web critic for The New York Times, travels through the blogosphere and finds some masterpieces along the way. Among the bloggers in this anthology: a Marine Corps lieutenant station in Fallujah in 2006, a 19-year-old student in Singapore pining for her ex, and a British pop singer living in Berlin. Revealing and deceptive, worldly and parochial, the blogs comprise a snapshot of life on the Web. B&w photos and illustrations from blogs are included. There is no subject index. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

“Here you'll find excerpts from 27 online journals-comprising punditry, poetry, ranting, raving and drawing of both pictures and conclusions. You'll also find some wonderful writing; you'll laugh, cry and scratch your head. . . .Boxer has gone out of her way to seek out content that can make the leap from one medium to another.”

Newsweek

“. . . the real utility of Ultimate Blogs might be as a relic of an odd, fleeting cultural moment when unfettered online self-expression was still new enough to seem worth documenting but was actually old enough to be decadent.”

New York Observer

“A provocative introduction to the art form.”

Baltimore Sun

“Boxer brings a generalist's curiosity to her task, finding engaging writing on classical music, miscarriage, Iraq and more. . .The common thread is the excellent (and personal and sometimes edgy) writing.”

Los Angeles Times

“Sarah Boxer, who has assembled a little print anthology of blog "writing." Which means that her task is two-fold, actually: explaining blogs to old people and justifying collecting them into a book to herself. How does she fare? Hilariously!”

Gawker

Former "New York Times" reporter and critic Boxer travels through the blogosphere and finds some masterpieces along the way. Revealing and deceptive, worldly and parochial, these blogs comprise a snapshot of life on the wild, wild Web.

“What are you working on?”

“An anthology of blogs.”

“I didn’t know you had a blog.”

“I don’t. It’s an anthology of other people’s blogs.”

“How do you find good blogs?”

“I read. I surf. I look at blog contests. I follow links. I ask people about the blogs they like.”

“Is a good blog hard to find?”

“Yes. Very.”

A Book of Blogs? WTF!!

Sarah Boxer, a former New York Times reporter and critic, travels through the blogosphere (more than 80 million blogs — and counting) and finds some masterpieces along the way. Among the bloggers in the anthology are:

two fashion critics mocking the inexplicable “fugliness” of celebrities

a Marine Corps lieutenant stationed in Fallujah in 2006

a 19-year old student in Singapore cheerfully pining for her ex

an illustrator’s tiny saga of a rodent and his ball of crap

Odysseus’s sidekick telling his side of the Iliad and Odyssey

Revealing and deceptive, grand and niggling, worldly and parochial, these blogs comprise a snapshot of life on the wild, wild Web.

Sarah Boxer, formerly a critic and reporter at The New York Times, is the author and illustrator of the cartoon novel In the Floyd Archives: A Psycho-Bestiary. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and son.

INTRODUCTION

AngryBlackBitch, Pamela Merritt

Becker-Posner Blog, Gary S. Becker and Richard Posner

Click Opera, Nick Currie

Cosmic Variance, Sean Carroll

El Guapo in DC, author known as El Guapo

Eurotrash, Delly Hayward

Get Your War On, David Rees

Go Fug Yourself, Jessica Morgan and Heather Cocks

How to Learn Swedish in 1000 Difficult Lessons, author known as Francis Strand

I Blame The Patriarchy, Jill Posey-Smith

In The Middle, Raed Jarrar

Ironic Sans, David Friedman

Its raining noodles!, Angelique Chan

Johnny i hardly knew you, Jennie Portnof

Julia {Here Be Hippogriffs}, Julia Litton

Language Log, Benjamin Zimmer

Matthew Yglesias, Matthew Yglesias

Micrographica, Renée French

Midnight in Iraq, Jeffrey Barnett

Nina Paley.com, Nina Paley

Old Hag, Lizzie Skurnick

Radio.Uruguay, Dmitri Goutnik

Rootless Cosmopolitan, Tony Karon

The Rest Is Noise, Alex Ross

The Smoking Gun, William Bastone

Under Odysseus, Mark Katakowski

HOW TO FIND BLOGS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS