Currently Reading 2

Here’s the second chunk of blogs I’m reading these days. I should point out that this won’t be all of them (I follow 170 feeds at the moment) and they’re chosen on a quite unscientific basis, so if yours isn’t here please don’t take offense. One criteria I might be using occasionally is that they’re of interest to a wider audience, unearthing unknown-to-most gems if you like. Another criteria might be “here’s when I rip off links from” though not so much with this list. And there will be many other criteria, some of which I won’t be aware of myself. What I’m trying to avoid is that social-circle-bonding-incestuous thing and I’m far to old in the blogging tooth to get all “I link to you so you must love me”. Whatever, click and enjoy.

Crawfish, the blog of Craig Smith, poet, musician, film maker and O’Reilly trade representative for the London region, which is how I met him. He was selling me a book on blogging, I told him I had a blog, the next time he came in he asked how my birthday went. And then he went and got his own. Also looks after Simon Armitage‘s site, which is cool.

Waffle is a group blog run and dominated by Reinder Dijkhuis, a Dutch cartoonist who has a comic on Modern Tales which I have to say I don’t read. I dig his blog though.

Nugatory is the blog of Steve Miller, someone I met through UK comics fandom though he’s probably more interesting to me (god that sounds self-important) for his music interests. He also blogs about music for Donewaiting as their British correspondent and should be podcasting soon.

Unified Review Theory by the brothers Cameron has slowed down of late but if you’ve not checked it out go dig through the archives. They review everything and were, to the best of my knowledge, the first people to do so.

Groc’s Bloggette by Groc, another cartoonist, though perplexingly you wouldn’t know it from the blog. Be sure and check out his photos too.

Gremlins Online, a relative newcomer to my faves, Marv is an archivist in the old-school style, cataloging old letters and diaries. When she moans about work it’s fascinating.

Gareth’s Journal. I can’t for the life of me remember how I came across Gareth, but he’s a bookseller (ex?) so that might be it, but also a comics readers, so maybe it was that. Doesn’t matter. Tends to highlight interesting new books and links to articles and reviews about books. (This is not the Gareth who often comments on this blog, should you think otherwise.)

Wherever You Are, one of the old-school blogs from the 2000 club, Vaughan has a tendency to moan but in a highly entertaining manner. Currently he’s doing some strange countdown thing which I haven’t quite gotten my head around yet.

Finally for today, the Russell Davies empire of A Good Place For A Cup Of Tea And A Think and EggBaconChipsAndBeans, blogs which celebrate great cafes and make me wish I lived in London again, not because there aren’t any decent cafes in Brum but Russells staked out all the London ones. To top it all this lovely man works in advertising! What were the odds!

I think I’m about half way now. More tomorrow.