As mainstream as many thinkers would like to say the Internet has become — and it has, to a large measure — it still originally the province of guys who talk about horizontal HTPC enclosures. Here's another way to put it: we found, after perusing The Guardian's list of the top 20 English-language geek novels that is today'd top link, that whereas we had read a full 45 percent of them, we had no idea what a horizontal HTPC enclosure was. Only those who do, and who've read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, are the true masters of the Internet. The rest of us are just sort of trespassing. You can see rumblings of it in various blogs, as posters gloat about how many of the books they've read, or criticize the Guardian's list for being too mainstream: "From the books that I know on the list, apparently, “geek” only means scifi, which rules out a ton of books that would have displaced others here on the list. American Gods is a vastly inferior novel to Gaiman’s own Neverwhere." Ha ha! Of course it is, sir, of course it is. Less quibbling and more discussion of the existing list is available here, but this blog is home to a rather elitist dismissal: "It's not so much what's on the list as what's missing. The books are a snapshot of mid to late 20th century sci-fi, as if the readers were ignorant of anything that predated the Great War. Where are the books that started the genre, like The Time Machine, Gulliver's Travels, and Frankenstein? Yes, where indeed? Where indeed.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:11 AM

It saddens us to bring you this story from today's top links, but we would be remiss if we did not: For newspapers, 2005 will be the worst year ever, like we say here on the web, as their advertising dollars and circulation dwindle. Fewer and fewer people are in the habit of reading physical newspapers these days, and more and more are in the habit of looking at their online versions or just gleaning news from a broad range of sites across the web. (Most intelligent readers, for example, now make daily visits to BlogPulse.) It's too soon to say what effects the slow death of newspapers is having on our democracy, but it's not too soon for bloggers to issue their reactions. "Who can be surprised? It will be just that much harder for the media to control what the population thinks," writes AffectingMyLife. Some are slightly more charitable: "But newspapers and online media should not be seen as competitors–they should be looked at in a sybiotic relationship. Bloggers need newspapers (because they get access and have the time to gather “facts”) and newspapers can benefit from bloggers–for story ideas, to keep them honest, and to know what smart people in their communities are thinking about," submits the Boi from Troy. Fair enough.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:40 AM

BlogPulse's no. 14 news story today will produce strong reactions across the board, so let's just get right to the heart of this thing: A lot of conservatives, including the indicited former vice presidential chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, write trashy, trashy sex books. In this piece from The New Yorker, reporter Lauren Collins takes us through copulative encounters as penned by Safire, Buckley, Erlichman and O'Reilly, all of which seem pretty tame compared to Libby, whose 1996 book "The Apprentice" involves deer, bears, and Japanese people. Collins calls these books by conservative operatives "an outlet for ideas that might not fly at, say, the National Prayer Breakfast." Uh, yeah. And if you thought these might stay isolated from politics, our response is ha ha, because you're in the blogosphere, Jack: at least one poster asks, "Can you say hypocrisy?" and writes: "Lucky this administration isn't getting indicted for sex. Only the Dems can be castigated for their sexual deviance. But the GOP is much better at it." Quite. Here's a different take, asked straightforwardly: "Does anyone else get the idea that perhaps the hyper-moralizing anti-sex positions of the Republicans might stem less from moral conviction than from a paralyzing fear of people realizing that they have no idea how it's supposed to work?" An interesting theory, but how might Newt Gingrich respond?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:08 AM

Our no. 26 link today continues a welcome new tradition of books-related posts about things other than That One Fictional Wizard, and indicates there is a vibrant, robust community of opinionated readers out there. It's a Lone Star Statement blog post with snippets of actual reviews of Time's 100 Best Novels culled from Amazon.com, and includes nuggets like this one, about William Golding's classic "The Lord of the Flies:" "I am obsessed with Survivor, so I thought it would be fun. WRONG!!! It is incredibly boring and disgusting. I was very much disturbed when I found young children killing each other. I think that anyone with a conscience would agree with me.” Hard-hitting. This blogger thinks the reviews are funny. This one is just mad. Hey — we're just glad people are reading.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:38 AM

Goth writer Anne Rice used to pen the type of books you'd buy in an airport when you wanted just a little dose of titillation on your flight — you know what we mean; i.e. not a book you'd buy for this reason (today's no. 38 top link) — but as Newsweek reports in our top link, the people who'll be most titillated by her newest book aren't her old fans, America's vampire community. Rather, it'll be America's Jesus-related community. Rice has gone through a rough couple of years since her last book, 2003's "Blood Chronicle:" her husband died, she was gravely sick, and she moved away from her longtime home in New Orleans, but had friends and property there damaged by Hurricane Katrina. During that time she has rediscovered a religious faith she abandoned at age 18, reflected in her new book " Out of Egypt," about a 7 year-old Jesus Christ who only "intermittently" realizes he's the, ah, y'know, Messiah. As reflected by the story's prominence in BlogPulse today, many bloggers can't believe what they're reading. (These are the people who made Harry Potter our perpetually most-talked-about dude.) ParisRoses is matter-of-fact about it: "The world is officially coming to an end." A Metafilter wag is in the running for quip-of-the-week: "Anne Rice has gone from writing about the undead to writing about the undead." The Catholic Ragemonkey, meanwhile, says it's glad to have Rice back among the believers. Truly an unexpected development, and perhaps even moreso that this Jesus book is just the first in a three-part series. (Maybe in the next one, he turns out to be a vampire).

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:09 AM

As the magazine America trusts to report on tips for longer life! when there's no actual news to put on its cover, Time has a unique station enabling it to bring culture and thought into the waiting rooms of America's dentist offices. So it has attempted to do with the story in BlogPulse's no. 15 link today, a list of the top 100 "all time" novels in English published since the magazine's first issue appeared in 1923. (Ulysses, James Joyce's modernist epic and the greatest 20th century novel, was published the year before, and is not included on the list. If Time had not included this proviso on what books they cited and which books they excluded, we woulda been layin' the smack down up in this humpy bumpy.) But the magazine's editors have made some puzzling choices on including some famous authors' books, but not others, and not ranking them, per se, but rather listing them all in alphabetical order. Regular BlogPulse readers — and thanks to our new partnership with AOL there are millions more of you out there now — know that we have little patience with annotated lists. But it's almost not even worth getting mad about an unranked annotated list. What's the point of doing them? The Elegant Variation at least describes it as serving a basic purpose: "There's plenty to talk about in the list, and a nice added feature - some of the books feature links to the original reviews." Just another way that Time is proud to improve our national character.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:03 AM

Right off the bat, you can see what challenges await bloggers who're considering taking part in National Novel Writing Month: They (and its organizers) are calling it NaNoWriMo. (It's our no. 8 top link today.) Now, when you're turning out highly perishable, hyperlink-flecked paragraphs several times a day, as is the case for the 16.8 million bloggers we monitor, coming up with a shorter name for the November writing event may seem natural, but it's the wrong way to think when you have to produce 50,000 words in 30 days. In the site FAQs, though, the organizers concede they ain't lookin' for The Sound and the Fury, and returning writers have been mentioning that a lot of what they turn out is pretty much claptrap. (Bloggers turning out claptrap? Heavens!) (Speaking of which, read this post.) Don't believe us? This Metachat poster says the contest draws out some "supremely bad writing." Still, some people are looking forward to the experience, like this blogger, who's nonetheless concerned about " trailing off into blathering." Bloggers and blather? Heavens!

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:23 AM

Before writers had to come up with controversies all day, every day, there were writers who did it only every couple of years, but boy, they dreamed up some doozies! They were called "authors" and they made paper-and-glue things called "books," which are longer than a paragraph and, unfortunately, don't have any hyperlinks. Nonetheless, we strongly encourage picking one up as often as you can escape from the blogosphere, and if you're lucky, you can read one that an ignorant, small-minded, fearful bureaucrat has decided will give you unacceptable ideas. This week is Banned Books Week, as denoted by our no. 5 top link, and if there's one thing bloggers can't stand — your humble correspondent included — it's pointlessly restricted expression and information, be it governmental or artistic. Some sarcasm from this blogger makes the point: "Don't skip the hardcore pornography, either. I would think that it's in 302, "Social interaction," or in the 700s, the art section." Elise at After School Snack has her recommendation for which banned book to pick up first, while this one soberly implores: "Don't let the narrow-minded, of whatever stripe, determine what we can and cannot think about, and read." We couldn't have said it better ourself.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:18 AM

Much as Frito-Lay executives probably smiled nervously when they read that Saddam Hussein loves Chee-tos, so too must British mega-author J.K. Rowling be awkwardly gulping her tea after seeing today's no. 19 BlogPulse link -- seems terrorists can't get enough Harry Potter. The Washington Times reports that, after the Koran, the most-requested books at America's Guantanamo Bay prison star the ubiquitous lightning-headed wizard. Naturally the Pottersphere has plenty of things to say about this: "Next thing you know those jack-booted torturers will be forcing the detainees to play Quidditch," writes Villainous Company; a poster on this blog guesses what the detainees like about the books: "I bet they are cheering for Lord Voldemort..." Perhaps wisely, the Potter-Baroness is keeping quiet about this new set of readers -- maybe, with her billions, she can afford not to worry too much about those particular customers?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:50 AM

A curious thing has been happening in the Pottersphere since fantasy writer Terry Pratchett criticized J.K. Rowling for saying she "didn't realize" her Harry Potter books were fantasy: Bloggers have been agreeing with him. (It's today's top link.) "I have been finding Rowling's recent public pronouncements increasingly batty and to my ears the stuff about trying to 'subvert' the genre is yet another rather embarrassing example," writes astrofiammante. What goes on here? The last time somebody on the web critized Harry, the response was cold and vicious. But here they are, saying such things as "It seems he [Pratchett] has it right -- Rowling doesn't know fantasy when she sees it, or even when she writes it." Maybe the difference is that people love Harry, the bespectacled imp every girl wants and every boy wants to be, but they're pretty mild about the woman who created him.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:07 AM

Much to the chagrin of Sony, Apple, Microsoft and others, America's kids seem to have rediscovered the original portable data assistant -- books -- with the recent release of Potter VI and movie adaptations of other novels. But just because they're using a low-tech information delivery system doesn't mean they escape our insatiable thirst for metrics profiling and buzz calculation here at BlogPulse. No, we wondered who of the recently prominent old scribblers was enjoying the most chatter in the vast electric lunchroom out there, and ran the numbers for Potter potentate JK Rowling, Willy Wonka creator Roald Dahl, Narnia chronicler C.S. Lewis and War of the Worlds author H.G. Wells. As this graph demonstrates, one author has risen above the others to command most of the blogosphere's buzz.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:44 AM

We wondered Friday which beloved children's icon would emerge most successfully from the weekend and now we know: wizard Mr. H. Potter, Esq. has handily bested candyman Mr. W. Wonka, J.D. A deconstruction and analysis of Potter's exploits is BlogPulse's no. 1 link today (beware spoilers, as we say here on the web) and, bottom line, Potter just made so much money. (Wonka brought in about $55 million to Potter's $100 million.) Potter also dominated chatter on the information superhighway, as illustrated here:

Posted by Philip Ewing at 10:56 AM

The Pottersphere thought it had been slighted when the LA Times ran a column making fun of Harry's grown-up devotees, but that was before it passed around today's BlogPulse's no 2 link. It's a report that then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who now is the pontifex maximus, said in 2003 that he opposed Harry Potter. He sent a letter of encouragement to the author of a Catholic book that warned the Potter books "corrupt the hearts of the young, preventing them from developing a properly ordered sense of good and evil, thus harming their relationship with God..." Huh. What say the bloggers? Uzzman: "Interesting article, but come on...is there not something more insidious to worry about?" Andy: "... [I]f the downfall of the Catholic faith is going to be children's fantasy literature, that says more about the weakness of the church than about the overwhelming evil that is Harry Potter." And the Minister of Perfidy: "The Holy Father may not approve of the Harry Potter books. But I am eagerly awaiting the arrival by parcel post on Saturday of my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince." And look for it in bookstores July 16, folks!

Posted by Philip Ewing at 12:29 PM

Perhaps when Leonard Nimoy penned his book "I Am Not Spock," in which he distanced himself from Star Trek and ridiculed the show's legion of fans, he might've gotten a more intense geekoid backlash than Joel Stein, whose LA Times jeremiad this weekend took no prisoners in skewering devotees of BlogPulse's perennial top man, Harry Potter. (Then again, George Lucas has been known to provoke some pretty acrid, frothing reactions from the world's nerds.) Mostly Stein points out that whereas Harry's exploits might make fine bedtime material for children, he can't quite agree they're worth the praise and time adults seem to lavish on them. "I'm sure the Potter books are fun. I bet a night of Fun Dip, piñatas and Sit N Spin would be great too," he writes. Predictably, the Pottersphere (as the blogosphere sometimes ought to be known) has never been so insulted: "All of this, of course, just goes to show that Joel Stein doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. The Harry Potter books are, in the guise of children’s literature, serious examinations of character, morality, politics, and culture," writes Alex Knapp. Elise the Insane thinks it's unfair to single out the Potterheads for such scorn: "Is it rather stupid for a 32 year-old woman to be looking forward to sitting in line for six hours for a children's book? Maybe. That is one way of putting it; but that stupid tag can be applied to nearly every single pop culture event. NASCAR fans having massive orgasms while watching people make left turns all day - seems pretty stupid to me." What about children flying around on brooms playing a made-up game nobody understands?

Posted by Philip Ewing at 11:43 AM

Britons probably never thought they'd export anything more lucrative than tea or rock and roll music, but they also never counted on the bespectacled, lighting-emblazoned young wizard who has been BlogPulse's key person for days now. The days are ticking down, after all: soon children and adults across the United States will assemble at midnight in bookstores to scramble for their copies of Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, available July 16. Pottermeister J.K. Rowling has either been assigned a new editor or shown remarkable discipline with the new volume, which weighs in at 672 pages, some 198 fewer than its predecessor. No matter: The bloggers are restless -- "EEK!" writes Noihatu, who sums up their collective, building excitement over the new book and the movie version of The Goblet of Fire, due out in November. Have you read all the books and seen all the movies, and still need more of that sweet Potter? There's always plenty of fan fiction to tide you over.

Posted by Philip Ewing at 01:36 PM