Finding blogs

Hello everybody!

I must admit that the task for this week was not so easy for me.

The blogosphere is an infinite universe (55 millions of blogs) in which you really risk getting lost in the flow of words and notions.

This experience has been useful because I have learned that before venturing into a blog research, you must have a fair idea of what you are looking for.
If not, you are only wasting your time and energy.

In surfing the net I found 2 original blogs concerning my great passion: literature.

The first is 52 books:
http://52books.blogspot.com

The blogger is a woman (she doesn’t reveal her age), coming from Rejkjavik, who presents the reviews of 52 books written by “mystery authors” who are not very famous.
Before doing this she prepares a card for each of them containing:
Title of the book chosen
Type of mystery and investigator
Time and setting
Themes, etc
And gives a mark.

The construction of this blog is very simple: the clear layout helps the surfer in finding easily the reviews he is interested in, the language adopted is quite informal and the contents refers to the blogger’s impression rather than to the author’s strategies and characteristics.

The links are used in an accurate and methodical manner because they allow the readers to access to the blogger’s profile and to the other blogs she is looking after.
In addition, they permit to obtain further information about the topics she is dealing with and the places she is referring to.

I was also impressed by the sentence introducing the blog:
The new home of 52 words. Comments are moderated. Spam is not tolerated.
It is an immediate message which could not sound very friendly but rather sharp. I think that short sentences and plain language (not ambiguous) are parts of the blog universe.

The second one is 101 Words:
http://www.101words.org/about-101-words/

This blog is posted by Anathema, a group composed by 12 bloggers.
It struck my eye because it makes a list of various short stories which have one thing in common:
they are all made of exactly 101 words.

All the visitors who want their stories to be published on the web, can send them to this blog and then read the comments about. The only condition imposed is that they respect the number of words.

The language adopted is informal and creative, sometimes original but it depends on the writer.

The links are fewer and mainly inside connections because of the topic. In fact, the aim of the blog is to let people express their feelings and thoughts and, as a consequence, it is not important to refer to other blogs or sites.

To sum up, I believe that the styles used on the blogosphere are various and depend on the age of the bloggers and the topics presented.

I think also that the aim of a blog is important in choosing a particular style. If the blogger wants to communicate something to everybody the style must be plain and comprehensible. On the other hand, if he wants to address only to a small group of people who share his interests or knowledge, he will tend to use a technical and complicated language.

Francesca