Last week on Brian's blog, I left a tongue-in-cheek comment suggesting that mano-a-mano writing combat would be a fun sport to watch. You know how sometimes once you clue into something, you start seeing it everywhere? I had no idea that after making the joke, I'd be paying attention to all of the recent literary-esque combat.
Tournament of Books
Like many folks, I have been following The Morning News' Tournament of Books, which pits title against title in March Madness-style brackets. My favorite round so far has been Colin Meloy's take on The Lay of the Land v. English, August. Channeling Mel Gibson from before we all found out he was a drunken, Jesus-loving, Jew-hating womanizer, the Thunderdome references made me laugh aloud. "Two books enter! One book leaves!" Killer.
Thinking Blogger Awards
Poor Maxine. She tried being nice by naming and complimenting a few of her favorite sites. Of course, someone always swoops in to ruin the fun. The bloggers awarding the "award" had good intentions. At the same time, John Baker surely had good intentions for exposing the nefarious "truth." If you perpetuate the meme, you are naive. If you scorn the meme, you are a killjoy. It's become a vicious circle.
Kid Lit Cliques
Chasing Ray has reported on a scuffle in the kid lit blogosphere over popularity and cliques. It didn't surprise me to find out that kid litbloggers also fight amongst themselves, since, well, they're bloggers. I was more amazed to see the Technorati authority groupings as defined by Kineda's popularity tracker widget. It establishes me as a B-List Blogger, which goes to show how meaningless popularity is since most of my inbound links are for the Gender Genie. The three of you reading this surely know that few care about what I have to say.
n+1 and the Litblogger Knee-Jerk Reflex
In response to my recent post about the dustup, n+1 has offered, based on my inability to find it in various sub-par bookstores, to send me a copy of the controversial issue. I'm looking forward to receiving it so I can draw my own conclusions, since I am not one to pass judgement based on hearsay.
Ed Champion, on the other hand, chose to leave a characteristically antagonistic comment. Sadly, he has no understanding of irony or author's intent and I have been forced to take him to school. Although the exchange boils down to a pair of litgeeks arguing over literary device [Snore!], it does make me feel kind of like Gulliver pitched in battle against a Lilliputian [Just so I don't confuse Ed more, this statement is laden with both irony and satire.]. I genuinely like Ed's blog, so I hope he learns some new things and becomes a better reader and writer from it all.
