I think… skip the bio if your life is entirely boring and devoid of events, but add it otherwise. And preferably add it with more details than the “John doe is a farmer from wherever who lives with her husband and five cats in a two-story house, and likes to write fiction in her spare time.” which is usually added on the last page of some books.

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Q: How much time, if any, do you spend on the web? Is it a distraction or a blessing?

Jenny Diski: Acres of time, wasted, wasted. I play poker (and lose), I play ludo and mah jong. I check out MetaFilter. I buy frocks. Anything. It’s a kind of hell. I sometimes think I might go back to typewriting. But you can’t get the ribbons.

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I don’t get language. I know a lot of words though I’m always a little wary of dropping most of the big ones into conversation not out of any lack of confidence but because they don’t belong in conversational English. Take a word like borborygmia for example (the sound of wind moving through your digestive tract), it’s a lovely word but what’s the point in using it if you have to explain it?

from Jim Murdoch’s archive

Self-validation seems to be an increasingly necessary act as we move further into the 21st century. We’ve known for some time that the consumer society is strong on promises but not so hot on satisfaction. No good going for a new dishwasher or having your hair re-styled. You’ll still have the same doubts cropping up. Seems like shopping doesn’t quite cut the mustard.

Maybe you can find yourself in nature, in art, or religion? You must be there somewhere. Our ancestors didn’t generally have this problem. But then again, they didn’t have search engines either.

You want validating? It’s easy. Go Google yourself.

“When you think about the history of education, going back to Socrates, it’s all been about asking questions, arguing over ideas, raising objections and then coming to some kind of resolution. That takes time, effort and hard work. It’s much easier to say ‘I don’t like this book.’”

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Bowen T Hunter over at Bookarazzi is worried that reading is becoming a dying art; describing an illiterate child, he says:

The school she was at was very poor. She is 11, and knows only her 2 and 5 times multiplication tables. The new school expects rather more, and so I have been badgered into trying to raise her educational level. Where to start? Oh my. She cannot add or subtract single digits without using her fingers. If I ask her “What is twenty minus one?” she has to sit and think, then out come the hands…”Twenty…um…….EIGHTEEN!” It is scary to think that in her old school she was one of the brighter pupils!

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Confessions of a Psychotherapist:
Ms Melancholy’s was the funniest post I read this week:

So….

I take a teeny weeny blogging break during which I explore my long-standing confusion about my sexuality, decide to split from my husband, take a lesbian lover, tell my adolescent son that his mother is gay and move house. And what happens? I watch my technorati rating plummet to barrel scraping levels.

You really are a fickle lot

If you click on your chosen category in the sidebar, say, art, for example, you will immediately be whisked off to the latest posts from A Welsh View (Egg City – An amazing piece of artwork created entirely from stacked eggs); or from The Daily (Maybe) (Louise Whittle’s excellent guest post on the place of women in the art world. There are currently thirty-six entries from a wide variety of blogs under the art category.

If art isn’t your scene, try books instead. Here you’ll currently find pieces from Harry’s Place on the life and death of Norman Mailer; from The ThunderDragon on Harry Potter’s politics – Is he really a Left-Winger? Or Baggage Reclaim’s cogitations on a Doris Lessing interview.

You may, of course, prefer to wander through the categories on current affairs, Wales, Scotland, Lib Dems, the environment, software, television or public relations.

You can spend a lot of time British Blogs.

There is a fully functioning search facility together with a constantly updated list of the most popular searches. And the site also lists top posts and the most popular links.

I don’t know how many sites British Blogs are currently aggregating, but the categories covered are numerous and at busy times of the day the site is updated every couple of minutes.

But go visit yourself, I’ll be very surprised if you don’t find something to capture your attention and imagination.

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Some authors are paying to have their books mentioned in your blog’s comment section. Dear Author has been investigating:

What I think is particularly pernicious about this is that we readers really rely on other readers to give recommendations that are free from financial interest. When a reader gives a recommendation, we presume that it is from their heart and not from their pocketbook. The idea that there are readers out there who are essentially paid commenters really disturbs me.

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Tickets for the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of King Lear, with Ian McKellan in the lead role, were selling for up to $1700 in Los Angeles. I think we paid £20.00 for seats in the dress circle for the same production in Newcastle.

A weekend ago, however, I decided to check that it was still there, to make certain I hadn’t dreamt the abomination. So I switched it on. A speccy child was talking about the year or so he had spent teaching English to Kurds. He mumbled some banalities and then started to read from the thrilling volume his experiences had led him to write. He was nervous and sniffed a lot, and stumbled over his words. He didn’t have anything to say I hadn’t guessed already. And then I started to experience a strange itch, a dark atavistic impulse. It took a while, but finally I recognised it: I wanted to steal his crisps. And throw his specs on the floor. But I couldn’t, because he was several thousand miles away in Massachusetts.

Art isn’t about promoting social cohesion, or cementing community relations. It’s about telling the truth as you see it, even if it annoys or offends some people. That’s called freedom of expression, and last time I checked we all thought it was quite a good idea.

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Right now my hole punch is propping the window open. I have a little paper cutout of a boy wearing a school uniform and holding a ladybug the size of a rabbit hanging from the lock on my window. I bought him in Berlin this summer. Depending on whether the window is open or closed, he has his toes in the treetops, he floats inside someone else’s window or he flutters against the sky as the clouds move past him. Behind him I can also see the corner of our pink fire escape and the curve of the building next to ours (we live on a circle, though it is officially called a square).

An Interview with Matthea Harvey at Bookslut

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The Bookaholics’ Guide to Book Blogs is reviewed over at Girl Friday.

Meet and Greet, Self Documenting, Self Promotion, Mentoring, Education and Giving Back. These are all briefly elaborated and worth a few minutes of your time.

Like most folks I have an exaggerated sense of self importance. Blogging just reinforces my narcissistic streak and inflates my ego even further. Seriously, if you have an interest in writing, speaking, etc., a blog serves as an important tool in promoting your skills and desires to others.