Friday, March 31, 2006

The Mason-Dixon Line

...Which separated the southern slave-owning states of America from the northern industrial "free" states.
...Which burnt its fiery shade upon the hearts and minds of millions of Americans during the Civil War.
...Which became a symbol of the imaginary boundary between oppression and emancipation.


A lot of my blog-consumers have been complaining, and rightly so, that I have stopped penning down my thoughts concerning each book that I have read. Quite a few of the newer ones do not realize, not having explored the cavernous reaches of my archived posts, that there was a day, not so long ago, when I used to engage myself in writing book reviews.

So why did I stop? The answer is simple, my friends.
Book reviews are boring. Their appeal is limited to a very rare kind of blog-reader, one whose leitmotif of existence is simply to garner knowledge and opine about the world around himself (herself). To such a reader, it is imperative that the reviews be idiosyncratic enough to appeal to the former's tastes of eccentricity and trivia. However, this readership forms a very small core of the overall blog-reading population.
Book reviews on my site were deemed unnecessary and boring by quite a few persons whose opinions I value. Which is why I stopped writing them.

So why am I starting again? Again, it does not take Einstein to figure out that a budding "person who has something to say to the world" (I'm still hesitant to use the word "writer" to describe myself) will die to grasp the opportunity of tubthumping his opinions in the major e-pubs of the world.

The solution I have wrought is simple enough. I have separated my blog into two: one for posting my book reviews, and the other for just about everything else. I believe this is a nice system in that whenever something becomes big enough, I'm sure I'll be flaking it off into a separate blog.
The Mason-Dixon line marks my boundary between popularity and self-satisfied navel-gazing.
So, check out my new blog: http://bibliovile.blogspot.com/ I'm sure you'll enjoy it. If not, now you have two locations at which to post your hate-mail.
Cheers.

2 comments:

Dipanjan Das said...

i will read your book reviews :)

great to see your blog! we only got the news of you winning the creative writing competitions all the time but never got the opportunity to read your articles first hand. carry on the great work!

Anonymous said...

"Their appeal is limited to a very rare kind of blog-reader, one whose leitmotif of existence is simply to garner knowledge and opine about the world around himself (herself)."

Ahem..you i would presume..exactly the kind of intellectual masturbation(for want of a better word :P) that would appeal to you...oh who am i kidding, i like it too :)
ps r u arivng on sunday