Weeks ago, when I did some minor housekeeping, I eliminated the list of links from the sidebar,* because I noticed that they weren’t really up to date. The list included a bunch of sites I rarely visited and omitted many of my favorites. It’s unlikely that I’d ever develop a habit of checking and updating the list; since it was just kind of there, hanging out at the bottom of every page, I stopped seeing it after a while. Over the weekend, however, it occurred to me that I check several sites every day–some of them several times a day–and that I would like to share them with people.
There are, I’m told, about a hundred million book design blogs. My long-time favorite is the BDR, which put me on to another blog, the Caustic Cover Critic. The BDR tends to exhibit the best of the best, such as this, this, and this. The CCC, as befits the, um, C, and then the, um, other C, tends to be snarkier, which I like. I’m especially fond of the evisceration of best-seller covers–here, here, and here.
(In my Under the Covers series, I’ve taken a swipe at a couple of popular titles, but I’ve generally steered clear of them, because as is pointed out in that first CCC post I linked to, they’re not really designed so much as “crapped out.” Your average ghost-written James Patterson pulp could easily have its cover generated by a bit of AppleScript.)
I’ve already mentioned Texts from Last Night, and I still check it for updates several times a day. In the last couple of months or so, I’ve also run across some variations on the theme. Passive-Aggressive Notes features a series of charming missives in which coworkers are entreated not to eat each other’s food, neighbors are kindly and gently made aware of their faults, and vegans are tenderly offered support. Emails from Crazy People–well, that’s pretty self-explanatory, innit? But you have got to see this email exchange, which is so egregious that it actually made news.
(By the way, Liz, darling? If you come across this, I want you should go here. Look around, check it out, sign up.)
I’ve also mentioned Cake Wrecks, which features professionally decorated cakes that have gone heartbreakingly, hilariously awry. Other things go heartbreakingly, hilariously awry as well, including, but not limited to: real estate listings, classified ads, graphic design, and of course, as we all know, fashion.
(I freely admit that pure schadenfreude draws me to these “heartbreakingly, hilariously awry” sorts of things.)
My affection for Pharyngula has led me to other godforsaken corners of the intertubes. There is, for example, No Jesus, No Peas, which I read religiously–no pun intended–because, in fact, I want no truck with either Jesus or peas. And then, also, there is Your Religion Is False, which is so, so funny.
Last, but certainly not least, my friends have blogs, too, and of course, I read them: Anaïs Nin, Terra Elan, Rascal’s Lair.
Join me, won’t you?
* I realize that the so-called sidebar is actually at the bottom of the page, not at the side, but who ever heard of a bottombar?
