I am a blogging fool

So, I write two other blogs besides this one. I bet you didn’t know that because you never look at the stuff in the sidebar. Nobody ever looks at the stuff in the sidebar, even though I spend so much time on rearranging it and getting it to look just right. Oh well, I don’t look at your sidebars either.

Both of my other blogs are basically  journals of my hobbies (and both get a lot more traffic than this blog). One is a journal of what I’m cooking, gardening and eating; it has recipes! The other is a journal of what I’m reading — mostly science fiction — and it’s where I get to geek out over my favorite books and authors.

I made the mistake (?) of saying I would accept review copies on my books blog, because after all, getting review copies makes me feel like a “real” book reviewer, and who doesn’t like free stuff? (Nobody ever gives me free cooking stuff, by the way, which I would really love, hint hint.) I didn’t realize how desperate publishers’ press agents were to give away free copies of books, though. It took just a couple of crappy books to make me real choosy about what I requested for review (although, to be fair, I’ve gotten a couple of really nice books as review copies too). But what irks me most is that these PR people shoot out offers of review copies like a shotgun, hoping something will stick, without regard to what the potential reviewer is actually interested in reading. So now my email inbox is filled every day with offers of the latest political baseball thriller or chick lit romance.

Here is an actual quote from one of these emails just so you know I’m not exagerrating:

In a departure from his gritty, in-your-face style, the author of God is a Bullet and The Creed of Violence, which are both being made into motion pictures, has written a sensitive dog story destined to rank with Edgar Sawtelle and Where the Red Fern Grows.

Here’s another (just the headline):

New novel examines potential doom of housewife’s selfish desires

Guys, I read science fiction. I do not read sensitive dog or doomed housewife stories of any kind.

Anyway, that was my rant for today. I also want to offer my congratulations to Senator Al Franken. Sometimes it really does feel like we have slipped into some parallel universe, but  everyone is acting like everything’s normal. Still, if it takes electing Al Franken to get health care reform passed and help some people out who really need it, then I’m all for it. And I’m sure all the other Senators will want to sit with him in the Senate cafeteria because he cracks them up so much.

To close with a laugh break: Roger Ebert (yes, that Roger Ebert) puts the smackdown on Bill O’Reilly.