"Following links is like putting on 3-D glasses."

That's a line from Sarah Boxer's big review of a lot of books about blogs in the February 14 issue of The New York Review of Books.

Oh, we saw "U2 3D" — the IMAX 3D U2 concert film last night. I'm trying to write a post about it, but I got distracted by this book review. I'm more interested in books about blogs than a humongous in-your-face concert film, but I'll just say the technology had one of us seeing double — the technology is not perfect — and me longing for the lush beauty and composition of traditional film. Also I don't really see the point of getting that close to Bono's face. His eyes are all but invisible behind those wraparound glasses — the wraparound 3D glasses curved inward in back and gave me a headache right behind my left ear — and his face is not expressive. He's a great rock and roll frontman because of his whole-body expression, which projects to the whole arena. So get back, get back, and see the whole arena, which did look very deep and real in 3D. Technology... Did you know the kids at concerts these days wave cell phone and camera digital screens around instead of cigarette lighters?

But back to Boxer's review. She's got a book of her own about blogs — an anthology of blog "masterworks" — but she's skeptical about blog books:

Political blogs are among the trickiest to capture in a book because they tend to rely heavily on links and ephemeral information. But even blogs that have few or no links still show the imprint of the Web, its associative ethos, and its obsession with connection—the stink of the link. Blogs are porous to the world of texts and facts and opinions on line.

What's the point of writing or reading a book about blogs? Write a blog or read blogs. What are books doing here?

Boxer has a nice, compressed history of the development of blogging:

When the blog boom came, the tone of the blogosphere began to shift. A lot of the new blogs—though certainly not all of them—weren't so much filters for the Web as vents for opinion and self-revelation. Instead of figuring out ways to serve up good fresh finds, many of the new bloggers were fixated on getting found. So the very significance of linking began to change. The links that had once mattered were the ones you offered on your blog, the so-called outbound links pointing to other sites. Now the links that mattered most—and still do—are those on other blogs pointing toward your blog, the so-called inbound links. Those are the ones that blog-trackers like Technorati count. They are the measure of fame.

Now that fame and links are one and the same, there are bloggers out there who will do practically anything— start rumors, tell lies, pick fights, create fake personas, and post embarrassing videos—to get noticed and linked to. They are, in the parlance of the blogosphere, "link whores." And those who succeed are blog celebrities, or "blogebrities."

She also has this list of words she found on blogs:

anyhoo, bitchitude, fan-fucking-tabulous, hole-esque, nastified, alternapop, coffin-snatching, YouTube-ization, touzing, Daddio, manky, nutters, therapised, Boo-Ya Nation, dildopreneur, dudely, flava, haz-mat, nut sac, sexbot, underwearian, fugly, vomit-y, consciousness-jumped, tear-assed, fetbryo, grapetastically, mommyblogdaciousness, Nero-crazy, Engrish, pidginized, votenfreude, angsty, malgovernment, bejesus, JumboTron, man-dresses, babe-aliciousness, droit de senny.

The squarest old man I've ever known said "anyhoo" a lot. We laughed at him behind his back... in the 1970s.

Boxer has a feeling for what makes blogging bloggy:

Bloggers are golden when they're at the bottom of the heap, kicking up. Give them a salary, a book contract, or a press credential, though, and it just isn't the same. (And this includes, for the most part, the blogs set up by magazines, companies, and newspapers.) Why? When you write for pay, you worry about lawsuits, sentence structure, and word choice. You worry about your boss, your publisher, your mother, and your superego looking over your shoulder. And that's no way to blog.

Yes, blogging must be free. Don't give those bloggers a job. But do send them money! Help them be independent. Place ads and hit the PayPal button.