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Two blogs I like

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Description, detail and the worlds they create have been on my mind this week. While I realize the importance of description, I do agree with many commenters who have noted the difficulty of balancing details with action. I agree that if details are not adding up to something, going somewhere or showing some connection to perspective, they may just be a drag.

When done well though, those details are what I remember about a piece. Those details make the writer unique for me and make it all concrete in my mind because I am not that cerebral a thinker I guess. For me, thought is always connected to place and space and people, not ideas and theories.

Don’t get me wrong though. I do care about ideas. It’s just that the universe of details of the piece is the body of the idea for me. What I see and hear and feel I connect as the idea. I don’t like to be told what the idea is.

Inkeeping with today’s thoughts, two great blogs I’ve been following off and on have been on my mind. If you like descriptions, detail and some great reads, here they are:

Valerie Davies’ blog has been a great pleasure to read. She writes of ocean foam, of wind-swept cliffs, of old manors, of the countryside, of flowers in bloom, of birds and what seems a picturesque life in a remote location. When I checked her “About” section, I saw that her life has been as full of adventure as the stuff she writes about. She ends her pieces with the description of a food item she made, usually fresh and a fresh food for thought. Here’s a recent post from her blog that I liked: Storms of Delight.

Tell Me Another is a blog I consider myself lucky to have chanced upon. The blog does not reveal much about the author except that she, Josna Rege, is going to tell stories. The structure of the blog is somewhat randomized perhaps to emulate some kind of spontaneity of the sequence of stories of the author’s life experiences as they come. She seems to have lived in at least three continents (India, England and the US), is well-read in British literature and children’s books amongst other things (I can tell) and has both an analytical and a creative mind. Here’s a great example about her high-school teacher: Remembering Mrs. Metzger.

I am lucky to have found these two people in the randomness and noise of the blogosphere.

Go bloggers!

17 thoughts on “Two blogs I like”

  8. Thank you so much Bottleworder for your amazing and generous recommendation – such a validation – I had wondered why I seemed to have such a spike in readers –
    Now I know!! Thank you again…. needless to say i have been an enthusiastic followers of your thoughtful pieces almost since you/we started…and I do like your elegant new design

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    1. I second that emotion, Bottledworder–it was generous of you, and it is so encouraging. No matter how much one might protest otherwise, one writes to be read, and it is always lovely to find that one’s storytelling strikes a responsive chord in another reader. You help nurture a community of readers and writers with your own writing and your restless (in a good sense) creative energy. Thank you.

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    2. Thanks both but I really admire your blogs. That’s the reason I wanted to share them with readers. No generosity involved. Fortunately, reading and enjoying isn’t a zero sum game. The pleasure only multiplies. 🙂

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  12. Thank you, Bottleworder! I’m delighted, as delighted as I was when I first came upon your blog and heard such a distinctive, and thoroughly enjoyable, voice. I’ve been following it with interest ever since. Cheers! J

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