THE LAMENT OF THE INTELLECTUAL'S WIFE

Time to brag about blogs and blooks (Cahal Milmo, New Zealand Herald, April 6th, 2006)

To their champions, they are a form of virtual literature compiled with wit and vigour by the diarists of the 21st century. To their critics, they are electronic waffle, clogging up cyberspace with self-indulgent polemic.

But the status of the blog as a route to literary recognition seems assured after the results of an inaugural prize for "blooks", or books based on blogs, were announced.

About 60 million blogs have appeared on the internet, and the total is growing at about 75,000 a day as more and more users post their musings on subjects from onions to quantum physics.

The Blooker Prize, established to reward books born on the web, aims to highlight the potential of the blogging culture to create, if not poetic gems, then at least mainstream fiction and non-fiction.

The award was given to Julie Powell, a former secretary in New York, for her book, Julie and Julia, based on her blog which chronicled her campaign to cook all 524 recipes in a classic French cookbook in her small kitchen in a year.

Since publication, the blook has sold 100,000 copies and secured its author a publishing contract. It beat Belle de Jour, the best-selling chronicle of a London prostitute and the leading British contender on the shortlist of 14.

If only somebody had been shrewd enough to insert a few of his recipes between Victor Davis Hansen and Kofi Annan...