The NY Times reviews Sarah Boxer's "Ultimate Blogs," an anthology of material culled from blogs between 2005 and 2007. Boxer apparently thought it was a "dreadful" idea when an editor first suggested she edit such a book, but she seems to have come around and, in the words of the reviewer, captured "good bloggy prose that non-blog readers can read." I like the idea of embracing new forms (like blogs), rather than just huffing about the death of good writing (which I do anyway) or dismissing them as cultural trash (which a lot of them are). But I'm thinking this anthology can only capture part of what makes a blog a blog. A lot of people use their blogs for long (often rambling) personal musings, and I guess have a small but interested audience. Those posts would be good for an anthology. But I think my favorite blogs (such as Bookninja or Maud) make better use of the form. They post regularly, keep the posts short, and link to something interesting, so that I can go to their pages for fifteen seconds a day, every day, and find something worthwhile. But those blogs wouldn't be very interesting in an anthology. Or at least I wouldn't buy it.