The Latest Leads
Our most recent set of recommendations
We asked a selection of NALD's members and friends which blogs they found indispensable.
Irna Qureshi writer and Bollywood Britain blogger
Many of the blogs I follow are about Bradford or written by Bradford people. You could call it research for my own blog but the truth is that I rather enjoy gaining fresh perspectives on my home town.
I always look forward to artist Robert Hope’s posts since I can totally relate to his obsession with lists. My lists tend to be goal oriented while he lists things he has found, such as a ‘bag full of wind’ or things he saw on a journey like ‘an elderly lady wiping a plastic knife and fork on the bus’. His lists remind me how the ordinary can become really interesting if you look closely enough.
I love the grassroots feel of Bradford My Town and Martin Singleton’s knowledge of Bradford. He captures those nooks and crannies in photographs that we walk past all the time without stopping to look properly.
Tales from Bradistan is something of an Aladdin’s Cave; a picture of a local Afghan refugee one day, an Egyptian music video the next. The author’s Islamic faith and travels around the Muslim world lend a refreshing dose of clarity and authenticity to his posts.
100 Objects Bradford keeps me connected with the history of Bradford. The archive highlights objects from Bradford University’s Special Collections and allows me to be a home tourist without leaving my armchair. My favourite so far is a notebook kept by Sir Titus Salt between 1834 and 1837. It documents the revolutionary wool manufacturing processes he discovered, which made him his fortune.
I’m a newcomer to the blog of Bradford’s new bishop, Nick Baines. I’m intrigued by the very idea of a blogging (and tweeting!) bishop. He recently blogged about Wayne Rooney’s hair transplant which tells me he has his finger on the pulse of the key issues of the day!
Nici West of the Bad Language writers collective and mentee on NALD's Second Steps Programme
For comedic tips on what not to do as a writer and to help me spot my own flaws I read Joel Stickley's How to Write Badly Well.
To catch up on what's happening in and around Manchester and to get the insiders info on events I missed I read Sarah-Clare Conlon's Words & Fixtures.
For ideas on what to add to my reading list and to get a deep analysis of the latest books I read Daniel Carpenter's Winter Hill.
And last but not least for some literature delights I read Something Everyday for spanking new poems and fiction from ever changing writers.
Chris Gribble Director, Writers Centre Norwich and NALD Co-Chair
As a means of getting an overview (in English) of a wide range of European literary journals and review sections, you can’t beat Sign and Sight.
I’ve followed James Bridle’s Book Two for a number of years – it’s a fantastic way to keep up with multiple discussions about and developments in literature and technology.
John Self at Asylum is very good, as is Sam Ruddock at Books, Time and Silence. (He works at Writers’ Centre Norwich, to declare an interest!)
And The Guardian’s Book Blog has just expanded and expanded over the years to the point where it’s almost impossible to keep up with, but still excellent when I can...
Tom Hunter, Director of the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction literature
Reading blogs, tweets, online reviews, comments threads, checking Google alerts etc etc is pretty much essential to my work for the Clarke Award as there’s a vast science fiction community out there, and it pays dividends to keep up to date.
Within that though there’s a smaller handful I turn to strictly for myself as great sources of information (and gossip), and in fact I find some of these so useful for clever-sounding soundbites I can use in meetings I’m a little reluctant to share them with you, so read on quickly before I change my mind:
Warren Ellis is not only an awesome comic books and science fiction writer, he’s also an avid experimenter and commentator on new technologies (including blogs) and highly insightful on the ways new technologies collide with the written form. He also posts a lot of other counter-cultural material, so be warned not every post is safe for work.
In may ways Jeff Jarvis is the non-fiction side of the same coin. An advocate of new forms of journalism who sees the advance of digital media as an opportunity rather than a threat to the traditions of the fourth estate.
Torque Control is the official blog of the editors of Vector, the critical journal of the British Science Fiction Association and my first go to for keeping up to speed on the state of the art in UK science fiction. Mixing swift link updates with extended thought pieces and shared roundtable critiquing, this is one of the only genre blogs where I’ve been known to loose whole days embroiled in the comment threads.
And finally I’ll leave you with my good friends at Pornokitsch who despite the name are often more safe for work than Mr Warren Ellis. I love these folk, not just for their blog’s title, but for reminding me that it’s possible to love something and poke fun at it at the same.
If you have an indispensable blog you think other NALD members should know about, tell us here
Take a look at previous recommendations here.
