I saw a mention not long ago, on Michelle Richmond’s blog, about something called Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle. What’s that about, I wondered, assuming the title was not to be taken literally. But verily, what one finds at Rex Parker Does the NYT Crossword Puzzle is the extensive notes of Rex Parker — or someone on the Rex Parker team — about that day’s NYT crossword puzzle. That can’t possibly be interesting, you’re thinking, unless you’ve already been there, read it, had a good laugh, and found yourself addicted. And I don’t even do crossword puzzles! (Not since that one winter in Austin anyway ...)

They record the day and date, the relative level of difficulty, how long it took them to do it, and what the day’s theme is. Then (I’m not kidding) they go through and write out their thought process, clue by clue. Whether they got each one right or wrong, whether they knew it or guessed it, whether they cheated and Googled — the whole nine yards. And they critique the puzzle along the way. Don’t get me wrong: you’re not laughing at them for doing this; these people are entertaining. You even get ironic photo accompaniments and the occasional meta note from Rex or whomever might be editing the latest guest puzzler. It’s priceless.

Go look. You’ll see.

It seems this week that George Orwell is everywhere — inspiring Cory Doctorow, being conflated with Evelyn Waugh, even providing content for a new blog. Last Saturday, the organizers of the Orwell Prize launched Orwell Diaries. (No doubt inspired by the success of The Pepys’ Diary.) An unsigned letter of introduction states, “From 9th August 2008, you will be able to gather your own impression of Orwell’s face from reading his most strongly individual piece of writing: his diaries. ... [T]o mark the 70th anniversary of the diaries, each diary entry will be published on this blog exactly seventy years after it was written, allowing you to follow Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to the UK, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into war in real time.” Unless your name is Tina Brown (who, coincidentally, is taking the name for her blog from that Orwell twin, Evelyn Waugh), it’s no small feat to launch a blog in 2008 and have the world take notice, but this one’s been widely covered and commented on. Blake Wilson says ”you don’t need to read every word of Orwell. ... And a good place to start not reading would be” the blog. Sonja Drimmer finds the impulse worthy but the presentation uninspired. Countless others have raved. What impression will you gather? 

For this installment we take a slightly different view of the phrase “blog of the week.” I think it’s safe to say that the book blog that saw the biggest bump in notoriety this week was Booksaga. What was it that brought sudden exposure to a fledgling, mild-mannered blog about “adventures in the book trade”? Well, sex and scandal, of course. Perry Falwell is a bookseller in Georgia who makes a sort of half-hearted attempt to keep his details private: He buys up books to sell online and some of his sources might frown on that. (Or, conversely, want to get in on the action.) He recently bought a cache of books from a widow, more as a kindness to her than anything else, only to find later that the husband had converted many of them to book boxes, in which he had stored pornographic Polaroids. Falwell blogged about it (complete with a photo of the find), uber-blogger Jason Kottke linked to it (as did countless others, including a link in our forum) and Falwell found himself with an instant audience of gawkers. Those who lingered long enough to peruse the rest of the blog will have found (not quite two dozen) faintly-genteel posts about life combing thrift stores and library sales, which could be either charming or deathly dull, but Falwell takes a bemused and writerly approach, and his sense of humor can be seen instantly in his categories list. It may well prove worth sticking around for.

It’s mid-Monday morning, the 23rd, as I’m typing this. It’s been all of ten minutes since I stumbled into a blog called if:book and already I’m so rapt I can hardly stand to wait until Saturday to post this. “A Project of The Institute for the Future of the Book,” a literary think tank, the blog has been “the daily record of [their] inquiry into a wide range of topics, all in some way fitting into the techno-cultural puzzle that is the future of reading and writing.” In other words, it’s about the intersection of books and technology. That can mean following issues like fair use, digitization, archiving and the aggregation of metadata, or it can mean showcasing remarkable and amusing things like this, or even inventing new technologies for reading and remarking on books. They’re currently asking some existential questions about the blog itself and apparently working on a redesign, but whatever happens going forward, it’s easy to imagine spending hours and hours with just the existing archives. 

This may seem like an obvious choice, but no listing of the web’s best book blogs would be complete without The New York Times’ Paper Cuts. Launched a year ago as Dwight Garner’s blog, it has since become a group blog for staffers of the review, so the tone and focus of it has changed a bit over time. When it was just Garner (who, full disclosure, I worked with at Salon many moons ago), it was a reflection of his own unique take on the world of books. Some of his best posts came from inspired ambling through the magnificent Times morgue of ads, photos and other treasures, which were interspersed with still-regular items like brief interviews and song lists. I was worried when the change occurred, but now it is multiple smart and interesting people drawing on the the paper’s content and archives in all sorts of creative ways, as well as simply formulating posts about whatever’s on their minds — from the dearth of book venues in midtown Manhattan to whether JFK really told Berlin he was a jelly doughnut. So without ever really seeming aimless, they’re making the sort of blog where you just don’t ever know what might turn up on a given day.

For writer and book reviewer Mark Athitakis, it’s all about American fiction. Or, more specifically, American literary fiction. He basically makes one post a day, every weekday, to his spare, straightforwardly named, text-only blog Mark Athitakis’ American Fiction Notes. The standard post consists of a pointer to, a little bit of commentary on and a quote from a thought-provoking essay or review somewhere else on the web. (He also does the occasional roundup.) Then each post is categorized by the American fiction author it pertains to. In a case like a post on author Ben Fountain writing about Ernest Hemingway, it gets filed under both names, and there’s a growing list of those names in the right column. There is (frustratingly) no dated archive, only the name categories, but it appears he’s been doing this for six months. So right now if you choose Ben Fountain’s name out of the list, you only get one entry; if you choose Hemingway’s, you get four. But you can see how this will snowball, especially if he keeps up the pace. So what he’s creating is simultaneously one man’s view of American fiction and a terrific, organic reference tool.

And now for something completely different: Vonnegut’s Asterisk. It would be fruitless to try to paraphrase Eric Spitznagel’s lengthy and suprisingly heartfelt intro to this one-page, finite, project-based blog, so I’ll quote the first part and you should click to read the rest: “To be honest, this wasn’t originally intended as a tribute to the late, great Kurt Vonnegut. It started as a goofy experiment, just to find out how many authors I could persuade to send me drawings of their own assholes. But then Kurt went and died on us last week. So now it’s become something else.” Though nothing on the page is dated, it was, as noted, prompted by Vonnegut’s death, which occurred in the spring of 2007. What you’ll find at this site you won’t find the likes of anywhere else, even on the World Wide Webs. Note that, despite the logo seen in the screenshot above, the domain name is vonnegutsasterisk, not vonnegutsasshole. The reason to note that is that there’s also a Vonnegut’s Asshole blog, which is currently on hiatus. We’ll be eagerly awaiting its return.

If you’re familiar with our Ode to a Lesser-Known Genius series, you know we love an underappreciated gem. But then, what serious reader doesn’t? The beauty of literature is that it’s a seemingly bottomless treasure trove, always ready to be mined. But then, how does one mine a trove that vast? The Neglected Books Page — “Where forgotten books are remembered” — is here to help. The unnamed editor of the site is amassing recommendations gleaned from a wide variety of sources — books, essays, articles, roundups, small publishers, other blogs — so what you’ll find is a wealth of titles, excerpts, links and quotes. That it’s quirkily organized adds to the sense that it’s a bit bottomless itself, but clicking discursively around is a lovely way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Books in New York’s Erik Heywood describes the site as “an ongoing project, working to create a visual catalog of New York City’s bookstores, libraries and book collections, both public and private.” It’s one of those brilliantly focused and simple and still somehow idiosyncratic concepts that always make the best blogs. Heywood seems to know everywhere there is a find a book in NYC, and he’s sharing that knowledge in the form of photos and write-ups of everything from the Strand’s Central Park stalls to the Union Square B&N to street vendors and much, much more. With a linked list of locations, it’s the perfect guide for anyone in or visiting New York, and a vicarious tour for everyone else. It’s also just nice to see someone paying attention to the places that are still selling and promoting books, when there’s so much focus on those that are closing their doors.