Weekly Geeks – Diversity

I’ve heard good things about Weekly Geeks, thought it was about time I hied myself over there.  Because I need another challenge…

Having arrived I found that this week’s meme was hard.  I didn’t really want to do it.  In fact, it was bizarrely reminiscent of working towards Brownie Badges; there was always, but always, one impossible clause.   Time to lay that Brownie ghost to rest!  So here is the meme:

Pick one of these:

1)Write a post highlighting one or more bloggers who are extremely different from you in some way. For example, think about blogger(s) who:
a. Identify with another race and/or ethnicity, religion, cultural background, age, etc. from you
b. Live the farthest from you
c. Have entirely different tastes in books from you (but you love their blog anyway)

Surprisingly enough, many of the blogs I follow are chosen because the authors have similar tastes to my own, and similar opinions.  Not too similar, but certainly compatible.  As for culture, race, location; these things are not always obvious and rarely something with which I concern myself .   An evaluation based on reading choices alone has much to recommend it.

Stage and Canvas and Pechorin’s Journal are obvious choices.  I’m not entirely sure about their respective locations, but both bloggers provide insightful (but not exclusively) genre fiction reviews.  I never deliberately turned my back on genre fiction, but have lost track of what is likely to be good.  Max’s excellent and detailed review of Consider Phlebas originally inspired me to reconsider genre, and Mish’s sci-fi challenge will hopefully provide the impetus to stick with it.  (Mish has also given me a reason to reinvest in Heinlein, after a parting of the ways following a bad experience with a couple of his latter day shockers.)

The third blog I would like to highlight is Antiblurbs.  Sanjay is based in Mumbai, which would qualify as both geograpically distant and culturally distinct from my blog.  Sanjay writes reviews for papers, often focussing on Indian authors.  His reviews are never bland and sometimes feature a pleasing sting in the tail.  Despite the emphasis on Indian authors it was, ironically, Infinite Jest that I read following a chance remark by Sanjay.  However,  The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam is on my Amazon wishlist as a consequence of this review at Antiblurbs.

Of course, as pointed out at Weekly Geeks:  “we’re probably all different-from-the-norm in one way or another.”

What differentiates your blog from the rest?  (Now I wasn’t prepared to try and answer that: but I’m quite happy to lay it on unsuspecting visitors!)

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