Writing a blog is in many respects not unlike writing a newspaper column. Although that, admittedly, is rather like saying that cooking dinner at home is in many respects not unlike being a chef. The obvious differences are scale, quality and, above all, consequence. My employment or your enjoyment will not be impacted by the occasional sub-par or self-indulgent blog post; not least because no money has changed hands. But one very real similarity to both professions lies in the way that even the best work is consumed, enjoyed (or not: I want my columns to be entertaining and my food to be served on plates, dammit), and then largely forgotten. Some top columnists do get to publish retrospective collections of their output, but they can only do what they do in the first place by rising to the challenge of delivering top-quality work to a deadline, week in, week out, only for it all to be consigned to the bin labelled "yesterday's papers". [1]
In an attempt to revive interest in former blog highlights (or simply to save the effort of repeating myself) I do often link back to previous posts, but the stats show that hardly anyone ever takes the hint. In an uncharacteristic burst of optimism I did once start a series of "best of" books on Blurb and do still maintain an Idiotic Hat Annual compilation on DVD, but zero sales meant I soon gave up on the idea as anything other than a way of preserving my efforts in the event of Blogger's inevitable eventual demise (or Russia cutting our cables and setting fire to our electricity substations, whichever is the sooner).
However, I still love putting a book together using Blurb's BookWright software. Not in pursuit of sales – as if! – but because it's an excellent way of bringing some coherence to my typically scattershot, amateur approach to photography and digital imaging. So it occurred to me recently that a series of posts I made way back in 2010 on the subject of the Anglo-Saxon poem known as "Caedmon's Hymn" could be combined into a pleasing little publication, using the Blurb "magazine" format. Those posts include some of my better attempts at extracting humour from unpromising source material and, assembled as a four-part text, invite accompaniment by a few of my Ring Hoard pictures, a series of digital images I have never yet got around to compiling into a book sequence in its own right.
So that's what I did, and here is a link to the usual preview on my Blurb "bookstore" page. But as I have also put the PDF version onto Issuu, which gives a better quality viewing experience, here is the "embedded" Issuu flipbook (click on the little four-arrow device to see it full screen):
This little book (just twenty-four pages) could probably use some further refinement – I've spotted at least one annoying spelling error – but I don't think I'll bother. After all, having tried, like a diligent columnist, to rise to the challenge of delivering top-quality work, week in, week out, since 2008, I'm simply trying to save some of it from being swept away in the digital deluge.
I'm content that a single printed copy will find its way into the archive of Balliol College, Oxford, where – who knows? – posterity may stumble across it, alongside the thirty-three other self-published volumes I have already deposited there. Thirty-three! That's pretty much an entire shelf-full, and hard for any inquisitive posteritoids to overlook.
Did I mention that I love putting books together on Blurb? I reckon they're going to need a second shelf to accommodate me before I'm done.
