One blog down, many more to go
March 5th, 2007 Today, I finished reading all of Emily’s Telecommuter Talk. Ever since I found her blog, I knew I would have to read all of it sooner or later. Here is why: when Emily writes about something, anything at all really, she writes a story. Emily’s blog is not a journal: it is a collection of short stories. You won’t ever find a Telecommuter Talk entry like: ‘Today I hurt my little finger in a door’, no. Instead you will find a small drama about impossible love between doors and fingers, where knobs and hinges are characters with a personality of their own, where creaking door memories meet creaking joints fears. A story strewn with gems of psychology insight, peculiar personal philosophy, or obsessive-compulsive views. A story embroidered on a marvellous fabric woven from skillful language and dyed with colorful wit. I do not know if she’s real of if she’s just a storybook character invented by a skillful writer (maybe Hobs and Dorothy can testify in this respect), but I can tell you the skillful writer has me gripped.
As I once confessed, reading a post of Emily has become like helping myself to a little chocolate — I do not have access to a lot of chocolate at my office, but I can read blogs when I take a quick break. Then, during a particularly intense period when work required more chocolate breaks, I started reading the archive from the beginning, helping myself to unhealthy amounts of language candy. I slowly inched my way up a wonderful collection of pieces (mostly about telecommuting at first, then rapidly diverging to other topics), marking new territory with tiny comments like mouse droppings. Some months into the endeavour, I have come full circle, when today I reached the first post I had commented, written in August 2006.
Now, there will be no more chocolate-on-demand. I have already read all her other writing that I know of: her childhood memories blog and her Halloween short story. Like a chocolate junkie in detox, I will be dying for more. Fortunately, the cupboard is far from empty: there’s David (very dark chocolate that gets you gasping for a glass of fresh water), BlogLily (glass of fresh water), Charlotte (cup of tea), litlove (petites madeleines) and many others.
She’s real, she’s real! And she’s as great in person as she is online, most definitely.
Ohmigod, I can’t possibly live up to all your praise! But thank you, thank you, thank you! My head is about five times bigger than normal right now.
Oh mandarine! “Mouse droppings?” You go too far. This takes self-deprecation to a ridiculous level. Funny, though. Made me laugh out loud. Thank you so much for the recommendation of Emily’s Telecommuter blog.
And, of course, thank you for associating me with chocolate. I like that very much.
Dorothy, I knew you’d be ready to testify. But who’s to tell me you are real? OK I’ll just have to take your word for it.
Emily, it’s none of your business to “live up” to my admiration. It was your writing that made my admiration in the first place. Whatever you do or write from now on, it won’t change a thing to what’s written above.
David, I’d have picked black coffee but I never drink coffee. The closest thing was dark bitter chocolate (as in 70% pure cocoa) of the sort that is so rich you cannot possibly take two bites in a row.
She is quite wonderful, is she not?
I second this! Me, I’m a fan of Emily’s too. I love her style and her sense of humour.
Can I say how absolutely delighted I am to be a madeleine? They are just the cutest little cakes with fab literary associations. And I agree about Emily’s posts - I’ve been an avid reader since the earliest days of her blog and she never disappoints.
Emily’s definitely real. She’s my sister and I taught her everything she knows. Ha, ha, just kidding. But she did worship me when she was about 4. It’s so gratifying to read words about one’s sister that are so full of praise. You GO, Emily. Love, yer sis, Forsyth
Emily is my older sister and I have been perpetually in awe of her since I started eating solid food (she taught me how to discretely feed brussel sprouts to the dog). She has made her mark in the big bad publishing world and is now kicking butt in cyber-space. Proud to be her brother.
Jordan, Charlotte and litlove: let’s setup an Emily Barton fan club. We’d sell T-shirts and mugs, and we could probably cut a deal with Willy Wonka for a very special Telecommuter Talk collector design.
litlove: you want the freudian trut about your ending up being associated with madeleines? Well, my mother teaches French lit, so here you go.
Froshty: I second Emily’s hint — I’d love to read more from you.
Ian: isn’t it amazing how so many people are proud to be Emily’s whatever-they-are (i.e. you - brother; us - readers; them - authors)
What a great project! I wonder if there’s a way to have a year’s worth of blog posts properly printed out and put together. I’d like to read someone’s output in that form. You’re right about Emily, who’s a gem.
Raising her glass of fresh water in your direction, BL
Actually, this was my 7th goal for 2007: produce an integral pdf version for the mandarine and absidea blogs. I am not sure how it is done — I’ll tell you when I know.
M — There’s an outfit called blurb.com that does this. I haven’t yet managed to download the software that lets you set up the book, nor do I know the cost. But I’ll let you know as I find out. xo, BL
Thanks, I’ll look it up.
This is what I love about reading blogs … suddenly the world opens up to another good read! Off I skip to read Emily’s blog in anticipation of having numerous delightful chocolate fixes.
Damn — I’ve just lost a reader.
[…] and nobody should keep his/her admiration for someone else hidden: ever since I wrote this dithyrambic piece about Emily’s blog, she has been consistently checking here for new material, commenting on every other post, and […]