mandarine

Here is how it all started out: I went to look around for blogging software to determine if one would be suited to my absidea writing project. I had long wanted to write down my absurd engineering ideas, and publishing them piecewise on the internet seemed the best absurd idea ever. I quickly found WordPress, and naturally the immensely resourceful blog that comes with it: Lorelle On WordPress.
I immediately felt at home among Lorelle’s wise advice: write well, proof-read, be smart, show respect.

Meanwhile, I was trying to find science/techie blogs that I could stalk to convince new readers to have a glance at my site. Most of what I found was hurriedly written rants expressing black-xor-white opinions, with comments that seemed to have been typed and submitted faster than their authors could read (let alone proof-read). I do not say that all science blogs are like this, but it was taking me an awful lot of reading, skimming, and discarding for a few good picks. I was beginning to get discouraged; random picks in the blogosphere were even less fruitful.

Shortly afterwards, Lorelle’s blogging challenge had convinced me to setup a personal blogging space. It seemed my writing spree needed a bigger outlet than the absidea project alone. I started the mandarine blog, and I had to think hard about who I was writing for. I decided that my readers had to be wise, well-read people, not adverse to idea discussion and controversial thinking. People whose thoughtful comments would adorn my writing like monastic illuminations. People whose culture would be broad enough to take some interest in mine. People who’d show respect. In one word (o, I love this word): literati (or literatae).

It became obvious that the place I would find the most literati was in literature blogs. At first I thought that I, as an engineer, would never be accepted in such salons. But then I heeded my heart’s hunch as to which circle I felt closer to: litblogs it definitely had to be.

The more I read what Bloglily, Dorothy, Emily, litlove, Polaris, LK or the Hobgoblin wrote, the more I was comforted in my choice. I had always been a reasonably big reader of books, half of which in English ever since I had read The Hobbit when I was fourteen. It turned out that I had read at least some of the books people were praising or criticising. And my reading record in French literature was really not that bad.

Although mandarine will never be exclusively a book blog, I have found three important things among litbloggers: fine reading, fine readers, and a renewed thirst for books.

Read on

Who am I writing for

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