Blog Reader's Digest

Technologies to create a stream of news and entertainment tailored to one's own taste are not only easy to find, they become (driven by the needs of advertisers) hard to avoid.

I have more than 80 subscriptions in my Google Reader account, mostly blogs. Some of these bloggers write just a few times a year; others have probably stopped, but I keep them there just in case they post again.

Many are personal friends; some are friends of friends. Others are colleagues and former colleagues, contacts through work.

And some just write really well, and/or write about things that interest me. I have pretty catholic tastes; I'm interested in hearing what other people are interested in.

A growing number of the blogs I read are written by people I've never met face to face - like the three I'm about to mention.

Here are a few recent well-written posts I've enjoyed. Thought you might as well.

• Jon Swanson - who writes both 300 Words a Day and Levite Chronicles - just posted "No wonder we are confused." It deals with different ways we rest, or grieve. Good stuff, and helps me push guilt and judgment a little further back on the shelf of my mind.
  
  
• A man with whom I collaborated on a project a few years ago - he blogs very rarely, and prefers to remain nameless in unprotected cyberspace - offers "Hero or Narcissus." (Might the recent death of a controversial celebrity have come to mind as he was composing it?)
  
  
• Molly often writes about raising kids. True, my life does not include that, but since when do you have to live in someone else's world to appreciate it? I enjoyed her recent "The 'You Are Stoopid' Love and Why It Wins."