Steven Poole: Unspeak blog
Trolling around for a deeply dull bit of web design info, I tripped over a forum where one contributor was asking advice on fixing something on his political language blog. I followed the link and discovered it was Steven Poole's deeply impressive Unspeak blog, put together by his own fair hands to promote and extend the arguments in his book also called Unspeak. The site seems to have attracted several intelligent commenters with whom Poole enjoys sparring in his posts' comments - and there's a particularly good page where Poole responds to Unspeak's critics, several of whom wholly failed to grasp the book's argument (stand up, Alistair cocking Campbell).
Unspeak is in my To Read pile on my shelf at the moment, and I'd still like to read his previous history of videogames, Trigger Happy, which I seem to have presented as a present for others on several occasions but never had a copy for myself.
I think I'm most impressed that Poole has simply got on with it and put together a blog that not only showcases his work but lets him correspond to readers - and that readers have genuinely responded to his work and the site by engaging in conversation. It doesn't seem to have disintegrated into "son of a terrorist whore" just yet, but give it time...
