Simon Owens has done the legwork and he’s revealed that the Litblog Co-Op site has been blacklisted from Google. In fact, I’ve performed a few Google searches for “Valerie Trueblood” and “Stephen Graham Jones” and these names don’t come up at all in the first five pages.

This issue has been broached to the group and we’re now discussing options, including switching over to WordPress if need be. It’s a great pity that the hard work of the nominated authors kind enough to volunteer their time to guest blog and answer questions, the many contributors and readers who have discussed the books, the podcast interviews, and the like simply aren’t accessible to the search engines.

The moral of the story: if you have a Typepad account, you may want to check your search engine ranking. It’s very possible that you’re speaking into dead air.

[UPDATE: It appears that there’s a line in our source code deflecting search engines.]

My “nemesis” Lev Grossman now has a blog.

So Grumpy Old Bookman is calling it quits for a while. While this is a great shame, I completely understand. I’ve come close to retiring this blog many times. But what’s the point? I’ll always keep on coming back. There are simply too many things to learn and too much interesting information to keep track of. There are too many hats to try on. A grand sartorial wardrobe with limitless options rests permanently in my mind’s closet.

In a sense, this makes blogging no more selfish than any other kind of writing. I have put up around 5,400 posts here since December 2003, ranging from two-sentence items to 2,000 word entries that I probably should have revised and sold somewhere. But no matter. This blog doesn’t feel as if is distracting me that much from other things, such as living or writing fiction. But I’m not really the most reliable guide. Perhaps the process has become too habitual. Most astute readers (and especially fellow bloggers) can probably discern why I’m so prolific. When it comes right down to it, this blog exists under extremely absurd circumstances. I’m working to change this, but I entertain gladly.

What has caused Michael Allen or any of us to blog so much? I’m thinking we’re all motivated by the same forces. But waiting around for unknown convergence is a pretty ridiculous way to live. Bud Parr had it right by organizing Metaxucafe. And so did Mark with the LBC. But someone with enough crazy ambition needs to do something that advances us to a point that readers and bloggers both recognize. I wonder who this pioneer will be.

Carolyn Kellogg has revealed the three Spring 2007 nominees at the LBC.

Reuters: “Ten years after winning the Booker Prize for her first novel, and a decade as one of India’s leading social and environmental activists, Arundhati Roy is planning a return to fiction.”