Blogroll Catastrophy and Blogday

My blogroll is more or less a catastrophy. It’s pure madness. It is split into five sections and some blogs show up 3 or even 4 times. Some of it is partially alphabetized, some of it is put in the order that I added the links, and other parts defy any organization logic whatsoever. I admit that several of these blogs I haven’t read in months. How did this happen?

In the beginning, I had a simple blogroll that is more or less the section that now reads “Blogs”. I’ve added a few since March but most of them I haven’t touched.

Back in March, not many people read my blog. I wrote some good stuff and some not so good stuff that no one was reading. I thought that was a pity. I had an idea: I will put everyone who ever links to my blog on my blogroll and this way I can read their blogs, comment on them, and maybe they will come back to my blog. I would get regular readers. Here is the original post that explained the idea of the “Linked to C&GC” section. Notice that only five blogs on planet Earth were linked to my blog at that time. Two blogs blogrolled me. So it never occurred to me that this might get out-of-control.

A little later, I created the “Bookmarked C&GC” so I could hand out two links to anyone who bookmarked me. At that time it was only Jwaala and Anyletter, neither blog is likely to be one you would see on anyone else’s blogroll.

Slowly, I began to get some regular readers. Vikram Arumilli, Sunil Laxman, Half Sigma, and my blogroll expanded. Most of my regular readers were from India, probably because of Amit Varma. For that reason, most of the blogs I read were by Indians and “desis”. So I decided to add another section of my blogroll that would be “My favorite “desi” blogs”. By now it was clear that I was a compulsive blogroller.

By this time, I was really beginning to add a lot of new bloggers to “Linked to C&GC” and “Bookmarked C&GC”. I wanted to acknowledge some good blogs that I read occasionally but didn’t have enough time to read everyday. So I created the “Other great “desi” blogs” section.

So I seem to be in some competition with Patrix for the most ridiculous blogroll. But he has had a two-year head start on me.

If you blogroll me and would like me to reciprocate, just leave a comment somewhere, and I get around to adding your blog in a month or two. I’m bad about updating stuff.

I got the idea of writing this post because of Uma's post explaining her blogroll.

Okay, blog day. List Five new blogs that I like:

1. Blogpourri Sujatha tells of her experiences returning to India after living in NoVa for many years.


2. Freakonomics Interesting stuff from Steve Levitt and Steve Dubner. Hey, Steve Levitt actually left a comment here.


3. Greatbong Is this new? I suppose not, but I think its funny when I understand it.


4. Indian Economy It’s like being able to comment on India Uncut, cool.


5. Indiblogreview @mit’s new blog. Looks like a real winner. It starts with a great interview with Patrix here.