Mimi Smartypants: Blogging is Dorky

Posted on January 2, 2006

Debra Pickett, a journalist and blogger for the Chicago Sun-Times, recently interviewed blogger Mimi Smartypants who has kept a blog at Diaryland since 1999 and recently had a book published based on her blog entries.

Mimi (I just can't bear to call her, New York Times style, Ms. Smartypants) was early to arrive on the blogging scene, setting up a no-frills Web log on the Diaryland site in 1999. It's the same site she uses even today, though she's become something of a blogger big-shot, with about 3,000 regular readers and a new book, The World According to Mimi Smartypants (Avon Trade: 256 pages, $12.95), that is a compilation of her early blog entries.
"I guess I could stop squatting on Diaryland," she says, after ordering a cup of vegetable soup and a spinach salad to go with her hot tea. "But it's just not that important to me. After the book came out [it was published first in England and makes its debut here this month], I did finally buy the Mimi Smartypants domain. But I haven't done anything with it."
This no-big-deal attitude covers the whole Mimi endeavor, from starting a blog in the first place -- "I think having a blog is incredibly uncool. I mean, how dorky. It's like playing Dungeons and Dragons" -- to seeing her book published.

Blogging is uncool and D&D like? Mimi says that but then she did buy the Mimi Smartypants domain so maybe she is planning something. Mimi's book, The World According to Mimi Smartypants, is not advertised on her blog which seems like an obvious markeing miss. But her Amazon.com listing has a good review from Publisher's Weekly and some very positive customer reviews -- not bad for content that came from one of those dorky blogs.