On the Internet, 2nd (and 3rd and . . . ) Opinions

The New York Times > Arts > Critic's Notebook: By SARAH BOXER: "The traditional objects of culture - books, movies, art - are becoming ever more distant. In their place are reviews of reviews, museums of museums and many, many lists.

Ron Hogan, who writes a literary blog called Beatrice.com, recently began a second blog, Beatrix: A Book Review Review. He's not the only one reviewing reviewers. The blogs Bookdwarf, Conversational Reading, The Elegant Variation, Golden Rule Jones, The Reading Experience and Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind - all gloss, grade or review other people's book reviews. On Gawker.com, a writer known as Intern Alexis reviews The New York Times Book Review.

The site Edward Champion's Return of the Reluctant also bears down on The New York Times Book Review and its editor, Sam Tanenhaus. Each week the site posts "The Sam Tanenhaus Brownie Watch." It is an act of counting. It compares, among other things, the number of pages devoted to fiction versus nonfiction and the number of women assigned to review nonfiction, promisingthat if there are enough fiction pages or enough women Mr. Tanenhaus will be sent a brownie.

Most book-review reviews are summary, to say the least. Their main purpose, it seems, is to get noticed and linked to by more popular blogs. This, for example, was Golden Rule Jones's assessment of The Chicago Tribune's book coverage on Sunday: "What I liked: Good numbers; timely, worthwhile selections. What I didn't like: Reviews are a little skimpy."

As these examples suggest, many lists on the Web have distance built into them. Respondents comment less on objects of culture than on themselves, their taste and their memory. The narcissistic lure can be irresistible.

Consider a Web diversion recently cooked up by Laura Demanski, a Chicago-based writer and book reviewer, better known on the Web as Our Girl in Chicago (or simply OGIC), who sometimes posts on Terry Teachout's blog, About Last Night. She asked her readers to list the first five movie quotes that popped into their heads.

Some 200 quotes came in. "Casablanca" topped the list with seven mentions, each one with a different quote. The most-cited movie quote of all came from "Network," which the Web site gives as : "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" And there was a six-way tie for shortest quote:

"Stella!" ("A Streetcar Named Desire")

"Thirty-six?" ("Clerks")

"Plastics." ("The Graduate")

"Willoughby!!!!" ("Sense and Sensibility")

"Sincerely." ("Stand By Me")

"Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!!" ("Star Trek II")

Ms. Demanski promises "a few general observations" about movie memory. What she really delivers, though, is a great set of lists.

And then there are the Amazonian lists, those offered up by sites like Filmaffinity.com, Muiscplasma.com and Music-map.com. Once you reveal a book, film or musician you already like, these sites will "tell what you will like," Sarah Lazarovic writes on the Web site CBC.ca.

In other words, the review is being replaced by a shopping list. Which brings out something important about the economy of the Web. The more lists you're on, the more you're wanted. The premier compliment for a Weblog is to be listed (or linked) by lots of other blogs. The Truth Laid Bear keeps a list of the most-linked sites, a "blogosphere ecosystem." It's like the Social Register.

The Web is not really a web after all. It is a list of lists."