Foolmaker [aka: Foolzone] is a Blogspot site, so the first thing I noticed is the advertising on the Blogspot banner across the top of the site. As much as I’d love to win a Mini Cooper, I don’t think it has anything to do with Foolmaker. The site itself doesn’t really strike an immediate impression – there are no graphics [other than the Blogspot banner] and the colors are dark. I wasn’t sure what to expect from the writing since there were no visual clues.
This is not a journal for the masses. Foolmaker really isn’t a journal that lends itself to casual reading. A lot of the entries are written in poetic form and don’t come with the accompanying story to explain the emotions and incidents behind the poetry. Many non-poetic entries are either very disjointed or written in stream-of-consciousness style, and won’t make any sense to anyone except the writer. There’s good sentiment and good writing in some of the entries, but none of it is very fleshed out. Because I found it hard to follow, it just wasn’t that interesting for me.
One of my biggest pet peeves in writing is lack of capitalization. The author of Foolmaker does not use capitalization at the beginning of her sentences on a consistent basis. The biggest problem is that a month’s worth of entries are on each page and they are in order from newest to oldest – this makes it difficult to read with any sort of continuity. After reading the journal, the design doesn’t seem to fit the writing. The writing is, for lack of a better word, pretty, but the design is just kind of blah. In addition, some of the linked pages that are part of the site have an alternative design.
Foolmaker has links to other sites she likes, commenting, wishlist, and a link to a page that has some of her poetry. Nothing out of the ordinary. Foolmaker does have a small section on her template about herself, but it isn’t very informative. The site could definitely benefit from a good About page.
If you like to read poetry, Foolmaker might be for you. I doubt I would come back for another visit – I just couldn’t get a good feel for who the author is.