Celebrating books and book bloggers

This week is Book Blogger Appreciation Week (BBAW). Marg, whose blog Reading Adventures was shortlisted in the BBAW Award for Best Romance Blog, posted a lovely write-up on Book Thingo. I thought it only fitting to pay it forward by listing some of the book blogs I most frequent or which continually inspire me.

Monkey Bear Reviews

SarahT’s blog is even younger than Book Thingo, but it’s already on my must-read list. I love reading Sarah’s opinion on various issues around romance blogland—she gets me thinking even if I don’t always agree. Sarah isn’t afraid to tackle controversial issues, but she does so in an articulate, fair and well thought out way.

Literary Minded

Okay, I don’t read every article on Angela Meyer’s blog, but if there’s one blog that has inspired me to be a better, more creative reviewer, it’s this one. Angela plays around with different styles when reviewing books, interviewing authors, or covering Australian literary events. She also convinced me (probably without realising it) to try two books that look set to make it to my list of best reads for the year: Addition by Toni Jordan, and Affection by Krissy Kneen. They’ve been so good I’ve had trouble blogging about them (performance anxiety), although I’ve been actively pimping them out to friends.

Reading Adventures

Well, it just stands to reason, doesn’t it? Marg’s blog is the first Australian romance reader blog I discovered years ago when there weren’t many romance bloggers around (at least, not that I knew of). She blogs about a variety of books, though, which is good because I get to ask her whether or not certain books have happy endings. :-D Every year, Marg runs the Blog Advent Tour with Kailana from The Written Word, and it was the very first blogging event I signed up for, when Book Thingo only had about, oh, 5 readers. Through Marg, I discovered that some people keep spreadsheets of their books, and her intense use of the public library convinced me to try my local library, too. (A valuable gift, this. I love my local library now, and so does my entire family.)

Gossamer Obsessions

AnimeJune’s blog is a relatively new find for me. I found it a few months ago on some bloghopping expedition, but I didn’t bookmark it for some reason and didn’t find it again until this week. I’m thoroughly enjoying going through the archives (as if I needed any more excuses to procrastinate). AnimeJune’s plot summaries and romance convention checklist are hilarious. And she loved For My Lady’s Heart by Laura Kinsale. Instant win right there.

I obviously have very good taste because Reading Adventures and Gossamer Obsessions were both shortlisted for the BBAW Award for Best Romance Review Blog, so congratulations to Marg and AnimeJune! I hope one of them wins … or they tie for first place. :-)

My feedreader is bulging with unread posts, but I have to ask: What are your must-read book blogs? And what makes them so compelling for you?