the blogosphere and me

Finding a new blog is usually a fairly haphazard process- it occurs through one of the three following ways: someone I know starts a blog and I find out about it, someone I know recommends a blog/blog post OR I stumble upon it through a trail of links. For that reason the blogs I read represent a fairly diverse (and unrepresentative of me) range of interests, here are some I probably haven't mentioned before:

Ronni's blog from Cambridge, which I have just added a link to in my sidebar.

Style Bubble- A fashion blog from the UK

Pioneer Woman- A blog about life in rural America + cooking + homeschooling

Smart Bitches Trashy Books- A blog about Romance novels

I enjoy these blogs, I really do, different as they are. Though they don't have much in common, I guess I could say that a good blog has personality, and these do. But I feel there is something missing in my life, and that something is book reviews. I can't seem to find them on online newspaper sites (or even in the weekend paper). I want reviews of all kinds of fiction, things that I want to read. Ronni writes about books sometimes, but that is not really the main purpose of her blog. Smart Bitches reviews books all the time (when it is not reviewing e-book devices), but it exclusively reviews romances, and I don't read romances (or use a Kindle). Don't ask why I read the blog, I don't think I can explain. 

Why, I wondered, since I like books more than cooking or fashion or homeschooling, do I read no blogs devoted to book reviews? So I am on a quest. A quest for book review blogs. I started at technorati, since they list popular blogs, amazingly finding a book review blog that doesn't focus on romance is harder than it looks, but I have found Stuck In A Book, and that's looking good so far. If you have any other recommendations, please let me know! I love to read about books (I also love to read books).

Comments

  1. Ronni8/4/10 06:28

    Thank you so much for adding a link to my blog! I should do the same for you, it's been ages since I updated my links, and some of them are to now-defunct blogs, and there are new blogs I need to add (like yours).

    In terms of books blogs, I don't tend to read straight review blogs, as I'm more interested in the whole writing process (I read a lot of authors', publishers' and editors' blogs for that reason). I do have a post of useful literary links that might help give you some ideas, though.

    My personal favourite blog is Asking the Wrong Questions, which is a sort of general blog with essays about books, TV, films and so on. It's what I aspire to write, as a blogger, and my blog is modelled a lot on it.

    It's just occurred to me that you might like Jo Walton's reviews on Tor.com. (Just google them, they're pretty easy to find.) Walton is one of my favourite authors, and she writes really thoughtful reviews of science fiction and fantasy novels. However, if you're looking to find recommendations, it might not be the best place, since she tends to review old favourites.

    Hope that helps somewhat.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Catie8/4/10 11:26

    Thanks! I'll have to check those out. 'Asking the Wrong Questions' sounds good particularly, started reading it already.

    I really enjoy reviews, which is why, I guess, I read 'Smart Bitches' even though I don't read romance, and I'm enjoying 'Stuck in a Book' even though the writer focuses on early 20th C. English domestic comedy and seems to dislike both fantasy and Middle English. *sigh* What would be ideal to me is a blog full of reviews of every genre of books (of course, I would prefer one which focused on my favourites, but that might be asking too much...).

    I am very slow to update my links all the time myself, although I've been trying to update them lately!

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