Recommend a blog please!

I love blogs! It is like having a periodical and picking your own book reviewers and columnists. Wonderful stuff. I have my favourite blogs, those I visit nearly everyday to see if they have posted. I have other blogs that I just catch up on from time to time. The old favourites are the best pleasure though, with the in-house jokes and stories, the exchange of comments online, and often the off-blog emails too, meaning some of them are rapidly becoming virtual friends even though I have never met them.

My own top bloggers, my must-visit sites are: Books, Mud and Compost, Musings from a Muddy Island, Cornflower, Dovergreyreader, Stuck-in-a-Book, Random Jottings and Ready When You are C.B. I also particularly enjoy Susan Hill's blog, not because I always agree with her but because she is always interested and therefore interesting. I also like the publisher blogs Snowblog and Fidra because of the insights they give into another side of the booktrade. My favourite writer's blogs are Justine Picardie, Alis Hawkins at Hawkins Bizarre and Angela Young at Writing, Life and the Universe. I also check out Books4All regularly because although I contribute, so do others and I never know what my bookselling colleagues might post about. My favourite teaching blog is To Miss With Love (recommended even if you are not involved in education) as living in a mainly white, mainly middle class, rural idyll (Midsomer without the murders, but with more blunt Yorkshire folk) I need reminding what life is like elsewhere, and I also usually visit Mother at Large, currently on maternity break. These blogs throughout the week make up my very own "periodical".

But there is also a particular pleasure in discovering a new blog that you just know is going to become one of those old favourites. Today, via Stuck-in-a-Book, I visited Other Stories for the first time, it appealed to me instantly and I know that this will be a regular stop now too.

What I would like you to do dear readers, is to recommend a favourite, top draw blog, that you visit regularly but that I don't have in my side bar on the right (book blogs under the booksellers list), and to recommend it with reasons why. I will visit them all, and probably post about them, and add them to my links, as you all have such good taste (well you're here aren't you!) and aren't likely to steer me wrong. It would be great to discover some more favourites!

Comments

[kim]

I go to Juliet Doyle's blog and look at everything she recommends (like your blog). In the category of "More to Life than Books" you might enjoy "Freshvintage." In addition to books, there is also junk to buy and sell. This is the most fun blog that I visit regularly. http://freshvintage.typepad.com/freshvintage/

[Kirsty]

Thanks for the mention and I'm glad you enjoy my blog! My blog tip of the week is Freelance Mum (http://freelancemum.blogspot.com) and also Chartroose's Book Barrage (http://chartroose.wordpress.com).

[Juliet]

Hi Catherine - thanks for the mention! Like you I have a long list of daily visits and it's incredibly hard to single any out (my own sidebar is choc-full of blogs I read several times a week, if not every day).

But if forced to narrow it down, a couple of absolute essentials on my list which aren't on yours include, on bookish and general topics, Petrona http://petrona.typepad.com/petrona/ and 60GoingOn16 http://60goingon16.typepad.com/my_weblog/, and my two favourite blogs by novelists: Emma Darwin http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/ and Martin Edwards http://doyouwriteunderyourownname.blogspot.com/

[Juliet]

Sorry, the link I gave for 60goinon16 was wrong - it should be http://60goingon16.typepad.com/.

[Jane]

Thanks for the mention! I'd have to go for Fugly Horse of the Day, which exposes the horrors of the American equine world. http://fuglyhorseoftheday.blogspot.com/

I'll have a look at the others that have come up. I don't have many blogs on my sidebar as there are very few I actually want to read every day, but I'm always hopeful of finding some!

[Julie]

I enjoy Deanna Raybourn's writerly blog at http://deannaraybourn.typepad.com/blog_a_gogo/ and the fabulously funny Smart Bitches at http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php

[C.B. James]

I am honored and humbled to be included in your must-visit sites. Thank you.

These are three unusual blogs I visit regularly. They are off the beaten track.

Not for books, but for great maps

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/

For non-fiction reviews and intersting insight to being a librarian

http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/

For details on the life of a book dealer and for great covers from old pulp paperbacks and other odd things

http://hangfirebooks.blogspot.com/

The traditional book blog I go to that you've not mentioned is Eva's

http://astripedarmchair.wordpress.com/

[Angela Young]

Thank you for including my blog in your favourites. I also recommend Find me a Bluebird at http://findmeabluebird.blogspot.com/
for its sheer beauty.

[Bitterly Books]

As gauche as it may be, I'd like to recommend my own blog, Bitterly Books (http://bitterlybooks.blogspot.com). It's irreverent reviews of offbeat books on UFO conspiracies, government plots, dysfunctional families, and drinking water that will kill you.