BBAW: First Treasure

Today marks the official beginning of Book Blogger Appreciation Week. The theme this year is A Treasure Chest of Infinite Books and Infinite Blogs. One of the things about the blogging world that stands out to me is the wide range of blogs and books out there, so this theme expresses one of my absolute favorite things about book blogging. To celebrate that infinite treasure, the BBAW team has come up with a list of topics for the week, and today’s suggestion is to share a great new blog that we’ve discovered since the last BBAW.

Well, of course, given the infinite array of choices, Jenny and I couldn’t settle for just one! So we’ve put our heads together and come up with eight blogs, and we’ll each tell you about four of them.

Teresa’s Picks

• Book Snob. Rachel’s blog is on hiatus at the moment while she’s moving from England to the U.S., but that simply means you have time to browse through her archives until her return. Rachel writes wonderfully detailed, impassioned reviews of a variety of books, both classics and non—but mostly classics. I especially love how she connects her reading to her own thoughts and feelings about life.
• The Literary Omnivore. When Clare says she’s an omnivore, she’s not kidding! On her blog, you can find reviews of a wide variety of speculative fiction, famous classics, popular and not-so-popular fiction and nonfiction, and even The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. Her reviews manage to be both concise and thorough—which is a pretty neat trick!
• My Porch. Of course, I have to give a shout-out to a fellow DC-area Anglophile book blogger! Thomas seems to have a knack for choosing books to review by authors I keep meaning to try but haven’t gotten around to yet, and of course, his reviews make me more determined to get to them. When he’s not posting excellent reviews, he’s sharing beautiful photos and art. (And he’s great fun to go book shopping with.)
• Paperback Reader. I may have discovered Claire’s blog before BBAW last year, but it was during BBAW that I really started following her closely. I love Claire’s blog for the wide range of books she covers, from the latest hot releases to classics that are often ever so slightly off the beaten path. Plus, we have Claire to thank for great events like Persephone Reading Week (which she co-hosts with Verity) and Angela Carter Month. (And I can attest that she makes an excellent book shopping and theatre-going companion.)

Jenny’s Picks

• Wuthering Expectations. I love this blog because it has so little in common with what I read. It’s my fantasy blog: one day, when I’ve read all the basics in the canon, all the things that everyone should read, then I’ll start reading the things Amateur Reader reads: Scottish literature, Jules Lafargue, Yiddish literature, Isidore Ducasse — and that’s just recently. Someday. Someday.
• Jenny’s Books. Jenny’s tone and style grab me, make me laugh, intrigue me, make me want to try the things she tries. Even when she’s reading something nominally light, she finds the politics, the gender angles, and the mystery in it. It’s no wonder she reads the end before she reads the middle (though she is, uncharacteristically, in the midst of No-Spoilers September.) I’ve taken a lot of good advice from this lovely blog.
• Evening All Afternoon. I started reading Emily’s blog when I ran across her review of Thoreau’s “Walking”. She said what I think about Thoreau so much better than I could have said it that I absolutely developed a crush on the entire blog, and have been reading it daily ever since. Emily is thorough, thoughtful, reads a real variety of things, and is unafraid to take a less-travelled path if she finds it more interesting. Everything that makes a blog good is to be found here.
• The Rejectionist. Okay, so this is not just a book blog, though she does post book reviews. I’m cheating a little. But if you don’t know the Rejectionist, a New York assistant to a book editor, and her revolutionary, literature-loving, Twilight-hating ways, then your life could be a little richer. She talks about the book industry, particularly those marginalized from it, and she’s about as sharply funny as they come.