The World of Book Blogs

“The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.” Elizabeth Hardwick

There was a study done in 2004 by the National Endowment for the Arts on the reading habits of Americans and the results were quite disheartening – especially to a librarian and one who loves and believes in books. The NEA declared that “literary reading” was in a “dramatic decline” calling this decline a “national crises.”

Well – I am not too sure about that. Have you ever explored the online world of book blogs? There are SO MANY folks – men and women, young and old, librarians and housewives, artists and engineers – people from every walk of life, who read and read and read – and then want to share their thoughts on what they have read with everyone on the net who cares to visit.

My first introduction to the world of book blogs was tiny little reading room, maintained by (in her own words) a “children’s/YA librarian who keeps getting herself into too many reading challenges.” But the really neat thing about these book blogs is that they lead you to other book blogs. Scroll down the tiny little reading room until you come to (in the right column) the Blogroll – and there you will see a LONG LIST of other book blogs.

I highly recommend that you check these out. My favorites (at least currently) are:

Jennie Loves to Read
Jennie loves to “knit, read lots of books and laugh with friends. Life is too short!” A girl after my own heart.

Should be Reading
Should be Reading is quite a mixed bag of a blog, but one feature I really like is Teaser Tuesday. Teaser Tuesday goes like this -

• Pick a book you like (and have read)
• Open to a random page
• Share two "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page. (Be careful not to include spoliers and don't share too much!)
• Share the title and author - so others can add the book to their "to be read" (TBR) lists.
  

Maybe we will try a Tuesday Teaser post here one day.

A Life in Books
This is blog that has been around for a while, and is really neat. First of all, the reviews are well-done and in-depth (for a blog). And then take a look (all the way down!) at the left-hand column. There are all sorts of neat things listed there – an extensive blog roll; other recommended other recommended book sites; random books from the blogger’s library; and then finally, the reading challenges she has participated in.

So click to one of these book blogs, find the blog roll and begin the adventure. I, for one, do not think reading is dead. Meg