BBAW Treasure #1-- Favorite Book Blogs Discovered in the Past Year

Book Blogger Appreciation Week is once more upon us. I'd wonder where the past year went, but this week is so much fun that I don't care.

One of the ways we celebrate is to participate in daily themed topics. Today's topic?

"For those of you who participated in BBAW last year, what's a great new book blog you’ve discovered since last year’s BBAW?"

Try as I might, I couldn't choose between two book blogs, so I decided not to fight it. Except for their overall excellence, they are very different blogs.


Desert Book Chick is the creation of Amanda, an Australian anthropologist, and it's obvious that her blog is a labor of love.

It's fast becoming a blogging resource for anything from blog design to writing book reviews to blog commenting programs.

Her reading is wide-ranging, and she has themed weeks on her blog-- Classics Week, for example, and the recent Men Don't Read Week.

One of the things that comes across so clearly in Amanda's blog is her passion, and this sometimes means that she's very blunt when voicing an opinion. Do I always agree with her? No, but that's part of what makes reading her blog so much fun.  If you've never visited Desert Book Chick, I certainly hope you'll make the effort to do so.

The second blog I want to talk about may not qualify under the strictest reading of the rules, but I'm going to talk about it anyway. Murder Is Everywhere is an author blog with alternating posts by crime fiction writers Cara Black (France), Leighton Gage (Brazil), Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip (South Africa), Yrsa Sigurdardottir (Iceland), Dan Waddell (England), and Tim Hallinan (Thailand). These alternating posts about their respective countries, their news items, their traditions, and their food have opened my eyes repeatedly. They've made me learn, they've made me laugh, and they've made me cry.

Their posts have persuaded me to go out and buy their books. Slowly but surely, I'll read and review them all on this blog. They may not be "book bloggers" in the strictest sense of the word, but they represent a few of the many authors who are responsible for inspiring me to give voice to my own passion: reading and writing about crime fiction. I feel they are more than deserving of acknowledgment on this first day of Book Bloggers Appreciation Week.

You don't have to like crime fiction to enjoy reading the posts in Murder Is Everywhere. What you do have to enjoy is reading well-written posts and learning about countries other than your own. This is another blog that I sincerely hope you'll take on a test drive. I think you'll like it. A lot.