BBAW: Blogs I Enjoy

It's the first day of Book Blogger Appreciation Week!  The first daily topic is straightforward: write about book bloggers we appreciate.

I'd like to start with some of the bloggers who inspired me to start my own blog.  Those ladies include Professor Nana of The Goddess of YA Literature and Rachel of The Book Muncher.  I once credited Lenore of Presenting Lenore as an influence, but it turns out my memory was faulty that day, as Lenore then pointed out that my blog was older than hers.  Either way, Lenore is a terrific blogger who once let me crash in her apartment and showed me around while I was in Germany.  I can't wait to read her debut novel, LEVEL 2, when it comes out next year.

When I first started my blog, I reviewed urban fantasy fairly frequently.  (Nowadays I tend to do that on The Good, The Bad and The Unread rather than here.)  But three urban fantasy reviewers really supported me through those early days.  I'd like to thank Amberkatze, Sidhe Vicious, and Tez Miller.  Tez and Amberkatze are still active bloggers.

Two blogs with features I really love are Stacked and Intergalactic Academy.  Stacked's reviews are long and informative and their articles are very well thought out.  They ran a "So You Want to Read YA . . ." feature this summer that was ingenious and I'm happy they're considering continuing it.  Intergalactic Academy has an ongoing Animorphs reread that I'm getting a major kick out of, considering Animorphs was my absolute favorite series as a kid.  (I still have a giant box full of the entire series.)  One of the contributors, Phoebe North, has a novel called STARGLASS coming out in July 2013 from Simon & Schuster.  (You can win a copy here.)  Given her (and her partner's) terrific insight into young adult science fiction, I'm sure it will be a fabulous read.

Two of my favorite bloggers are Lauren of Shooting Stars Mag and Cecelia of The Adventures of Cecelia Bedelia.  Lauren's taste isn't the same as mine, but I admire her.  She's organized some cool publicity for several great books and she started a scholarship program for LGBT students.  How awesome is that?  Conversely, Cecelia and I have very similar tastes, making her reviews super useful for me.  Plus she posts all kinds of mouthwatering recipes.  I highly suggest you take a whirl around her blog.

It would take forever to mention every single blog and blogger that I love.  But I can tell you how much time it would take me to list every blog and blogger I hate: no time at all.  Any group of people that loves books is alright by me.

Let's get BBAW off to a good start!  Why don't you tell me a little about yourself and your blog in the comments?  I'd love to add some new people to my blogroll.