(Re)Discovering Book Blogs

Did you ever read the encyclopedia when you were younger? I don’t mean Wikipedia, I mean an honest-to-goodness set of World Books or Brittanicas. And I don’t mean for a school paper, I mean for the sheer pleasure of it, discovering wondrous things about the world and letting one article send you on to the next, until before you knew it, several hours had gone by? That’s what reading Dana Huff’s blogroll links have been like for me over the past few days.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the last week or so I’ve been getting back into the rhythm of blogging. I updated the look of One Catholic Life, I did some technical fine-tuning behind the scenes, and most importantly, I began writing again. But I’ve been missing one thing: connecting with other bloggers.

Much Madness Is Divinest Sense

One of the best things about blogging is being part of a community of people with similar interests each writing from his or her point of view. So as I began brushing the dust off One Catholic Life, I also wanted to reacquaint myself with some of the more interesting book blogs out there.

But where to begin? Many of the book blogs I used to read are defunct. I haven’t followed book blogs for several years, and there are a lot of book bloggers out there. How would I find new ones who resonate with me, who are kindred reading spirits?

I felt that I needed to find one book blog that I could count on for being connected with the kind of blogs I was interested in reading: literary, but not too literary; book reviews, but not only book reviews; classics, but not only classics; articles that would motivate me to read, but not make me feel guilty for not reading enough. Picky, I know. Still, I had hope. I had more than hope, actually.

I had Dana Huff, English teacher and blogger.

Who Is Dana Huff?

Dana blogs at huffenglish and Much Madness Is Divinest Sense, and is a prolific reviewer on Goodreads. I was introduced to Dana about nine years ago, after she came across another blog of mine, Teen Literacy Tips, and kindly encouraged her readers to visit. Since then I have come to appreciate her dedication to reading, her taste in literature, and her commitment to writing about books. We don’t really know each other, but that’s the beauty of the Internet–you can be an influencer without even realizing it.

If anyone had her bookmark in the pages of quality book blogs, I knew it would be Dana.

I browsed on over to Much Madness Is Divinest Sense and promptly began clicking on the links in the sidebar. Following the links on her website was like reading the encyclopedia when I was a kid. One link sent me to a blog with another great list of book blogs, which led me to even more. Before I knew it, several hours had gone by, and I had half a dozen or so new blogs to get to know.

What I Found

Here are just a few of the many blogs I discovered on that first go-around:

• Behold the Stars by O – “A blog that focuses on classic literature, because, as Marcel Proust wrote, ‘the wisest thing is to stick with dead authors.'”
• Better Living through Beowulf by Robin Bates – “Literature is as vital to our lives as food and shelter. Stories and poems help us work through the challenges we face, from everyday irritations to loneliness, heartache, and death. Literature is meant to mix it up with life. This website explores how it does so.”
• Beyond Eden Rock by Jane – “My name is Jane, and I live on the Cornish coast, with the Man of the House and a border terrier named Briar. This is where I write about books, and about other things that interest me. Art, music, knitting, my dog ….”
• Brain Pickings by Maria Popova – “Brain Pickings is my one-woman labor of love — a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why. Mostly, it’s a record of my own becoming as a person — intellectually, creatively, spiritually — and an inquiry into how to live and what it means to lead a good life.”
• Classical Carousel by Cleopatra – “Trying to get through as many classics as I can before I die, and hoping to share part of my journey.”
• The Classics Club by a team of moderators – “The Classics Club hopes to unite readers who blog about classic literature and inspire people to make the classics an integral part of life!”

I’m grateful to Dana for her list of book blogs, and I hope I connect with the writers above and get back to contributing in my own way to what Robert Hutchins called “The Great Conversation.”