BBAW: Best Nonfiction Review BLog

Voting is now open at the Book Blogger Appreciation Week Awards.

A Striped Armchair This blog is one I’ve heard of somewhere, but I don’t think I’ve ever visited. The blogger is Eva, a 20-something passionate and eclectic reader, who in addition to reviewing nonfiction also reads and writes about mysteries, historical fiction, classics, fantasy, and literary fiction, a little of everything. Here you can read about some of her favorite authors, and here’s another post about the special books in Eva’s life. Lovely blog.

Citizen Reader reads like a highly opinionated, and entertaining, look at the world through the lens of (mostly) nonfiction books. I’m going to add this book about the founding of Facebook to my TBR list to reinforce my antipathy to that “social networking site” on the strength of Citizen Reader’s review. Citizen Reader has, in addition to blogging, been working with Librarian/Author Nancy Pearl on a book called Now Read This III: A Guide to Mainstream Fiction, a fact which impresses the heck out of me. I’ll have to make time to read all of the Citizen Reader reviews, and the book, because I can never have enough suggestions of books to read. 🙂

Nonfiction Book Reviews Havilah is a part-time librarian who writes about nonfiction books exclusively. The front page of her blog is heavy on the astronomy titles, but it looks as if she just moved into this particular blog space back in April. Her old blog was NonFiction Lover, and it has a list of her Top Ten Favorite NonFiction Titles. Nice variety. Of the ten I’ve read, and enjoyed, five, and a couple more look good.

Sophisticated Dorkiness “Kim is a busy journalism master’s student at UW-Madison who blogs about books, school, and other dorky topics.” An aspiring journalist blogging about nonfiction? Sounds like a good fit. I’m going to have to take a look at this book, reviewed by Kim: Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters by Scott Rosenberg.

Welcome to the Hinterlands: A Narrative Nonfiction Blog Caroline Kettlewell’s blog looks a little more newsy than the others nominated in this category. She informed me that there’s a name for those “year of” books (an annualist book) and that Elizabeth Gilbert has a sequel to Eat Pray Love in which, after her sojourn in free spirit land, she embraces Marriage. Caroline’s Hinterlands Manifesto is worth a look for its lament for the undiscovered joys of nonfiction reading—and the book recommendations, too.

I loved all five of these blogs, and I’ll be visiting all of them again because I really like nonfiction that tells a good story or introduces me to a new subculture or world that I hadn’t know about before. However, I think I’ll cast my one vote in this category for Welcome to the Hinterlands. The manifesto pushed me over the edge.

One thought on “BBAW: Best Nonfiction Review BLog

  1. Hi!
    And thanks for the shout-out. I too have really been enjoying looking at all the blogs at the BBAW site, and I liked your reviews of the nonfiction sites. I’ll take both “highly opinionated” and “entertaining” any day of the week!

    I love the name of your blog, BTW. And always glad to meet another reader who can never find enough new titles to read!

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