From time to time I follow what I consider gimmick blogs in which someone creates a blog around some goofy topic. Most of these I’ve tired of rather quickly, but the one that has kept me reading for years is Cake Wrecks. People send in photos of professionally decorated cakes that have gone horribly wrong in one way or another. Some of them would be amusing by themselves, while others are made funny by the hilarious commentary written about the cakes by the blog’s author Jen. It’s rather astounding how many horribly decorated cakes there are out there. This blog always gives me a smile and a good chuckle, which is something everyone can use in their day.

No rundown of blogs that I love would be complete without NPR’s Monkey See blog. It’s mostly though not entirely written by Linda Holmes. I first became familiar with Linda’s writing many years ago when she used to recap for Television Without Pity. I also read the personal blog she used to keep during that time. I was sad when she stopped working for TWOP and updating her blog, so I was very excited a few years ago that she had moved to NPR and was writing the Monkey See blog because I had sorely missed her voice in the meantime.

The blog covers all manner of pop culture related things both seriously and humorously. It also gave birth to one of my favorite podcasts Pop Culture Happy Hour, which I wrote about way back in one of my very first posts on this blog. If you in any way like pop culture and aren’t already reading this blog I highly recommend that you check it out.

The second blog I’m going to write about in the series on the blogs I love is Justin Lee’s Crumbs from the Communion Table. I actually graduated from Wake Forest University with Justin. We knew each other in passing, but weren’t really friends. I don’t know if he would remember me or not. Justin is the founder and Executive Director of The Gay Christian Network, a ministry serving Christians who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. On Crumbs from the Communion Table, Justin writes about his work as well as answering questions on Christianity and homosexuality posed by readers.

Much like the reasons I elucidated in my post on Whatever, I really enjoy reading Crumbs from the Communion Table because of Justin’s reasoned approach in writing on a topic that is very polarizing. Though Justin does not believe that homosexuality is a sin he approaches the topic from multiple angles and addresses how even Christians who don’t share his view should be reaching out to the gay community in Christian love as modeled by Christ and not in the hate that is too often the basis for their interactions.

The first blog I want to highlight in my series on blogs that I love is John Scalzi’s blog Whatever. Scalzi is a science fiction author. I don’t really care much for science fiction, but because I am such a fan of his blog I gave one of his books a shot. I didn’t hate it, but it was still science fiction and I would much rather spend my time reading something I enjoy more so I won’t be reading any more of his books. His blog on the other hand I will continue to read until he stops writing it.

As is evidenced by the title of the blog, Whatever, Scalzi writes about whatever is on his mind. Sometimes the posts are dedicated to things in the world of science fiction writing. Those posts I tend to skip. He also allows authors to promote their books on his blog via his Big Idea series. It’s all the other posts that are the ones that keep me reading though. He often weighs in on issues occurring in the news. I often though not always agree with his views, which probably helps my enjoyment of his posts. However, what I really appreciate about his thoughts are how reasoned they are. Unlike the crazed vitriol that too often gets spewed around 24 hour so called news channels and the internet, Scalzi presents reasoned thoughts on the subject at hand. He’s willing to engage in civil discussions and not just try and brow beat people into seeing things his way. It’s for this reason I think that he has a lot of readers and many who request him to weigh in topics that they want to hear his opinion about. I suspect that even if I didn’t share his views I would still appreciate the way he approaches writing about often divisive topics.

In addition to newsworthy topics he also posts about just his life in general: his wife, his daughter, his pets, etc. I appreciate those posts as well as they provide a look into his life and make the blog feel human, which is something I gravitate towards. If you don’t already read Whatever I would highly recommend checking it out.

This is kind of an introductory post to the series of posts I’m about to write on the blogs I love. Thanks to the wonders of RSS I follow a lot of blogs, and there are a handful that I want to write about here. Don’t worry if you write a blog and you don’t see it included in my list, it doesn’t mean I don’t love it. At least for now I’m concentrating on blogs that have a wider audience. Thus no one reading this who writes a blog is going to be included because I can guarantee that none of the bloggers I’m going to write about read my little blog. I also read a number of libraryland blogs that I am not going to include because most of the people reading this won’t care about library themed blogs.

Putting together the list of blogs I wanted to write about was a fun little exercise in that I unhid all the feeds in my RSS reader to see a list of all the blogs I was subscribed to revealing to me a ton of blogs that are no longer updated. Many of them I had completely forgotten about. Some of them I don’t even remember what they are just based on the name. There are others like the short-lived blog my sister wrote after my first niece was born that made me smile. I did go back through that one and look at the really old pictures of my niece. There were some defunct blogs that made me sad because I really miss the voices of the people who were writing them. I understand why people quit blogging especially in the age of Facebook and Twitter when it’s so much easier to share quick thoughts or why they move on to other projects that I’m not as interested in, but I still selfishly hope that one day some of these bloggers will return. In addition to just being lazy, it’s partly why I haven’t culled the dead wood out of my RSS feed. If any of these blogs are resurrected I’ll be sure to know. Plus since I can hide any feeds that don’t have new content it’s no big deal for me to leave all these blogs that are no longer updated hanging around.

I’ll be doling out my list of the blogs I love in no particular order over the next week or so. Hopefully you will find some of these bloggers to be as wonderful as I do.