5 Favorite Blogs: 2009 Edition

Aidan recently posted his list of his five favorite blogs of 2009, and Larry responded by talking about blogs that challenge the reader.

I figured, why not?

So, I took a spin through Bloglines with an attempt to identify five blogs I would imprecisely label as "favorites". Think of this a snapshot as to what I find the most engaging / interesting on December 27, 2009.

There is no order here.

OF Blog of the Fallen: What I like best about Larry's blog is the essays. He'll hit on something that interests him enough to write about that is outside the bounds of a review. It may be a take on an internet kerfuffle, or to take another reviewer to task for something, or his posing a question, or perhaps his answer. It's his questioning and searching and pointing out flaws that intrigues me.

The Wertzone: This is one of the few blogs I read for the reviews, though generally here I'm looking for his reviews of classic works of the genre. Retrospectively, I enjoy Adam's writing on books I've read and appreciated. Adam seems to have an inexhaustible trove of information about epic fantasy contained in his head. Very readable.

Torque Control: Nominally a blog of the editors of Vector Magazine, I tend to think of Torque Control as the personal playground of Niall Harrison. As such, this is very smart stuff and Niall writes as much about short fiction as he does novel length work - which I appreciate. Niall is very much into the conversation about fiction and his blog is a great resource (as well as part of that great conversation.)

Whatever: The personal blog of some strange chap named John Scalzi who finds time between taking pictures of his animals, sunsets, fingernails, his ranting, helping out other writers with his Big Idea, creatively consulting for television, and generally being a decent chap to occasionally string together enough words to put into book format. You may have heard of him. I focus a decent amount of my online attention to skiffy things, but John's blog is a fairly diverse cross-section of his interests. It's quite good. But, he gets some 45,000 visitors a day, so you probably don't need me to tell you that.


I've thought a bit about what the fifth blog I wanted to highlight when I checked Bloglines one more time. There were several blogs bolded with new entries, but only one brought a quiver of real interest and excitement.


Alison McGhee's Blog: Alison is an infrequent poster, but her posts are almost all lyrical stories rather than what we generally think of as a "Blog Post", be it an essay or a review. Her Christmas post is one example. Or this one about things she used to believe, which is a post that haunts me for a variety of reasons. McGhee is one of my absolutely favorite authors (and I think I almost met her once) and her blog is a quiet delight.