"Think! Think Think!"

says Pooh Bear

The nice and thought-provoking folks over at The Hathor Legacy awarded me with a Thinking Blogger Award a while ago. Which completely surprised me and made my week.

But now I have to pick five blogs that make me think. Which would be easy as pie, if the obvious hadn't already been tagged. I could just tag Pandagon and the like for probably the ten billionth time, but I'd rather not.

So here are five not-quite-on-the-beaten-path blogs that make me think:

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books:

Aside from having a wicked sense of humor the very smart bitches at SB, TB are a great source for thought-provoking commentary on romance novels and the romance novel industry. Romance novels get a lot of flack, and while some of it is deserved, they don't deserve to be treated as the pissing hole of fiction that most people treat them as. Candy and Sarah manage to balance the mockery that romance so often richly deserves with a great amount of respect and admiration for readers and writers of romance. All of which is injected with a large amount of fan enthusiasm.

Nothing New Under the Sun:

For reminding me that just because romance novels and their readers are treated like pathetic freaks by the industry and the media and beyond, that doesn't mean they can't benefit from some good constructive criticism. Bellatrys also writes lots of good stuff about SciFi/Fantasy, literature, sexism, racism, and more.

Westerblog:

Scott Westerfeld's blog has a lot of the usual writer's "covers of my new book!" and "here's some picture of where I am right now!". All very good and worth checking out, but not a reason for a Thinking Blogger Award. However, it also has more than a few posts that demonstrate just why his YA books are so good - he's just that damn smart. Which is why he gets the award.

Digital Femme:

Do I really need to explain this one? Sometimes my lilly white ass needs some kicking, and while it's not Cheryl Lynn's job to do it, she does a fine job of it nevertheless.

And now I'm going to cheat and go all Times Person of the Year Award and give my last Thinking Blogger Award to the linkblogs Jade Reporting and When Fangirls Attack.

Being linkblogs, I'm excusing them from passing this award along (although the people who work so hard putting them together are more than welcome to do so on their own blogs).

Why am I giving an award to linkblogs? Because the theme of the Thinking Blogger Award is "Too many blogs, not enough thoughts!" While there are plenty of links I'd sometimes rather not have read, both of these linkblogs do us all a great service by compiling all these links, just so that we can access a variety of opinions more easily. Because of the topics they focus on (women in what are considered to be traditionally male fandoms) they also provide much needed and appreciated way for non-mainstream voices to connect instead of getting drowned out in a sea of marginalization. All in all, even the links that make you want to gouge out your eyes tend to result in more interesting posts from everyone else.

(yes, I picked 6 blogs, not 5. That's because I had written this up, let it sit for a while to review, and then someone else had tagged digital femme in the meantime, but I didn't want to take Cheryl off.)