One Lovely Blog Award - some blogs you might like

I've been nominated, by novelist Jane Davis, for the One Lovely Blog Award - a meme, but a good one because it suggests blogs you might never have found.  I have lots of favourite blogs, so I'm including only a quick selection here.

I'm very impressed with Gerry's blog 'That's How the Light Gets In' - discussions of art and poetry that go more deeply into creative things than blogs usually do.  This week he's talking about the paintings of Anselm Keifer and the poetry of Paul Celan.  I always come away with something to think about after reading his blog.

If you're a novice writer, creative writing student, creative writing tutor, or just someone interested in another writer's take on the nuts and bolts of the business, you can't do better than Emma Darwin's 'This Itch of Writing'. 

I like writers' journals and blogs that are online journals, so Sarah Salway's blog, 'Sarah's Writing Journal', is one I look at regularly.

Then there's Wendy Robertson's 'Life Twice Tasted', (a quote from Anais Nin).  Wendy's blog is an honest reflection of the ups and downs of the writing life and the amount of work that goes into researching a novel.  Wendy is a best-selling author with more than 25 published books, who has enthusiastically embraced e-publishing, creating an organisation called 'Room to Write' in partnership with other North Eastern authors.

And where would we be without readers?  I love Mel U's 'The Reading Life'.  He shares a wide range of books (where he gets the time to read all of them perplexes me!) both classics and contemporary. I re-discover old favourites and find new ones to read too. One of the best book review blogs because he chooses what he's going to read across the whole spectrum of literature according to a particular literary journey he's on - at one point it was short stories, at another Irish literature.

Finally, there's The Bone Garden, the blog associated with Sharon Blackie's 'Re-enchanting the Earth' web site - because we need some magic and re-enchantment in our lives.  She quotes DH Lawrence -

". . . we are bleeding at the roots, because we are cut off from the earth and sun and stars, and love is a grinning mockery, because, poor blossom, we plucked it from its stem on the tree of life, and expected it to keep on blooming in our civilized vase on the table.'

 Happy bloghopping everyone!