Bloggers Who Make Me Think

My friend Jordan has very kindly tagged me with the "Thinking Bloggers Award," after she received it from another blogger on the strength of her always-fascinating motherhood-and-Chicago blog, Wonderwheel. Thanks, Jordan! (Among other things, she tipped me to a bunch of new blogs to read.) You know how it goes with these things: now I have to pass the award on to five more bloggers. Thanks to Google Reader, I follow a truly sick number of blogs, but here I'm going to stick to more-or-less personal blogs written by people I know and like. (As it happens, all but one are written by women. Huh.)

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1. My first nominee is Shannon, wife, mother, and blogger extraordinaire. Mama in Wonderland is always the first thing I read in my RSS queue, and not only because her posts often offer an update on the scene I'll find when I get home. With a complete lack of bias, I think she's also a stylish writer and a very insightful commentator on family life.

2. My second nominee is the Snarky Squab, a great friend whose blog mostly sticks to her adventures in parenting - when she isn't sticking it to bad movies. Nobody makes better or funnier use of All. Teh. Blog. Tropes. And of course the Squotient Triangulum (part I and part II) will change your life.

3. Nominee number three is Questionable, another old friend who keeps a great eponymous blog that ranges far and wide (almost as far and wide as she does: see her posts on Patagonia) and always presents her opinions and ideas in a very true-to-her-personality way. Once she finishes her dissertation, I'm sure the blog will get even better - no more posts about the horrors of dissertation writing.

4. My fourth nominee is the proprietor of two linked blogs, the Adventures of Reiji and the Adventures of Rie. A college friend whom I haven't seen since 1995, her blogs are nonetheless a wonderful way to keep up with her and (you saw this coming) her two kids, neither of whom I've ever met but both of whom I feel I know pretty well, thanks to her pithy and frequent posts.

5. My last nominee is a pair that I always read in tandem: my dad's life-in-the-U.P. blog, Driving Around, and my sister's life-in-the-Netherlands blog, Expatriate-izing. Where else can you learn about population decline in the U.P. (dad) and the cognitive problems by Dutch compound words (sister)?

I left a few of my favorites off the list, but please don't feel slighted! I have to leave a few for others to nominate...