Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Book Websites and Blogs

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're highlighting some of our favorite bookish places on the internet! I've split my list into half websites, half blogs. I follow a few dozen book blogs, all of which I really enjoy (or else I wouldn't follow them), but the ones I've listed are the ones I tend to pull recommendations from most often because my personal reading taste falls most in line with theirs.

Goodreads: There are certainly flaws to it, but I love keeping track of what I'm reading, seeing what other people whose opinions matter to me are reading and loving (or not!), and being able to create tons of shelves to keep things organized. People who have beef with it because it allows the plebes to have opinions about books that they can share widely (which I've seen a bit of lately) can step off with their gatekeeping nonsense.

LibraryThing: This is a great book cataloging site if you use it that way, though the interface hasn't really done it for me. It's also a great source of information about the books you read (it's where I pull the lists/awards section of my posts from!).

Libib: My preferred way to catalog my physical library. Super easy to use and tag your collections!

Thriftbooks: This is where I get nearly all of my books, because the prices are amazing and I've been able to get my hands on things I would have had to spend ages digging for at local thrift/secondhand stores. I have embedded a referral link for this one, so avoid clicking on it if you don't want to do that (you'll get 15% off your first order if you do, though).

Book Riot: SO much bookish content every day! I do scroll through a significant number of posts without reading them, but it feels like at least once a day I find myself adding something to my TBR because of a recommendation or list they post!


Sarah's Book Shelves: Sarah is like my book blogger role model! Great recommendations and lists, and when she reviews books she does such a great job of hitting the highlights and giving a sense of whether or not it would be something you're into. Our reading taste has significant overlap (lots of "literary fiction", with occasional forays into other genres) and I always appreciate hearing what she thinks!

Read All The Things!: I post at the most three times a week, but usually two, because that's about as much as I have creativity for. AJ, though, posts several times a week with interesting content and a great sense of humor. She's also primarily focused on literary fiction with a lot of backlist, so we read similar things.

So Obsessed With: Hannah reads more YA than I do, but she reads adult fiction regularly as well. Her voice is great, peppy and fun but not sugary sweet. What makes her blog go-to reading for me is that I appreciate the way she ventures outside the strictly bookish to post some lifestyle-type content that I enjoy reading because her voice is so relatable!

Sophisticated Dorkiness: Kim sometimes posts more and sometimes less, but it's always worth waiting for! Her reading mix is literary fiction, with a decent amount of backlist, and one of the few bloggers I follow who reads non-memoir nonfiction fairly regularly so she's a great source for recommendations for me in my favorite genres!

Broke By Books: A second Sarah on my list! This Sarah doesn't post much in the way of straightforward reviews, but she posts lists I don't see elsewhere and some really interesting discussion-type posts. She doesn't post super-frequently, but when she does I always look forward to it because her perspective is different than a lot of what's out there.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Book Websites and Blogs

Book 117: Americanah

"Ifemulu showed her the cover of the novel. She did not want to start a conversation. Especially not with Kelsey. She recognized in Kelsey the nationalism of liberal Americans who copiously criticized America but did not like you to do so; they expected you to be silent and grateful, and always reminded you of how much better than wherever you had come from America was."

Dates read: January 10-14, 2017

Rating: 10/10

Every so often, a thread pops up on Reddit asking people who've come to the United States from elsewhere what surprised them most about this country when they got here. The answers are usually fairly similar: our obsession with germs and our "personal space", our loudness, how big the country really actually is, tipping. I always enjoy reading these kinds of things because I'm always curious about how what seems very natural to us can seem bizarre to people who grew up elsewhere and I try to keep it in mind when I myself travel elsewhere: what seems odd to me probably seems perfectly normal to them. Just because I think of something as "the way things are" doesn't mean it's the way things are everywhere.

Ifemelu, the Nigerian-born-and-raised protagonist of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, experiences this kind of cultural whiplash twice: once, when she transfers from her university in Nigeria to a small college in Pennsylvania and then the second time, fifteen years later when she decides to return to Lagos. That Ifemelu is black and only really experiences what it's like to be black in a predominantly white world once she gets to the United States, as well as the gap between African-Americans and Africans in America inspires her to start a blog about race, which becomes a major source of income for her and helps earn her a fellowship at Princeton. Once the fellowship is over, she shuts down her blog, leaves her longtime boyfriend, and prepares to go back to Nigeria.

She's nervous about going back, not so much because she doesn't have anything lined up there but because it means she'll be back in the same place as Obinze, the man she loved in high school and college but is no longer in touch with. Adichie uses one of my favorite framing devices to structure her novel: she begins with Ifemelu just before she leaves the US, shows us how she got there through flashbacks, and then proceeds forward. I love getting some information but not all of it right up front: it makes me intensely curious to find out how the situation we first encountered came to be. I hate mystery-style books where all the "answers" are backloaded...it makes the rest of the book feel like it's treading water before the payoff at the end. Those just leave me annoyed by the time I get to the end, but unwrapping the narrative layers one by one keeps me hooked. And Americanah had me like a fish on a hook.

Not only is her story structure one that I personally respond well to, but Adichie's writing is absolutely magnificent. I marked what feels like half of the book because she has a such a knack for taking feelings that you have or you recognize and phrasing it in a way that hits you right in the gut because it's so dead on and perfect and you never thought about it like that before. And I loved the way she wrote Ifemelu and Obinze's relationship, from their charmed young love to the reason for their separation and that Adichie isn't afraid to give them new partners, partners they experience happiness with even. There's context and nuance, not just to their relationship, but to their lives. The whole book explores shades of gray, no one is either a saint or a villain. They're people, trying hard and messing up and trying again. I think one of the most important things about reading is its potential to increase empathy, to see people outside of the ones like you as having the same kinds of hopes and dreams and fears as you even if their experiences don't look exactly the same. This book is a beautifully written examplar of that exact principle. It's completely fantastic and I totally loved every second of reading it and I recommend it highly.

One year ago, I was reading: The Bear and the Nightingale

Two years ago, I was reading: The Twentieth Wife

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Book 117: Americanah