Blog-Enriched Reading

I stopped by my university library on the way home from work today and came away with four blog-inspired choices:

Bryher’s The Heart to Artemis: A Writer’s Memoirs which has been on my wish list since Matt Cheney wrote about it at The Mumpsimus several months ago;

Angela Smith’s Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf: A Public of Two which I was inspired to seek out by recent discussions at A Curious Singularity;

Gabriel Josipovici’s The Lessons of Modernism which Mark Thwaite mentioned recently in a post on Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse at ReadySteadyBlog; and,

Graham Greene’s Travels With My Aunt from which Terry Teachout has been posting a series of tantalizing excerpts this week at About Last Night.

As I made my way from the library to the bus stop with these tomes in hand, I reflected on the extraordinary extent to which the literary blogosphere has enriched my reading life. I frequently find myself prompted by a blog post to pick up a book that I might not otherwise have heard of or been interested in. And, of course, it’s not just a matter of book recommendations broadening my reading, but also of critical commentary deepening my reading. Blog posts regularly inspire, challenge, and sometimes even anger me.

It takes a great deal of time and effort to maintain a blog and I am so grateful to all of you who do so. Not just to those I mentioned above, but also to all of the excellent bloggers listed on my sidebar to the right, to the many MetaxuCafé members whose blogs I visit through the headlines page, and to those who contribute many bookish insights through the comments sections of this and other blogs. Thanks to one and all.

That I should have access to this vast, stimulating universe without so much as leaving my house seems nothing short of magic.