Today’s Book Blogger Appreciation Week prompt is: “What have you read and loved because of a fellow blogger?”
Before I start naming names, some background: I have a ridiculously long to-read list on Goodreads . . . it’s insane. And to add to the insanity, every time I add a book to that list because of a blogger, I put the blogger’s name in the “recommender” field of the web form. I’ve been tracking recommendations from the moment I started blogging in November 2009. (Oh the nerdery!) Which means, with some sorting, I can list off some five-star reads and the blogger responsible.
In no particular order:
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (Ana of things mean a lot)
The River of No Return by Bee Ridgway (Alice of Reading Rambo)
The Rose Garden by Susanna Kearsley (Eva of The Charm of It)
Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven by Susan Jane Gilman (Kim of Sophisticated Dorkiness)
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (raych of books i done read)
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Heather of Capricious Reader)
The Inn at Lake Devine by Elinor Lipman (Thomas of Hogglestock):
Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn (Michelle of Fluttering Butterflies)
And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts (Jenny of Reading the End)
The Arrival by Shaun Tan (Leslie of Regular Rumination)
This is by no means a complete list of worthy recommendations I have received, but it makes me happy to give some specific examples of bloggers who connected me with great books.
Before I close out this post, I want to give an additional shout-out to the bloggers who are most guilty for the lengthy state of my to-read list. I counted, and the bloggers with the highest amount of recommendations in my to-read list are (in order):
Eva (The Charm of It), the combined force of Teresa and Jenny (Shelf Love), Ana (things mean a lot), Jenny (Reading the End), Aarti (Booklust), Jackie (Farm Lane Books), Kim (Sophisticated Dorkiness), Maphead, and Claire (Captive Reader).
I fully expect to find more books that I love thanks to their recommendations!
A Good Stopping Point 
So many good books and good bloggers here! I’m pretty sure Thomas got me to buy The Inn at Lake Devine, but I have yet to read it.
When Thomas really likes a book – especially a relatively recent one like The Inn at Lake Devine – I pay attention. š
Lonesome Dove is an awesome book, wasn’t it? I got Ella Minnow Pea because of a blogger recommendation as well, but I haven’t read it yet. Glad to see you liked it.
More people need to read Lonesome Dove – I found it so addicting. Hope you enjoy Ella Minnow Pea!
I recognize a bunch of those bloggers and agree that they give good recommendations. If we only had time to read them all, right?
If only! Sigh.
Wow it is so awesome that you keep track of who recommends you books! I really need to do that!
I looked and I have several from you as well including Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy which I can’t believe I haven’t read yet.
That’s a very smart move – I never thought of tracking book bloggers on the recommenders field! Going to start doing it right this minute. BBAW is teaching me so many things š
Glad to share the tip! BBAW has been such a boost!
I love Susanna Kearsley! I am so happy to see other people loving her, too!
I’ve only read two by her, and already know that she’s an author I can depend on for a good read.
First — thank you thank you thank you for sharing all these links for cool new blogs to check out. #BBAW has been a GREAT way for me to find new-to-me book blogs.
Also, I’m fascinated that you actually do use the Goodreads “recommended by” feature. It’s such a smart idea, but I didn’t even realize until recently that it was a thing! I did a little survey on book rec habits last month and one of the questions was about this very thing — and it turns out only about 17% of people who responded keep track of recommendations like this! Here’s the survey I’m talking about: http://www.lonestaronalark.com/2016/02/book-recommendations-series-survey.html
Glad to introduce you to some blogs! and thanks for sharing a link to the results of the survey you ran – good topic choice, since the giving and receiving of book recommendations is a topic near and dear to a book blogger’s heart. I don’t think it surprises me that not everyone uses Goodreads’ recommended by feature. It’s not a prominent feature (and I’m not sure it’s easy to populate on a mobile device).
Ooo, I am excited to appear on your most recommends list! Your strategy of using Goodreads to keep track of recommendations is so smart. I struggle with that, in part because I don’t love using Goodreads and in part because having a long list (even digital) of recommendations sometimes overwhelms me. But I didn’t realize they had a recommender tab, I am going to have to look into that for sure.
You and Maphead’s blog are my main blogger sources of non-fic recommendations. The Goodreads recommender field is a little clunky to use, I’ll say – after adding a book to my to-read, I have to hit the “edit review” option from the book’s page and the field is available to populate from that point. But then it becomes an option for sorting your read and to-read list by, which is pretty cool.