Thinking Blogger Award

Thinking Blogger Award

Marc at Spinning Clio Has given me a Thinking Blogger award!! I'm so flattered, especially as I've been a little derelict in my blogging duties of late. Anyway, that means is that he thinks my blog is "thought-provoking." Since I've accepted the award, I now have to follow the rules:

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
   
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

So here are my five awards. I'm not going to mention some of the more confessional blogs I read all the time, not because they don't make me think, but because some blogs seems to me the kind of things that are still sort of private -- we meet those bloggers through friends, and there are few "strangers" who come by. Some of these I read every day, some less often. When I do read them, these are the blogs that are most likely to make me stop and mull things over. Honestly, though, I don't read many blogs that don't make me think. And I could easily name more than five. My choices are mostly ones that my normal readers might not read as often as I do and that represent a range of the types of blogs I read. I'm kind of annoyed, because I had to leave a lot of blogs out. So here's my list:

1. Tim Burke's Easily Distracted. Tim's an African historian, and a fantastic writer. He also has an interest in sff, (well, mostly sf) which results in posts that are not only interesting, but warm the cockles of my heart. I met Tim at AHA a couple of years ago. He speaks as he writes, which to me is amazing, because I can be hugely inarticulate. It would annoy me, if he weren't so darned nice!
   
2. Dean Dad, at Confessions of a Community College Dean. Dean Dad is sensible and smart. His blog combines academic life with daily life. The comment threads are filled with fantastic conversations -- and arguments -- about how colleges handle administrative decisions, hiring, and the faculty-admin divide. There's a "been there, done that" universal experience quality to it that I love.
   
3. This next one's an 800-lb gorilla of a blog, but it's one I've been reading for as long as I've been blogging: Crooked Timber. CT also did a lot to confirm for me that I wasn't a total academic fraud -- when a bunch of working academics in a broad range of fields talk to you as an equal, especially when you are in the hell that is The Job Search, it can do a lot of good. I need to get back over there today -- John Holbo has posted on Frankenstein, but in a way that will doubtless spark conversations on public domain, authoritative editions, etc.
   
4. Dr Crazy, at Reassigned Time, is another thought-provoker. I find her posts on teaching and finding balance in the life of a single academic resonate with me and give me lots of ideas for how to re-frame my approach to my own teaching and life.
   
5. My last award goes to another heavy-hitting group blog: Making Light. Nielsen Haydens, sff, and politics, all rolled into one. I especially like Making Light because so many of the posts are things that just don't often get above the radar. And, well, politics and sff. I don't go to cons, although the ones with academic panels where my friends present are really tempting. But that's really only the matter of not having had the money to do it when I had friends who did (Some of my friends and I formed a Star Trek club in 7th grade, which eventually expanded to broader sff -- one of the co-founders -- and a first real crush on a genius -- now teaches condensed matter theory at a big midwestern university), and not having any friends who would go when I had the money. Now I have both (sort of, on the $ side), but I feel like that part of life has passed me by. I'm not a fan-girl, and I feel stupid next to the academics. Making light helps me feel like I haven't entirely lost that. Maybe I'll even get to where I feel I can comment there!

So that's my list of awards. I think I'm supposed to let them know. I hope you find them all thought-provoking, too.