My Fab 5

Thanks to Trop50 for sponsoring my writing about fabulous bloggers. This year Trop50 is granting 50 Fabulous Wishes. Click here to enter for a chance to win $1,000 to celebrate a friend with a refreshing attitude about looking and feeling fabulous! // Thus ends the section I did not write.

(If you’re looking for today’s 50 for 50 post, it is right below this one.)

A lot of bloggers are doing this post, taking the assignment of picking five fabulous bloggers. Anyone who has been around blogging as long as I have knows this is a hard task, a real Sophie’s choice. I have over 100 blogs left in my feed reader, and this is AFTER a lot of ruthless pruning. So five.

How do I decide? Do I pick people that I love and know in real life? Writers that I love? People I love but who don’t have the readership they deserve? Blogs I love even though they have a huge readership and don’t need my little bit of publicity?

It just so happens that LaurieWrites already did her list, and four out of her five bloggers are people I would have chosen (the other one is me). So you can go over and read Laurie’s list and get 80% more fun! It’s like a great bloggers clearance rack!

I feel it is only right to pick Laurie for my #1 spot, not in the spirit of logrolling, but because I’ve been reading her for several years now and her writing just keeps getting better and better. True. Every time I click over there lately, she has posted something exceptionally smart, thoughtful, honest and well-written. She’s also a good, good friend who has shared many laughs and laments and WTF? and OMG!s with me via IM and DM and text message. I love her for herself, but I admire her for her writing and photography.

Laurie and me in Ojai. Can you guess who is who?

#2 Flurrious. I am determined to get this woman more attention. I want everyone to read her. She deserves to get a million dollars a month in ad revenue and sit home in her PJs writing posts. She doesn’t post often, but when she does, it is worth waiting for. She makes me laugh harder than anyone on the internet, and that includes Jenny the Bloggess and Hyperbole and a Half (see how I snuck two extra bloggers in there? SNEAKY!).

She doesn’t work the social media the way some bloggers do. She doesn’t ever post photos of herself, she doesn’t tweet and as far as I know, she has never expressed any interest in going to a blog conference. But read this and you’ll know why I have such great love for her blog. (I must say at this point that I went over and got sucked into reading her archives and spent a good half an hour over there. The posts are ALL good, so feel free to start anywhere.)

#3 Blogography. Dave’s brain is just enough like mine to make me feel smug and self-righteous when I read and agree with him, and just different enough to make his blog fascinating. He is insanely talented; he has 1000 interests; he’s irascible and cranky at the human race. He’s awesome.

#4 The Trephine. She used to be someone else, and now she is this. She is still a good read, a writer who is evocative, funny, smart and brave. Consider this post excerpt, which is from a field guide to different types of personals ads:

PRETENDING TO BE TOO COOL FOR PERSONAL ADS BUT PROBABLY JUST LAZY
I am too amazing and complex to be summed up in paragraphs so I won’t even try. You should similarly recognize the futility of this exercise and just message me, hopefully with considerably more effort than I just exerted.

ALMOST COMICALLY INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM ANY OTHER HUMAN BEING ALIVE
I like fun. I enjoy going out, staying in, and eating food that tastes good. I also enjoy snuggling and laughing. Sometimes I watch movies. I live in a house and have a job. The first thing people usually notice about me would have to be my smile, my eyes, or my unique inability to pick myself out of a lineup. (My friends could, though, and they claim I am attractive, with a great sense of humor.)

#5 Doves Today. Glennia writes a travelogue of Los Angeles, from Los Angeles, with other posts thrown in for good measure. She has a keen eye for details that others might miss. She loads her posts up with many fine photos, historical details, and observations.

There are more, of course, and I feel bad about leaving them out. But the assignment was for 5 blogs and only 5. If you ever need recommendations for whom to read, just ask me, because I can make many great recommendations.

And here begins more stuff I did not write:

Don’t forget to enter the 50 Fabulous Wishes contest for a chance to win $1,000 to celebrate a friend with a refreshing attitude about looking and feeling fabulous. I was selected for this Tropicana Trop50 sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do. I received compensation to use and facilitate my post. // I normally do not use the word “facilitate.” Someone else wrote that bit.