Too Much of a Muchness? I Say All Book Discussions are Good Book Discussions

I was checking out Omnivoracious' (Omnivoracious's?) YA Wednesday post and they mentioned the School Library Journal Battle of the Books and Jill Wolfson's post expressing a little fed-upedness.

On the one hand, I don't blame her at all. She's right that a relatively small selection of books each year receive the attention, the reviews, the awards lists, and maybe it does seem like the beloved Neil Gaiman is sucking up all the oxygen on the planet. But as a regular reader of Neil's blog, I don't think so. He is, like other well-known author/bloggers such as Meg Cabot, Mo Willems, and John Scalzi to select a few from my blogroll, modest about success, very clear about the business of selling the books, and quite generous in mentioning and linking to others.

Everywhere I go online, I'm adding books to my TBR list (currently standing at 770, thanks for asking). Everywhere I go online, say the School Library Journal, I'm following clever comments and links to more blogs, to discover more people who can recommend the kind of books I want to read. As it is, I'm pretty much in charge of finding books for my mother, mother-in-law, husband, 9-year-old daughter, and 7-year-old daughter, so I'm always searching for pretty nearly everything. Except board books.

But what about other people? Do y'all feel like you can't get offbeat suggestions? Are the Neil Gaimans using up all the oxygen? Feel free to mention a book title you've never seen mentioned elsewhere, or a blog or website you find helpful. And if you read YA, be sure to check out Jill's book, Cold Hands, Warm Heart. Promote yourself, promote a friend, or just argue with me.