meme: bloggers who think, bloggers who make me think

Way back in June Jimmy was tagged with a meme that asks you to give a 'thinking blogger' award to five bloggers and he was kind enough to include me on his list. (Thanks!) Of course then I got busy and the meme slipped down my 'to do' list, as did posting in general for a while. But now here is my own list of 5 thinking bloggers. The button below is for them to include on their sidebar, if they want to. Either way I hope they'll take the time to pass the award on to five more thinking bloggers, but I know not everyone's into memes and such.

The fool makes me think about life and love and poetry. He tends to come at subjects from an unexpected angle and is one of several bloggers I consistently find myself wishing I knew in real life. He also connects with nature in a way that is deeply interesting to me ~ sometimes I feel I can relate and other times his experience seem alien to my own.

Lolo makes me think about food in a more creative way. I find vegetarian cooking limited, so vegan cuisine always seemed impossibly so. But everything on her blog looks so delicious that I'm starting to think that I've just lacked imagination. Of course all the herbivores out there are saying, 'well, duh. Of course you can eat well with only vegan ingredients...' but hey, I do live in the land of the backyard barbeque, so cut me some slack. :) Anyway, go salivate and here's a quick plug for her upcoming cookbook.

Soulemama and her family are lovely and a little alternative. I'm a city girl and I like that. I don't grow a garden, or knit, and my artwork is usually created on the computer. Reading about her life is like going back (or perhaps more aptly, forward) in time, or moving to another country, so different is it from the one that I'm living. When I read her blog and look at her children in beautiful homemade clothes, interacting with nature and generally tackling their world hands-on, I feel like I'm reading a wonderfully illustrated children's picture book, the kind you always keep handy because your kids want you to read it over and over. She probably doesn't realise that she pushes me to explore my own creative processes and think outside the box about my life. She has a cool book coming out next year that I'll probably buy as a gift for a couple of families I know, but her store is closed for the summer, so you'll have to check that out later.

Dave writes a blog called How to Save the World. This guy is super-prolific, so much so that I sometimes can't keep up with reading all he writes. His topics vary quite a bit, but it's all about making the world a better place and it puts me in the mood to read, talk to people, learn more and act. I have no idea where he finds the time, but I'm glad he does.

Of the eight or so 'debt reduction blogs' I read, Tricia's is my favourite. I like her particular mix of news, personal experience and creative ideas. I actually started a blog about debt reduction, but in the end I realised that I wasn't saying anything that wasn't already out there. Tricia is almost halfway to zero debt and I'm learning a lot going along for the ride.

Obviously there are a lot more people that could have made this list. It's isn't a 'top 5' list; it's just a '5' list. I also avoided bloggers that I know have been tagged previously. They already have a 'thinking blogger' button. And rightly so.