I received my first ever blog award last week! And before I had time to write up this post, I received it twice more. I figured it was time to get this written before more among the April Platform Challenge peeps figure that I’m due.

The book bloggers were well and truly over the whole blog award thing before I ever came on the scene, judging by the number of times that I come across comment forms that declare “This is an Award-Free Zone.” As much fun as it is to get an award, you can kind of see that it would get old pretty quickly to write posts like this nominating other blogs for the award. And, it might get pretty circular after awhile.

On the other hand, as we learned during the April Platform Challenge at My Name is Not Bob, linking to other blogs is a terrific way to build community.

In order to open the circle a little bit, I’m going to give my five nominations to book bloggers who started about the same time that I did or after. I figure that they, like me, missed out on the award-giving trend in the book-blogging world and might get a kick out of it.

Plus, I would like to introduce some of my new writing friends who participated in the April Platform Challenge to some more book bloggers. We can help you. We are your audience.

According to the people who nominated me, there are 4 rules to follow when receiving the Liebster Blog Award:

1. Thank the one who nominated you by linking back.
2. Nominate five blogs with fewer than 200 followers.
3. Let your nominees know by leaving a comment on their sites.
4. Add the award image to your site.

So, item 1, thank you Anne of Life on the Funny Farm who was certainly the funniest writer to participate in the April Platform Challenge, Gerry Wilson whose descriptive prose exudes warmth and enthusiasm, and Sarah of sarahscapes who writes beautiful evocative poetry. I’m so honored to be nominated by three such different people who appreciated different things about the way I work.

And, item 2, here are my five nominees for the Liebster Blog award:

Martha at Hey, I want to read that writes with wit and whimsy about books with lovely covers featuring beautiful houses and dresses.

The Brunette Librarian is a fellow Missouri librarian who loves books about strong women and reads them quickly so there’s always something new on her blog.

Alysia of My Little Pocketbooks is not new to book blogging since she’s one of the powers behind Mocha Girls Read, but her new personal blog gives her a chance to join book blogger memes and write more personal reviews.

Libby at libbysbookblog reads a variety of books–literary, nonfiction, classics. She participates in two of my favorite book blog memes (Weekend Cooking and Wondrous Words Wednesday) as well writing really fun things for a meme called the Trifecta Writing Challenge.

Julie at ReadHanded is another eclectic reader. She writes outstanding summaries of the books she reads.

I’m off to tell the winners (item 3), having already posted the image at the top of this post (item 4).