Susan Hill, prolific author of the Simon Serrailler books, has posted a strident defence of book blogs on her website:

The idea that those of us who blog about books and reading might somehow be degrading literary taste is a patronizing and ridiculous one. We are writing about books we love. Why on earth should we not do that in a blog, as anywhere else, and improve literary taste, whatever ‘literary taste’ means ?...The fact is that the tide has turned and the people have power now. Not that we do it in order to have ‘power’, we do it because we love books and want to recommend a wealth of them to others, so that they may enjoy them and for no other reason. We do it for nothing and for fun and for the book/literature. And to demonstrate that the many - with honourable exceptions - arrogant, lazy, stuck-in-the-mud, cliquey little set of literary editors, and/or ‘mandarins’ are now almost totally irrelevant.

Susan is also experimenting with a Book Bloggers Book Prize. If you run a book blog you can send Susan your nominations for the best book of 2006. The current nominations can be found here.

What books would you nominate?

(Thanks to Book World for the link.)