Reading is my poison. This is how I like to get my information, my entertainment, my emotional and intellectual kicks. I don’t think it’s superior to other methods of doing these things, it’s just what I prefer (OK, maybe I think it’s a little superior, but really, not by much). Books, newspapers, magazines, I like them all.

When it comes to reading blogs, however, I was a relatively late adopter. Partly because I loved magazines so much: when at university, I seriously considered begging on the street with a sign “HAVE SPENT ALL MONEY ON BRITISH VOGUE PLEASE HELP NEED US EDITION”. But after years of reading, I grew disillusioned with women’s magazines. Not that I didn’t notice their shortcomings before, I certainly did, but at some point they started to actively annoy me. The beauty pages were (are) especially bad, with their straight-from-marketing-materials miracle creams and sexy perfumes.

Enter Now Smell This, the formidable web resource for all things perfume. I no longer remember how I found it, but it was the first blog-like thing I started to follow and I still read it daily. It is a news portal, web magazine, blog, database and forum, all in one. I suddenly discovered not only a whole new way of looking at perfume (and became obsessed as a result), but a lovely community I could never have imagined before. I think Now Smell This must be one of the nicest places to hang out on the Internet – although at least some interest in perfume is probably required.

Through NST, I discovered a host of other interesting perfume blogs, the greatest among them Victoria’s wonderful Bois de Jasmin. In format, it’s more of a classic blog and features reviews and general musings on perfume and other pleasures. This is another one I still read every day and never plan to stop. It also profoundly influenced my thinking on what a proper blog can and should be like: always intelligent, exceptionally well written, with a coherent approach and tone of voice, about sharing something, rather than making money. And that one should ALWAYS respond to comments.

After these first favourites, I have slowly been adding to my small Blog Hall of Fame. Caroline Hirons is almost single handedly responsible for my skincare ideology, built on what I learned from Sali Hughes’s blog-like columns in The Guardian (now she also has her own web site). My absolute favourite make-up blog, Drivel About Frivol, seems to be on a hiatus at the moment, but I still check every week, hoping that Kate’s witty, extremely detailed posts on (mostly) Japanese make-up will return. That level of fun, honesty and analysis is something mainstream magazines just cannot provide – even if they did get rid of the influence of advertisers. Most readers just aren’t interested enough (and most writers not as talented).

In other areas, I’m pretty well served by traditional media. I still read The Economist for politics and The Guardian for football (although I love Arseblog as well) and Hadley Freeman and enjoy Delicious Magazine’s take on food. For books, there are many good sources: The Paris Review and The New York Review of Books for serious/obscure stuff and several newspapers for everyday reading. For my very specific fix of feminist science-fiction and fantasy, however, I rely on Liz Bourke’s brilliant Sleeps With Monsters. Again, this is something a major daily is not likely to cover.

So in general, I turn to blogs when mainstream channels are unlikely to talk about the subject at all or do it in much less detail than I’d like or in a stupid, uncritical way. The other reason is, of course, that I like the voices and attitudes of the bloggers I follow. It’s not because of brand names I visit Man Repeller, but for the enthusiasm she feels for weird fashion. I’m pretty sure a significant amount of Bois de Jasmin readers are half in love with Victoria (and rightly so). Sometimes it’s quite strange, how well I know the style/scent/book/food preferences of people I have never met, but it’s also nice. It’s a new kind of connection, the sunny side of the Internet: finding people who are interested in the same things you are and who talk about them like you would, only in a smarter and wittier way, with nicer pictures.