In preparation for World Vegan Day (today!) I’ve been looking at some of the best resources for new and aspiring vegans. I posted a list of really good free vegan starter guides on the examiner site this past week and a list of five of my favorite new cookbooks over there as well.

Continuing with that theme, here are five blogs that I love. It’s not that easy to choose. I subscribe to around 50 blogs (including a fair number from the meat and dairy industry). I don’t read them all every day, of course, but there are a few from the vegan community that I never miss. In choosing my favorites, I’m not including blogs devoted to food and recipes because there are so many great ones. And some of those are on my blog roll to the left.

Here are five vegan blogs that I highly recommend.

Vegan.com: It’s the Vegan New York Times—that is, all the vegan news that’s fit to print. Erik Marcus updates his blog as many as three or four times per day with the latest news related to veganism and animal rights. Erik is a good writer who distills big concepts into a few words, so his posts are short and to the point. He provides commentary and opinions on everything from new vegan books to the latest events on the animal agriculture front. Whether you agree with his take on the issues or not, you’ll be entertained and informed.

Digging Through The Dirt: Tracy Habenicht sifts through the misinformation in the news in order to provide a more accurate view of what is going on in the world of animal agriculture, animal rights, and the environment. She covers a lot of material in her blog—it’s not always about animal rights—but she is on top of the news as it relates to animal use and she provides great perspective. Her blog is well-written and always a quick, thought-provoking read.

The Grumpy Vegan: The nice thing about Kim Stallwood’s blog is that, if you get tired of reading about veganism, you can dip into Kim’s recommendations for “pubs what the Grumpy Vegan likes.” I don’t actually know how grumpy Kim is (I met him once and he seemed perfectly genial), but I do know that he is a smart experienced activist who has been involved in animal rights since the 1970s. (He’s a former executive director of PETA and was editor of The Animals’ Agenda.) Kim’s blog includes an assortment of posts related to animal rights, England, the aforementioned pubs, etc, all written in an amusing third person voice.

Jack Norris, RD: When I have a question about vegan nutrition, I have a very short list of (three) people to whom I go. Jack is one of them. Wow—he knows a lot about vegan diets! He doesn’t post very often to his blog, but if you want to know everything that is going on in the world of vegan nutrition, you really do need to subscribe to it.

Animal Righter Mat Thomas provides long thoughtful posts two or three times a month on a wide variety of issues related to animal rights and welfare. He’s a good writer with in depth knowledge of his topics. A nice feature of this blog is that many of the posts have a “What You Can Do” section relating the topic to activism. He always provides interesting perspective based on his considerable experience as an animal activist.