I love a good book

Hello and welcome to my little website with book reviews and someday maybe some short (or long) original stories. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

I like to read, and I love a good book. I like to get lost in the pages, imagine what the characters look like, picture it all in my mind, and escape from my real life for however long a book lets me.

I’ve been reading since 1973, if you believe the stories my parents tell about me. Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary were my favorite authors as a child. I read way too many V.C. Andrews books in the 80s (why were we reading those books…), and Sophie Kinsella and Helen Fielding were my faves in the 90s/early 2000s. (Someday I will write a review of the entire Shopaholic series as I think I’ve read it, start to finish, at least 5 times.) Currently, I think Katherine Center is my #1, but Emily Giffin and Kristin Hannah are right up there too.

I am married to a man who doesn’t read books. He owns them, and they look nice in his grandfather’s antique glass-door bookshelf, but no reading. (I think that just means all the book money is for me.) I have two kids that are both readers, which makes me immensely happy. They’re not little, they’re in their late 20s actually, but some of my favorite things to remember about them as littles was bedtime storytime. The #1 book of the late 90s/early 00s for those two – Just Shopping with Mom by Mercer Mayer. I think I still have that one memorized.

Ok so back to why I’m here. Back to why this website exists.

I spend a lot of my day sitting in front of a computer and sometimes I put Youtube on for background noise. I had a long phase where I mostly watched 90s grunge bands in concert (the archive of video of this era is wonderfully massive) or sewing videos (I make my own clothes). Then I think I must have searched for something book related because it started serving up videos related to books, or I guess what’s known as BookTube.And some of what I watched was pretty interesting but there was a lot of toxicity too.

All of these platforms where people could just share positive stuff are also platforms where people anonymously lash out at other people for dumb shit like not believing how many books they read in a year OR giant 30-book hauls OR long rants about not counting audiobooks as books. It’s really gross.

Since I know how all of the monetization of that toxic content works, because my day job is to teach exactly that to college seniors and graduate students, I decided to make this website to just sit in positive opposition to all of… that.

This is a blog about good books that I read. That’s it. There is no way to engage. You can’t leave a comment and tell me you agree, and you can’t tell me I’m wrong either. You can’t tell someone who says I’m wrong that you think they’re wrong. We’ve got enough places where people can engage. If you want to tell me how much you hate what I have to say, you’re going to have to just yell it to the clouds. Or I guess you could email me if you really want to. I probably won’t respond.

I’m also not collecting data and selling it to anyone. I dont and won’t use the Google or Facebook marketing pixels either. You deserve something to read where you aren’t being tracked. If you’re visiting, I can tell someone has been here, but I can’t tell that it’s you, or what your suspected hair color is, or whether or not you can swim, or what your maybe location is or what the last thing you bought from Amazon is. Again, I teach this to college students and I know how it all works, and more importantly, I know how to not do it. I’m not so sure anyone else does any more.

None of the links on the site are monetized. Someday I might add affiliate links but they will be transparently labeled. So if you want to click one, cool. But you can also just type the name of the book in wherever you buy your books or go to your local bookstore and buy the book too. My links won’t be to ANY big corporations, not even the biggest one. They’ll be to B-corps and small businesses that deserve your attention too.

You also won’t get the cookie popup that you get on so many sites, because the only cookies around here have real choccy chips and came from the kitchen. Or Costco. No tracking cookies at all.

I get most of the books I read through the Maricopa County and Pima County library systems in Arizona. I buy some of them from Kobo books (I use Kobo readers for my e-books) and have an audiobook annual subscription at Libro.fm. I am also signed up for NetGalley and occasionally get a free copy of a book for review. I’ll make a note on a review where that is the case. Getting a free book doesn’t = good review. In fact, if it isn’t any good, I don’t usually finish it.

For the books I received from a publisher or NetGalley – if I didn’t think those books were any good, I let the publisher know through feedback. I don’t write a public review. I might drop the cover on the DNF list, though I’m debating removing the page alogether.

If you got all the way to the end of this, thanks for reading all of my ramblings. I really am glad you found my site and I’m glad you read books.