Getting Started!

I love my Kindle. There, it’s out there. Sure, I’ve always been a big reader, but between the inconvenience of having to go to Chapters every 3 days only to find they didn’t have what I wanted, or the wait for an Amazon package requiring me to pick it up at my parents’ home (since I’m in an apartment building), I never read nearly as many new releases as I do now. At any given time I have 15-20 books stashed in my “To Be Read” collection and can pick whichever I want depending on my mood. The most inconvenient thing about the Kindle is that some of the books I’d like to read aren’t available in Canada, but in that case, too bad publishers, you lost that sale.

Almost all the books I read now I’ve come to via book blogs or podcasts and I’m reading more quality genre fiction than ever. This year my goal is 100 new books and I am blowing through that goal very quickly.

For a while now I’ve been interested in the idea of a blog, but never felt strongly enough about a particular topic to make the blog last. I’m an aspiring writer, but much of the “aspiring” part results in being cranky at myself for not doing better and that hardly makes for a good blog. Then it hit me: why couldn’t I review some of the books I’m reading?

Part of wanting to be a writer is studying the craft through reading. Sure, not every book is going to teach me something new, but every good story can make one think about why it worked and I can learn from that too. So while I plan to review the books themselves, I will also have a special section on what my writer-self saw as particularly notable. In some cases this will probably be a case of what not to do. So that’s the plan. Each book will have a general, spoiler-free review, followed by what my Inner Writer thought and then if something particularly stands out to me (as a writer or as a reader), but is spoilery, a special section for that as well.

I won’t review every book I read, as some stand out more than others. No one is interested in a review that says “Well, I liked it, but it was nothing special”. If you’re interested in everything I’m reading, I always post a star rating on my GoodReads page and you can follow me there.