Welcome! This is Worlds Between Words, a book review blog started by yours truly. First things first, thank you for visiting! There are approximately 80 billion book review blogs out there, so I truly do appreciate your taking a moment to check out this one. (Yes, there will be puns; no, I will not apologize for them.)
But why should you stay? What can you expect from this nascent blog? Who am I? All excellent questions; you are a very smart person, which is one of the reasons you should bookmark this page and return to it often, even if there’s no new content, and link to it in any various social media you might use with high praise and recommendations.
In seriousness (or at least, semi-seriousness), my goal for this blog is to introduce you to a number of books and hope that you will also want to engage and share your thoughts on specific titles I review, authors you love, or just revel in the awesomeness that is reading. I’m willing to guess that you’re here because you a) want to know if a book is worth reading; b) you already read a book, read a bunch of Goodread reviews, Googled more reviews, and just continued to search for more viewpoints about it or c) you were assigned a book for a class and are hoping that I will give you the answers for the essay question(s) that go along with it. To address the c readers first: “[Book Title] is a story about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity. [Author] inspired me to look past the ordinary and the expected, and in honor of that gift, the rest of this essay will discuss [random topic you like].” [Disclaimer: If you actually do this, your teacher/professor may chuckle, but then fail you for not doing the assignment, as they should. However, if you’re looking at book blogs to get the answer, trust me, you’re better of failing with your own original work than plagiarizing.]
With that out of the way, the goal of this blog is to provide you with a spoiler-free* overview of a book I’ve recently read, provide my thoughts on it, and perhaps bring up other books you might like if you enjoyed this one. Depending on the book, I may post a specific spoiler space where I can talk about major plot points and people can discuss it there if they’d like. I would love for folks to comment on each post (in a friendly, kind, non-spammy way), but please be mindful of those who haven’t yet read the book if you’re commenting on a non-spoiler space. (And no shouting please. Use your library voice. And check out the rules for commenting.)
Finally, who the heck am I that you should care about what I think? Quick version: I have a Ph.D. in history, I’ve always loved reading, I used to write reviews of academic books, and now that I’ve delved back into mostly fiction, I wanted to share my thoughts on those too. I buy and read books by the bushel, so I figured that as long as I’m reading them, I might as well share my thoughts on them to as wide an audience as I can. I really, truly hope that you find some new favorite authors or find that book that makes you say, “just one more chapter” until it’s 3 a.m. and you finally remember that you have to get up in a few hours or find a space where you can just relax for a few minutes and enjoy sharing a love of reading. I also have a photography blog (wanderingdryadphotography.com), which I hope you might also visit from time to time, and where I’ve posted an occasional book review along with my photography. But I decided that embracing another blog project would be an easier way for people to bookmark and search and browse posts that caught their attention, especially for those times where you’re at the library or the bookstore and know that there was a book you really wanted to get, but your brain has betrayed you and now you can’t remember what it was except maybe there was the word “Hunger” in it? (Did I link to the book you were thinking of? I’ll be reviewing it eventually!)
So yeah, hopefully this is just a fun little book nook for you. In addition to specific book reviews, I’ll also likely include posts on reading in general, memories of particular books that were especially meaningful to me at certain points in my life, things of that nature. Grab your blanket, grab your tea or coffee or wine or whatever, find a cozy spot to curl up in, and let’s get reading!