A few words on what you'll find here...

So, far, the books I've mentioned here have had to do with religion, serial killers, rock and roll. Oh, and then there was the mystery novel.

This might be causing you to wonder about what you might be seeing here in the future. What kinds of books I'm going to review, what kind of other reading material I might write about, that sort of thing.

The short answer is: Almost anything.

No. Really. I'll read almost anything. Fiction and non-fiction. Oh, I have my favorites, of course. I read a lot of history and current affairs, and quite a bit of anthropology and the other social sciences. My education was in anthropology, with an emphasis in the anthropology of religion, so there will be some of that. In fiction, my favorite genres are science ficiton and fantasy and mysteries. But I do not limit myself to those genres and topics. Right now, I've got a book about trilobites on my to-read pile, as well as a couple of books about conspiracy theories (one advancing them and one debunking them), a memoir by an Iranian woman, and a Russian science fiction (or maybe it's fantasy) novel in translation. And those are just the books I've got out of the library right now.

Besides writing about the specific books I'm reading now, am getting ready to read, or have read in the past, I also plan to write about the topic of reading in general. Because, and I'll be frank about it, I think that most people don't read enough.

I'll probably also be writing about libraries from time to time. I love libraries. I use them all the time, and I think more people should use their public libraries more often. I'll likely also write about bookstores and their somewhat precarious position these days.

Another thing I hope to do here is to point you all toward interesting things to read on the internet. I love books, but there is also a lot of information to read on the 'net. Even entire books, free for the reading. When I find those, I'll tell you about them.

So, you'll just have to come back and check, to see what I'm on about on any particular day. Of course, I won't promise that I will post new content every single day. I do have a day job that I have to keep up, after all. But I'll be around most days, even if it's just to let you know what I'm reading and to see if you've dropped any recommendations of your own into comments. Which I really hope you will do. I'm always looking for more good things to read.

By way of introduction...

I read a lot. Or, anyway, I used to read a lot, before that inconvenient thing called the Real World got in the way. Even at that, I read a lot more than most people do. However...

I used to read between 50 and 100 books per year. A few less when I was in school, but still more than the maybe 20 full books I read in 2010. I’m not sure of the exact number this year because it was so embarrassingly few that I quit keeping track.

But then the aforementioned real life got serious, and between one thing and another, my book count dropped dramatically and it has been difficult to get back to my normal reading habits. There is still work, there are still knit nights, and movies to watch and SCA events to attend. But there is more time to read than I've been devoting to reading. And many more books out there than anyone could possibly get through in ten lifetimes.

So, I decided that I need a place to log my reading, to write about what I've been reading and what my reading is moving me to think about, and to get feedback from other folks about what they're reading.

This is that place.