This is probably a book review blog.

I set a book reading goal in 2024. Choking on a smog of inertia about life, purpose, and people, it was one thing to do that I knew I’d enjoy even in failure. Nice, low stakes.

Something I’m learning as I find myself in a limbo stage of life… low stakes can be “self-care” if you include essential oils.

So, I read books that year and then I’ve kept going. I read excellent, beautiful, compelling books. I meet authors, ideas, history, politics, and so many questions. Eventually, they have come spilling out of me like the stone tapped for water in the desert in some parable or the Bible or maybe it was that they couldn’t get water because it was a stone…?

It led me here. Because there is only so much amazement one can keep inside! Because my partner can only eat one dinner per day while I gush about the feats of magic that novelists do with language! Because, if I’m to be my own audience, I can at least give myself an enjoyable medium and I’m not a fan of scrapbooking.

Let’s be clear. This won’t be a place for hard hitting book reviews by trained book critics who can talk about novels against the context of literary history from an academic podium. It’s just me here and I’m not one of those people. (Le sigh.) I imagine this URL, this spot on the internet, to be my little soapbox in a bustling town square. A place you stop on your way to get a coffee and hear me evangelize about “discovering” great writing on my own and somewhat accidentally. What I lack in formal literary education, I might make up for in zeal. There is a world out there of people who know what magic has been created over centuries in the written word. (They are fascinating, lovable, and intimidating.) It is tempting to assume I am the only person who managed to miss it until later in life despite all the public education my lil’ ol’ heart could handle. However, I don’t think so.

I think if there is a me there are probably some you out there. Folks who have heard names like James Baldwin, Dostoevsky, and Flannery O’Connor our whole lives but never actually read them, much less been taught how to read them. This place will be whatever happens when one of those people meets those writers and can’t help but holler about it to anyone passing by.

If you are here, I’m glad you could join me… Have you read any good books lately?

– HR