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About Me

I am a reader, writer, and reviewer.  I've been a reader since I was a wee thing:  the moment I could look at the words on the page of the book my mother was reading to me and understand them and read them back to her.  (Probably starting with my favorite storybook at the time, Rain Makes Applesauce by Julian Scheer, illustrated by Marvin Bileck.)  I started my writing career concurrently with my reading one, with my first stories transcribed by my mother as I was too young to have the necessary writing skills.  I've only come to reviewing, though, in the past few years, and I've only been a blogger for, well, less than a month.  I guess you could say I'm late to the party.

As you can probably tell, I'm an eclectic reader.  Nearly every genre interests me, though I am fondest of sci-fi/fantasy, historical fiction, mystery/thriller, humor, YA... you know, it might be easier to list what I'm not fondest of!  Um, I would say military and political-based fiction, but I'm open to anything that might change my opinion.

I'm also a traditionalist.  I love print books:  hardcover, softcover, small books, big books, flip books, books infused with scent, interactive books (you know, the kind with inserts, facsimile letters, maps, pull-outs, all that good stuff--this is probably my favorite kind of book)--doesn't matter, I love 'em all.  I love the smell of the paper, the ink, the leather or cloth or paper bindings; I love the feel of the pages as I turn them, the deckled edges, the marbled end papers.  I even love cheap paperbacks whose spines crease the moment you open them.  It doesn't matter in what form they come, it's the experience of picking up a book, curling up in a comfy chair, and losing oneself in the story for a couple of hours which matters.  And libraries!  Oh, don't get me started on libraries.  The air of anticipation, the smell of all those collected tomes, exuding the musty-warm scent of wood pulp, dyes and ink, and incipient mildew, reminding us of the frailty and limited lifespan of our folio friends.

That said, I am aware of the technology which has given us digital books, though, once upon a time, I swore I'd never read them.  I despised them, I reviled them, I cursed the day they arrived on the scene and lamented them as the harbingers of death for print books.  Then I got a Kindle Fire.  Yeah, I may not be cheap, but I am easy; all it took was the novelty of the Fire to change my mind.  As I read my first e-book, I realized that I had had it all wrong.  E-books aren't be the death of print books; e-books are an adjunct to them.  Not only that, e-books provide an outlet for authors formally strangled and ignored by traditional print publishing houses.  Now authors of every ilk, color, and talent level can present their works to the public; those first e-books were the equivalent of the declaration of independence of book publishing.  So while I'll never love e-books as much as I do print books, and I'll always prefer the latter to the former, I've accepted them into my life... and found my to-be-read list multiplied a hundred-fold.  But, them's the breaks!  As a dedicated, life-long reader, it's a burden I'm willing to bear.

Oh, and if you couldn't tell from all the above, I'm long-winded.

1 comment:

  1. LMAO at the dissimilarities between our two writing styles in our 'about' sections. :D Wonder what writing styles would tell about a person? Anywho, I'm glad you have the 'follow by email' option so I can stalk -- err, see when you post a new review. :P Especially since reviews can fall through the cracks so easily at GR. :)

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