To Begin - Chapter 1

Hi. My name is Patrick. I am starting this blog, with my wife, Rachel, to tell you about the books we have read. We are both book lovers, although our personal tastes in books differ somewhat. I tend to like the fantasy, science fiction, mystery or classic genres while Rachel reads anything from young adult to erotica, but it must always have a romantic element for it to be any good. Sometimes, we read the same books, especially the young adult section. Sometimes we finish a book and give it to the other and say, "You have to read this book/series."

I will admit, my lovely wife has way more time and dedication to reading. She read 80 books in 2013 alone. I read when I can, but I don't have the book count she does. She's an awesome bookworm.

We will be posting about any books we have "read." This may include different formats or mediums. For example, I listen to audio books in the car on my way to and from work. I consider these performances to be read, and will give a review on it like any book. I am not naive to say that the performance will not affect my opinion of the book, because it will. There's no way to avoid having someone else's words, tone, inflection, and even character representations affect my bias towards the book. We, of course, prefer to have a physical copy of the paper, stamped with the musings of the author by the ink of the publisher, but as we live in the 21st century, we make due with what time we have. If the audio book review bothers you, think of those reviews similar to a movie review, where the performance of the actors play a part in the review.

We will try to include all books we have read, separately or together, with only a few exceptions. For example, I am an accountant, and I don't think you want to hear about my review of a CPA exam test booklet, or the instructions to a tax form. I won't be posting any reviews of such boring material (unless there is just a huge demand for that kind of thing). If, however, I read a nonfiction book on gardening, I'll give a review of that.

Okay, one last item before the first review: ratings. We will endeavor to rate all books on a scale of 1 to 5, but five options is not enough, so we will incorporate halves as well. Here is a general rubric of our rating system:

• 1:     Abysmal; not worth reading.
• 1.5:  Bad.
• 2:     Mediocre.
• 2.5:  Fair.
• 3:     Good.
• 3.5:  Great.
• 4:     Excellent.
• 4.5:  Amazing: highly recommend.
• 5:     Phenomenal! Must read.

Please enjoy our reviews and journey together to experience the books we read. If you have any questions or comments, please comment on our posts. We would love to extend our conversation with any readers out there. One more note; we wish this website to be a spoil free zone. If our reviews have any spoilers in them, we will make them hidden. Our wish is that you will read the book yourself, and experience the thrill of not knowing. Once it is known, you can't "unknow" it (at least not easily). But sometimes, you just need to talk about ---hidden--- to get the full picture of why a book is great or not.