Pleased To Meet You

Thought I'd kick this blog off with a little about me and my reading preferences since this is a bookish blog. I'm Jessica, living with a husband, two kids and three cats in the Midwest. I am an unrecoverable bibliomaniac and a caffeine addict. My hope is to connect with folks like me who live with their noses in a book almost all the time and prefer the company of fictional characters to real people, also almost all the time. I hope to start a dialogue here where we share our love for a genuine page-turner, our bookish goals and aspirations and of course recommendations for more books we can all fall in love with or throw against the wall. My TBR list is probably as long as an unabridged copy of Les Mis.

As for my reading preferences, I love stories with really crazy M. Night Shyamalan-style plot twists and deeply flawed protagonists. I love books with characters that I hate. I'm not crazy about happy endings, unless they make sense and are really well-written or I've just fallen deeply in love with the characters and want nothing but the best for them. I read across most genres and I don't judge anyone's reading preferences. For me, a book doesn't have to give me warm fuzzies, it just needs to be written well, have a great story populated by interesting characters, and it needs to make me feel something. In fact, some of the best books I've read have been those that I have flung across the room with rage or disgust or have tear stains on most of the pages.

I don't always read the latest, most-hyped books when they first come out. You can often find me living on the backlist, reading whatever strikes my fancy. I enjoy reading from across a diverse breadth of authors from different counties and ethnic or cultural backgrounds, and my reading preferences tend toward the dark, weird and sometimes violent or crude. I don't shy away from books about tragedy, criminal behavior, sex or unconventional beliefs or lifestyles. That's not to say all of the books I recommend here will contain these types of situations, and I'll try to disclaim those that some might find disturbing, but I operate on the assumption that we are all grownups here, so you may come across bad language and adult themes in some of the books I read as well as some of my posts here.  I do not believe in censorship, and banned books will be wholeheartedly celebrated here. I believe reading is a highly subjective pursuit and no one can truly predict whether you will like a book unless they are psychic or knw you really, really well. I am neither so while I will recommend books, my recommendations are based on my own interests, perspectives, opinions and experiences. I can't promise that we'll always agree but I will always listen to a different viewpoint if it is presented in a mature way, makes logical sense and doesn't involve personal attacks.

So comment away, as I'm excited to meet some of you fellow book nerds out there on the interwebs. I look forward to many bookish conversations to come. I'm always open to recommendations, questions and comments so feel free to share. I will post about authors I love, bookish news, events, web sites, other blogs, trends, my neverending TBR, my DNFs, adaptations and the occasional bookish product or Etsy shop owner. And I will write about and defend the existence of libraries because I think they are critecally important in our society and our history, in addition to being sacred places that are built out of and house pure magic.

I intended for this introductory post to be brief but I failed, as I probably will most of the time. Brevity is not my gift but I hope that will not deter you, dear readers and fellow lovers of books, who get just as excited and intoxicated at the smell of an old book as I do. Now, go chip away at that stack of books piling up on your bedside table!