A brief word about how Friday reads, and a disclaimer.

I’ve had a couple of questions about how I select books for Friday reads.

First, I only review books I would recommend.  There are basically three categories: recommended, highly recommended, and Stop Everything And Read This Book Now.  Almost nothing gets the highest level of recommendation.  In fact, nothing I’ve read this year (even before I started writing the blog).  That means almost all of the books I review will fall into one of the other two categories.  This doesn’t mean that I like every book I read – quite the contrary.  I simply prefer to reserve this space for the ones I liked the best.

I read many books I don’t recommend, including a large number that I enjoy. If a book makes the cut here, it means I actually advise people to read it – which is quite a different thing from saying “oh, yes, I read this and found it less than odiferous.”  To get a review on this blog, you must have more than “the absence of suck.”  You must qualify as the kind of book I’d encourage my mother, my friends and my cantankerous peer-editor to read.  In other words, to get this far, you must already be more than just good.

As of this posting, I review only books I have bought and paid for myself.  This may change, however, and so I would like to publicly proclaim myself a bought-and-paid-for slave of the publishing industry, whose words are doubtless forced upon her by promises of (as yet unpromised and undelivered) cards, flowers, gold dubloons and the oft-desired-but-still-missing pony of my childhood dreams.  In other words, you can’t believe anything I say.  Unless, of course, you want to.  That, and any time I’m given a book to read for review purposes, I’ll say so.  Beyond that, my reviews are not for sale.  I will not accept money for posting a review and will not permit people to buy this review space.  If I like the book enough to review it, it means I really liked it.

‘Nuff said.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.