About

Welcome to my blog, BooksDaniLikes. The purpose of this blog is to share my love of reading with those beyond my hometown library.

I’m a Librarian working in the South. I’m primarily starting this blog because I live in a fairly conservative area, and while I love my patrons, there are some books that I just can’t discuss with them. Also, through the nature of my work schedule, I am not able to run any book groups at my library right now and I miss the camaraderie of those interactions. I aspire to read across multiple genres, although my favorite is mystery/thriller. In that category, I read them all: Nordic noir, cozies, suspense, psychological, etc. I read authors everyone has heard of, authors that no one has heard of, and I love a first-time novelist more than anything in the world.

Hopefully you’ll see something that entices you to pick up a great read while you’re here.  This blog will feature book reviews that are recommend-only. That means that if I wouldn’t recommend it to someone, you won’t see it featured here. I’ll also add in a couple of resources to help you engage more with the stories. I might add potential book discussion questions, resources to help you learn more about covered topics, read-a-likes, interesting information about the author or their writing process, etc.

My rating system:

For me, whether I personally loved a book is irrelevant. Working in a library, I try to keep an open mind when it comes to book recommendations. My rating system takes that into account by offering ratings based on the potential audience that I think a book could be recommended for (using my local area as the theoretical audience). It goes like this:

1 glass of lemonade. A book that can only be recommended to someone whose reading taste you know well, like a best friend. There may be a fair amount of curse words, spicy sex scenes, or potentially morally repugnant behavior. This does not mean that the book is bad, just that the audience might be a little more limited.

2 glasses of lemonade. A book that you could probably recommend to family and close friends. They may not like everything that’s in it, but they’re not going to start sending you cards with holy scripture written in them as messages to get you back on the path of righteousness after reading them either.

3 glasses of lemonade. A book that you could recommend to coworkers and friends you don’t know very well.

4 glasses of lemonade. A book you could recommend to a book group or anybody who reads. You might find controversial subject matter, but it is handled delicately.

5 glasses of lemonade. A book you could recommend to anyone. There is nothing in here that should upset anyone and you could start handing it out on street corners. This kind of book is a Librarian’s dream.  As much as we love good literature, suggesting a book for someone can be nerve-wracking work that can backfire BIG TIME if it isn’t handled with care.

I’ll also include a personal rating of the book so that you can clearly see the difference between my personal and professional opinion of a book. Just because a book gets a low rating on the lemonade scale doesn’t mean that I didn’t love the book. My personal ratings will utilize a star system from 1-5 stars, with 5 stars representing a book that I loved and 1 star representing a book I don’t think that I would read again.