Grinding through the pile.

While not exactly a site update, I figured I should inform you as to why there haven't been any recent additions to the Recommended Reading section.

I read a lot of books, and it's honestly not the terrible ones that make this task difficult. Rather, it's the books that are solid and enjoyable that cause the struggle.

If a book is bad, I can dismiss it fairly easily. If a book is unsuitable for this site, that soon emerges upon reading it. I can make my way through any number of these titles with ease.

The books that are reaching for the proverbial brass ring and just slip short are the type that are causing the holdup. They flatter to deceive, with parts of them which are great followed by elements that cause problems. As a reader, I am engaged and entertained by the book, and I have to read to the end in order to determine whether it can do enough to merit a place on the site. This determination takes a lot more of my time, as these are the books that merit a review but not a position on my site.

What's 3 star to me may well be 4 or 5 star to other readers, and I feel it'd be disingenuous of me to only review books on Amazon/Goodreads that merited a 4/5 star rating. As I've stressed in the past, 3 stars from someone as stringent as I am is a good score to attain and it means that you've kept me interested throughout the whole work. Not to mention the fact that a balanced but favourable review is like gold dust to the modern independent author.

I've given 3 stars to some absolutely excellent authors, people like M. Todd Gallowglas, Patrick J. Loller and Claire Frank. All of whom are going from strength to strength with their respective series.

So while I may have gone into double figures without finding anything worth publishing on the site, I will continue reading away in the hopes that some of the upcoming titles on my vast list will result in a hidden gem.

Thank you for your patience.