Spearhead Books and General News

Things have been crazy lately.  I've been volunteering up at my local YMCA pool, but slightly more importantly, have tons of books to review.  Among those being books such as The Bone House (Advance Review Copy-review publishing time undecided), The Wolf of Tebron, The Final Summit, and Precisely Terminated(Advance Review Copy-review publishing time also undecided).  I'm really excited to bring my readers some reviews which you likely won't find in much other places.  While they're a while down the road, I also have The House of Dark Shadows, Sword int he Stars, By Darkness Hid, The Book of Names and it's sequel, and a few other books I haven't gotten to read yet that I own myself.  So those will be reviewed at some point in time, unless I die, which I'm kinda hoping won't happen too soon, cause it'd be kinda a bummer, but also kinda not... Anyway!  In other news... (that means scroll down, like, one click-or click the read more button)

The Making of the Review (Part Two)

If you have not already done so, read the post The Making of the Review (Part One), it'll give you some context for the rest of this post.

This is the second part of a two-part series in which I'm going to try to explain to you guys how to start out a book blog.  Where I get the books you get books to review, what you should consider when reviewing, and in general, what happens to become a book review blogger.  Today I'm gonna focus on how you define your style.


There's many ways you can review a book, mostly based on your style, but if I could at least give one definitive tip, DON'T write a book report, or a recap.  You can make your own description to put at the beginning of the review, you can take one off the back cover, but make sure your post is a book review, not a book report.  We want to hear what you thought of the book, not a longer or shorter version of what we can find on any bookseller website or the back cover.


The rest mostly depends on your personal style.  When I write a review I focus on a few main parts of the book.  I focus on the plot, characters/character development, settings, themes, and the author's level of ability in writing.  There may be other parts of a book that you notice more often, and want to point them out in a book.  That's part of your style.  You have to develop your own style.  If your reviews are bland then no one's going to care too much for them.  They can get a bland review anywhere.  You gotta stand out.



I'll be back next time with my process of reading and writing a review.

Candid Room Tag

So this is actually a tag I was wanting to do a long time ago but never got around to it.  Everyone who follows Chris's blog was tagged, so well here it is.  I actually had to track down that post, being that he changed sites and I didn't actually know the new one.  I eventually found it after some Googling and scrolling and more Googling.
Since my room is so tight I took multiple pictures.

My bed/desk area.  You can barely make out the Curse of the Spider King poster I won from the ARG a while back at the very left area.

A portion of my bookshelf.  Below that there's about one more full shelf.  Above the shelf is a poster of the capitol which actually looks quite cool.  I picked it up in D.C..  To the right is a Dawn Treader poster and below that is a bunch of papers that I should probably look at again some day.

Here's a closer up picture of my desk.  Got an extra monitor hooked up to my laptop and next to that all of my to-read books minus one.  I'm not sure if anyone will guess that background image on the laptop.  We'll see ;).  In the back is a drawing of a Slade-a weapon from a book I was writing a while back.  To the right of that is a family tree.  To the right of those are two drawings, one of a castle and one of a landscape.  Neither one very good haha.

And so that's my room.  My work area as well.  And I tag everyone that reads this/dare everyone that reads this to post an image of your room/work/reading area.  Then link back from here!