Thanks for visiting! We hope you’ll stay and explore and chat for a while. If you’re a solitary reader looking to share your thoughts (or read ours) then please pull up a chair.


What You’ll Find Here

Ongoing, evolving, visceral responses to and thoughts about the books we’re reading now. They usually won’t be especially well-reasoned analyses. As we journey through each book, you (and, hopefully, your reflections and commentary) will be right there with us. Since we are trying to celebrate the spirit of discovery that comes with reading a new book, we will rarely blog about books we have already read, unless there’s a compelling reason to do so (rereading a classic in the context of today’s current events, for instance).


Why We’re Doing It

Do you ever feel that amazing surge when you are on the bus reading a book and you stumble across something so genius, so exactly you, and then you look around to find someone to share that with and realize that you are surrounded by strangers who don’t care about you or what you’re reading? We get that a lot.

Do you ever get the feeling that you just read three books last week and you hardly remember the first one because you were barely paying attention, and then you wish you were still in school because the professor would force you to slow down and pay attention, and then you realize that it’s probably good that you’re not because you could never read exactly what you wanted to then and you can hold your liquor better now anyway? We get that even more often.

Books are such a distinct pleasure in the reading of them, not the finishing of them. Yet most of our thoughts and discussions of books (if we do have them) come after they are done and we’re on to the next. This web log is our attempt to reclaim the thrill of discovery, the feeling of wholeness that comes when a book grabs you and won’t let go.


What We Expect From You

A lot, actually! In most cases we will be new to the book (and sometimes the author). We’re hoping that you experts out there — those of you for whom that book is a personal favorite, or those of you who have studied a certain author for years — will lend us your expertise as we go. If you read some of our thoughts and agree, disagree, or think we’re utter fools, please please PLEASE let us know. In that way we would like this to become the book club we always wished we could have.


Why This Isn’t a Book Club

A book club is a wonderful thing and usually strives for the same goal as we are. But most book clubs meet only after all the members have finished the book, even though most of the pleasure of reading comes in the journey through it, not the analysis at the end. We meet characters we hate but grow to love them by the end. We think this guy is the hero and find out it’s really his kid sister later on. You get the idea: we’re here to explore rather than critique.


A Note on Young Adult Books

You will notice that the sidebar to your left lists what each of us are reading as well as what both of us are reading. This is because we like to read a young adult book together once in a while. There’s no real reason for this other than that the brevity of those books makes it easier for Jesse to keep up with Jessica’s robot-like reading pace, and that way we can share a reading experience sometimes. This doesn’t preclude either of us from reading one of these on our own.


A Note on Spoilers

Unfortunately, just about everything here is a spoiler! If you don’t want a plot spoiled you shouldn’t be reading this. With that being said, we will always take care to keep any discussion of plot points behind the jumps on each post — that way, if you are casually browsing the home page you won’t accidentally see something you don’t want to. And with that being said, we’d like to point out that the pleasure of any truly good story can’t be ruined by revealing the machinations of the plot, so feel free to click around ’till your heart’s content!


Our Qualifications

We have none — sorry about that! But you can read more about us here.