My Reading and Reviewing Motto
I get asked from time to time what my reading and reviewing philosophy is. After a few years of doing this, I have boiled it down to a short motto: read widely, review honestly, recommend kindly. It is a sentence I come back to whenever I am wrestling with a hard review or trying to figure out what to read next. Today I want to walk through what each of those three pieces means to me, because the short version sounds simple, but each piece carries some real weight.
Read Widely
Reading widely, for me, does not mean reading everything. I have a reading wheelhouse (audiobooks, contemporary romance, cozy mystery, food memoir, the occasional literary novel) and I do not pretend otherwise. But within that wheelhouse, and at the edges of it, I try to keep reaching.
Reading widely means trying narrators outside my comfort zone. It means picking up books by authors I have never heard of. It means being willing to be wrong about what I will love. It means actively seeking out voices that are different from mine, in race, gender, sexuality, faith, ability, geography, and class. The book world is enormous. My reading life is small. The least I can do is keep it pointed outward.
Review Honestly
Honesty is the foundation of useful reviewing. If I rave about everything, my raves stop meaning anything. If I trash everything, no one will trust me with anything. I owe my readers an honest assessment, even when that is uncomfortable.
What honesty does not mean is cruelty. I can be honest that a book did not work for me without being mean about the author or the narrator. I can name what fell flat without making it personal. The line between honest and harsh is real, and I try hard to stay on the right side of it.
Honesty also means being honest about my own context. I am one reader. My taste is my taste. A book I bounced off may be exactly the book another reader needs. So when I say a book did not work for me, I try to say why specifically, so a reader can decide whether my reasons even apply to them.
Recommend Kindly
Kindness in recommending is the part I have been thinking about most lately. It is one thing to be honest in a review. It is another to be the person whose name comes up when an author or narrator is having a hard week. I want to be the kind of blogger who lifts up the work I love loudly and consistently. I want to be the kind of blogger who tags narrators in praise, not just in critique. I want to be the kind of blogger whose recommendations feel like an invitation, not a verdict.
That said, “recommend kindly” does not mean “only ever say nice things.” It means leading with what works in a book, naming who the book is for, and making space for readers to make their own decisions. A kind recommendation is informative. It treats the reader as a thinking adult.
How These Three Work Together
The reason the motto works for me is that the three pieces balance each other.
If I just read widely without reviewing honestly, my reviews would be useless. If I reviewed honestly without recommending kindly, my blog would be exhausting and probably mean. If I recommended kindly without reading widely, I would just be a brand ambassador for my five favorite authors.
The three together keep me grounded. Read widely so my recommendations actually mean something. Review honestly so my readers can trust me. Recommend kindly so my work makes the book community a little warmer rather than a little colder.
A Final Note
I do not always live up to this motto. Some weeks I read narrowly because I am tired. Some reviews come out a little harsher than I meant them to. Some recommendations are sloppier than they should be. I am a person, not a brand.
But this is what I am aiming for. This is the through-line. If you have stuck around the blog for a while, this is the lens I am trying to look through. Read widely. Review honestly. Recommend kindly. That is the whole thing.