About

What is this blog?

Bluejay Reads is a personal blog where I review the books I read. I don’t take requests, accept review copies, or have authors asking me for my thoughts. There’s no posting schedule, no quota to meet (beyond my annual reading goals), no rhyme or reason to the books I read beyond “that looks interesting.” If you like what I have to say, awesome! If not, no hard feelings. I post reviews on this blog just because I like it.

I also sometimes post book- and reading-related essays. (It would be more accurate to call them rambles, but “essays” sounds so professional.)

So, what do I read?

I read books that sound interesting to me. That usually means it checks one or more of the following boxes:

• Speculative fiction, especially fantasy and related subgenres
• In fiction, unique and creative concepts (the Civil War ended because of a zombie apocalypse? Conjoined twins that are two minds in a single body? A home for protagonists who come home from their magical adventure and don’t fit into the “real world” anymore? Sign me up!)
• In nonfiction, something new to learn (lately, especially about the world and the way society works)
• Interesting perspectives and takes on gods and religion, both fictional and factual
• A catchy title and/or a pretty cover (that’s not all I look for in a book, but I’ll admit catchy titles and pretty covers can sway me towards picking up something I’d otherwise be on the fence about)

Uniqueness and experiencing new things are hugely important for me when reading, so I also look for diversity in authors and fictional characters. I enjoy reading characters and authors who are queer (gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, transgender, genderqueer, intersex, asexual, aromantic, etc.), polyamorous, disabled, neurodivergent, people of color, and have different religious and/or ethnic backgrounds from me. I also look for non-Western settings (or non-Western-based fantasy settings), non-Western authors, and general non-Western literature.

A Note on “Western” and “non-Western”

I live in the United States, where Western media is dominant and Western voices are the main ones heard. Big chunks of the world have voices and perspectives that I don’t get to hear unless I actively search them out. For my book-reviewing purposes, “Western” and “non-Western” are handy terms to distinguish between “voices I hear a lot” and “voices I have to actively seek out.”

In my general categorization, “Western” covers the following countries:

• The United States
• Canada
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Western Europe

This is not a perfect system. I’m still not sure if Poland should be considered Western or non-Western. Historically, Italy and Spain have been considered part of the West, but they still represent voices that I don’t often hear as an American. And there are voices that are geographically Western but I still don’t hear as much for other reasons (such as race or sexuality). But even though it’s an imperfect categorization, it’s what I’m using until I find something better.

Reading goals

My biggest reading goal is to read through my TBR (To Be Read) list. Even if I meet my annual goal of 48 books every year and add zero new books to the list, it will still take me nearly 3 years to get through. And I keep adding books.

These are the general goals I have for my reading every year.

• Finish 48 books between January 1 and December 31
• Read at least 50% fiction
• Read good books, which involves…
  • Only reading books I’m truly interested in
  • Not attempting to read books because I feel like I “should”
  • Not finishing books I’m not legitimately excited to finish reading
• Read 12 books off my “unread shelf” – books I own but haven’t read yet

About Me

Reader of books, writer of novels (sometimes), very queer, and collector of random skills with no particular place to use them. Still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

I’ve loved reading since I discovered The Boxcar Children at age 6, and by the time I was 16 I’d read my way through two libraries and was working on a third. Then life got crazy, as it does, and reading and reviewing fell by the wayside for a while. But in 2017 I decided it was time to start doing more things I enjoyed – like reviewing books.

So here I am. In some ways, this blog is just a record for me to keep track of what I’ve read and what I thought about it. Stay tuned for more book thoughts as I work through my to-read list!

I’m not active on Goodreads anymore (because it’s owned by Amazon and fuck Amazon), but you can find me on the open-source Goodreads alternative The StoryGraph here!

A short history of this blog

A fair warning if you decide to read through the archives: most of the reviews before 2017 are not great.

2012 – I started this blog because (1) I read a lot of books, and (2) I had Thoughts about them. This blog was somewhere I could tell people which books were good and which weren’t – I was too young to have quite grasped the concept of other people having different opinions than me, and I didn’t know Goodreads existed until 2013.

2014 – I became extremely Christian and initiated the “Book Grading System,” which gave books an “appropriateness rating” based on swearing, character morality, violence … basically how well the book upheld the Christian belief system. Reviews from this era are very, very judgmental.

2015 – Due to a combination of mental health issues and way too much happening in my life, book reviewing – and book reading – got put on hold.

2017 – My reading picked up again and I decided it was time to revive this blog, with a rebrand, a new logo and design, and an update to the kinds of things I read. You can read the entire changes post here – I changed during my two-year unintentional hiatus, so naturally my reading tastes did, too.