Sherry Thompson has been a high school librarian for 31 years.  She reads mainly young adult books (because she's a librarian at a high school) and reviews them for publishers.  You'll only find good reviews of good books at Read Many Books because she doesn't write reviews on any of the bad ones (which is great, because you can check out her site and know that the books there are all good ones!). 

Sherry also includes book trailers, some of them she has produced herself and others have been done by students at her school.  Here's a book trailer she did for The Year We Disappeared by Cylin and John Busby.

Sherry says this about her blog: "I write this blog to let my students know about the books I have read and what I think about them.  The main purpose of the blog is to promote reading and encouraging others to read.  I especially encourage young adults to read." 

We have a similar goal in mind.  Here at booksXYZ we try to promote reading and education (which, of course, can be gained through reading).  We feel that education and reading go hand in hand; they are complimentary in that one activity tends to lead to the other.  Reading helps us to develop our vocabulary, learn proper syntax and sentence structure, and teaches us all about life, how to dream, how to deal with adversity.  In young people reading helps to develop that particular muscle for imagination and keeps it alive in the rest of us. 

I'm glad to have run accross Sherry's blog for several reasons, but one in particular.  It brought back fresh memories of my elementary school librarian who encouraged me to read, suggested books for me to check out, and encouraged me to venture into the adult section at the local library when I'd wiped out the children and young adult section.  My love of learning and reading goes back to my first years in school, through the encouragement of our librarian and my elementary school teachers I've developed a life-long habit and love of reading. 

My favorite review, so far, on Read Many Books is Sherry's review of Monstrumologist.  I just loved the description. Here's a bit of a teaser: "This story is an extremely exciting and gripping tale. It is not for the squeamish or faint of heart! The book will appeal to the readers who love Stephen King and Dean Koontz. There is plenty of blood and guts: the anthropopophai have rows of shark-like teeth and eat people. Their favorite human delicacy is the human brain! The vocabulary in the book will rival that on the SAT test; I had to use a dictionary frequently!"  Stephen King and Dean Koontz are favorites of mine (blame it on my father, a long time reader of both authors) and any book that challenges my vocabulary is a great one in my book.  (I took a class on Emily Dickinson and Mina Loy, both poets who frequently will use words not used in common speech - I slowly began to enjoy discovering the meaning of new words during that semester).  And now I really want to know what an anthropopophai is? And why does it have so many teeth!!

So go, read! Enjoy!

You can email suggestions for articles or features to me at kristin at booksXYZ dot com - just include a link to the website or book if you have one!