So let's start off by pointing out there's been no reviews since late July, 2011. Why is that?

In August of that year, I bought my own domain name: www.dragote.com. All activity here has thus pretty much stopped. If you want to find new reviews, you'll need to go there.

Okay, fair enough. So who the heck are you, to review these books?

I am a reader of books who has a brain capable of making opinions. That should be enough.

That's it? So, why should I listen to you?

I don't have a degree in English, no. As far as I'm concerned, though, that's a plus, because I won't ladle on references to the Great Works and how these relate to whatever. I say what I like or dislike, and why. If you think you'll agree, then follow my advice. If you don't, then don't. If you disagree with a lot of my reviews, then clearly you and I have tastes too different for my opinion to be very relevant, and why are you still here if that's the case?

What does "Series" mean on the review pages?

Books that are part of a series are marked as such in their reviews. You can see the book's position in its series and view all of the books in the series (that I have reviewed, anyway). Unfortunately, this only works for named series; books that are just plain sequels of another book don't always get series names. At that point, I can either make up a series name myself, or I can use the "See Also" area; I choose to use the latter.

But I see plenty of books with other books in the "See Also" area that aren't sequels or otherwise related at all! What's going on?

"See Also" was originally meant to gives visitors to my site a chance to find other books that are similar to this one. If I review a mystery, I might add a mystery to the "See Also", for instance. Generally, they are books I think you'll enjoy if you enjoyed that one. But I also use it to point to the next and previous book in a series that doesn't have any official name.

Hey, wait! I know there are other books in this series, but they're not listed in the series or in "See Also"! Why not?

In general, if I own any of the books in a particular series, I try to own all the books. But for any of various reasons, that isn't always done. I'll only list the books I actually own on my pages, and that includes in the "See Also" area. I do try to make it clear that this isn't the only book out there, though, in the review itself.

This link isn't right! It sends me to the wrong book, or even gives me a 404 error! What gives?

If you encounter an error while using this site, please send me an email. Now that the site is mostly automated, these errors shouldn't happen anymore.

What's with that cover? My book doesn't look like that!

I scan in the covers of the books I own; I don't rip them off Amazon.com or other websites — including the authors'. This isn't usually a problem, but sometimes a book gets reprinted, and sometimes it gets a new cover picture in the process. I'm not going to buy a different copy so I have all the cover art, and I'm not going to rip the photos off a site where I have to stretch or shrink it to fit mine.

What's with all the books rated A and B? Surely there aren't that many great books, relatively speaking; it should be closer to a bell curve, with C being average. Are you going easy on your reviews?

All books start with a rating of B, not C. If they show themselves to be outstanding, they get raised to an A. If they have problems, they get lowered to a C or further. If they're average, they remain a B. So a bell curve would probably center on B, not C — and if you look at the breakdown of the reviews on the left sidebar, you'll see that they do.

Do you ever change your reviews?

Yes, but only rarely. For one thing, I have to reread a book to do that, and as good as some of them are I still prefer reading new stories. Also, books that got a bad review are less likely to be reread — half the point of writing these reviews, remember, is to keep myself from wasting my time reading a book I thought was bad. But even there it has happened.

What's the point of a search function when you have indexes?

The search is best used to find words or phrases in the review itself. If you want to find the review where I mention a specific character but you don't remember anything else, or if I used a particularly good (or bad, of course) phrase to describe my impression of the novel, the indexes aren't going to be much help.

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