About

Hi! My name is Sheryl, otherwise known as the Five-Eyed Bookworm. I started this blog on December 6, 2013 to share my thoughts about books I’ve read. Aside from book reviews, I like to share new book discoveries: new releases or backlists. You must be wondering… Why ‘the five-eyed bookworm’ and not seven or eight-eyed? Another thing that I love, aside from books, is photography. I consider the camera my ‘fifth eye’. So how about the other two? That’s because I wear glasses. My other interests include traveling, looking at beautiful typography and design, watching movies, trying cooking and baking (sometimes not edible, unfortunately), eating (of course) and creating things. I love sunsets, the beach and flowers. My love for books didn’t start early in childhood. I discovered them later on thanks to a wonderful teacher and was thrilled to find a wonderful world so different from mine. During college and after graduating, I didn’t read a lot of books (except for my heavy textbooks – boo!) so I am in a state of rediscovering my love for reading.

I’m not very particular about the genres of books I read. I try to read books from all genres and even children’s books, but my favorite books are mysteries, thrillers, literary, historical, women’s, science, and speculative fiction. Throughout the years my preferences have somewhat changed thanks to reading new genres and new authors. I am starting to love nonfiction books (especially memoirs and travel books) short stories, graphic novels, and translated fiction (mostly by Japanese authors). I love reading books that make me think and stories of lasting interest. The most important consideration to make me want to read a book is a GOOD and INTERESTING STORY. You can see my favorite books here. As to my favorite authors, I have a few: Stephen King, Haruki Murakami, Banana Yoshimoto, Khaled Hosseini, John Grisham, Paulo Coehlo, Dan Brown, Roald Dahl, Stieg Larsson, Markus Zusak, Laura van den Berg, Yoko Ogawa and M.L. Stedman. I suspect this list will grow longer in the future.

Most of my reviews are discussions or reflections of the books I’ve read. I treat this blog as a book journal of some sort. My reviews contain an account of what I actually felt and thought about while reading the book. I tend to ‘dissect’ books a lot, taking note of quotes or passages that interest me. If a review contains spoilers, I will indicate that in the post. I also like sharing related articles in my reviews. I call this section of my blog post “FIVE THINGS”. You can find them at the end of each post. My reviews are not very ‘technical’ or ‘formal’. Kindly read my reviews as if we are in the middle of a friendly conversation.  It’s very rare that I will not like a book as I choose books I read based on the synopsis. The story must interest or appeal to me in some way, no matter what genre it belongs to. If I read a book that I didn’t like, you will probably not find it here. I prefer talking about books I enjoyed reading and would recommend to other people.  You can find the books I reviewed here. I’ve always believed that there is no right or wrong review. Only opinions. I understand too that our preferences are highly subjective when it comes to the books we like or don’t like.

While most of the books I review here are my own, I sometimes receive books from publishers in return for an honest and unbiased review. I do not get compensated for writing reviews about the book they provide. I can’t guarantee that I’ll review every book provided to me (especially if I didn’t finish reading it or if I didn’t like the book at all). My opinions are my own and acquiring a book from a publisher does not affect my reviews in any way.

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Updated on March 20, 2014