Being someone whose life has been filled with rather insecure economic conditions and who has been sensitive to the poverty around me, I can remember many times from my youth when I saw shabbily dressed people with cardboard signs saying “Will Work For Food.” As a college student I remember the homeless from skid row in downtown Los Angeles looking through the dumpsters next to my dorm for cans and bottles to recycle. I remember one particularly poignant story where a homeless person with a golden voice even received the opportunity to use his voice for profit, only to have his chances sabotaged by his addictions which had led him to be homeless and estranged from his family in the first place. Despite his obvious gift, he lacked the character to profit off of those gifts even after achieving a brief fame for a video someone took of his deep and rich voice. Having always felt deeply responsible to develop my own gifts and talents, I have always been sensitive to questions of character and how our behavior affects our opportunities.

Though writing is a gift that I have long developed over many years of everyday practice, it was only after many hundreds of book reviews before I ever reviewed books for others. Like most other aspects of my personality, I tend to pay my dues rather quietly and unobtrusively before showing my talents before the world fully developed and seemingly effortlessly (since the long years of practice and development have generally been done rather quietly, as is my fashion). It was only after writing hundreds of book reviews on books I had bought or read at the library and having started a blog site for book reviews that eventually became moribund that I saw calls for book reviews thanks to my master’s degree work at Norwich. In fact, I can greatly credit Norwich’s MMH program in providing opportunities for writing, opportunities that provided ways to profit for my talents and bring honor and credit to one of my alma maters.

Having now done a fair bit of blogging for publishers, I can definitely understand what both parties are interested in. My own interests are fairly straightforward–I like acquiring a reputation for knowledge about books, a wide variety of subject material, and what sort of people are likely to enjoy a given work. Getting free books for my trouble is something that I greatly enjoy, and as I am generally predisposed to think highly of books and people until they prove themselves unworthy of my interest and respect, I can see how a publisher or author would appreciate honest but effusive praise. In fact, writing book reviews is one of the ways that I have generally developed my ways of complimenting others, given that I tend to be rather reticent about giving praise under most circumstances but find it easy to praise a job well done when I am doing so as a reviewer, standing in a position of relative objectivity. The fact that I tend to read books rather voraciously and review them quickly has also generally attracted praise and appreciation, and added quite a few books to my library with more on the way.

I also have to give a fair bit of credit to friends of mine who like me enjoy being surrounded by books to read who have pointed out opportunities for me to review books for others and add to my library. I have found that the books and publishers I review largely come in two categories that may not appear to be closely related at first. One of these categories is military-related journals related to my education as a military historian, and I have become familiar with these opportunities largely through the posts they have made through Norwich University’s online LinkedIn and Facebook groups. The other category is religious publishers (or authors) seeking to find readers for their Christian-themed writing, and it is mostly through other Christians that I have been familiar of these opportunities. In both cases the talent of writing book reviews has found expression through the information that others have given about their own activities.

In a world where information sources are often highly dispersed, those who have developed a solid base of readers through solid effort and the joys of search engine optimization can find that they receive the sort of attention that was once limited to traditional media sources. But the fragmentation of media has provided a way for quality work to receive recognition from nontraditional sources. I appreciate these niches and opportunities to receive an audience for my thoughts and musings that would not have been available in the past, taking it as a responsibility to express my thoughts and opinions in a reasonable and fair manner, and showing gratitude to the freebies and attention that come my way for my approach to expressing and developing the gifts given to me by my Creator.