Meet the Reviewer

The year I completed an MA in English Literature some of my closest friends started a book club. This was 2005. We were young and had ample time to read and gather, imbibing liberally while we shared our pithy thoughts on books like Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy (a novel that is in the top 10 for longest books published in the English language, and coincidentally a marvelous read). We were also infamous for standing each other up for meetings. After about a year attempting to keep up with the group’s reading while also voraciously working through all the popular fiction and American authors my academic reading had failed to include (I focused on canonical British and Irish literature), I took a break from the book club in order to selfishly pursue books like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon and Gregory Maguire’s Wicked. I found that after a lifetime of being assigned reading (even when the books were fantastic classics that shook the world either in their time or as they aged), I craved the liberty to compile my own reading lists and fill in the many gaps in my life’s reading. At the time I was 24 years old.

After several years of reading Kingsolver to Coelho, Starhawk to Boyle, I re-established my place in that book club where I enthusiastically participated in the reading and conversing about a diverse collection of books across genre. I enjoy the community of reading and I missed that aspect of the academy. I remained part of that group for nearly a decade before leaving my seat open for someone else to join their discussion (though I still share and receive book suggestions and ruminations with many of its members). Since then I have started and joined other book clubs. I have moved cities and found my reading friends still reaching out to share great reads and inspired writers. I began LitReaderNotes in 2019. At the time I was a mother of two daughters, who were more and more self-sufficient by the day leaving me more time to pursue my own writing life, including book reviews. In addition to writing and working as a teaching-writer for Boise’s The Cabin, running Idaho’s Poetry Out Loud for Idaho Commission on the Arts, and pursuing a second MA in English teaching, I return, here, to my roots as a literary critic and bibliophile.

LitReaderNotes is simply my side of a conversation about books I read. Books have the marvelous power to transport the reader to myriad worlds through the adventure, knowledge, and inspiration they provide. I revel in that exploration and wish to share my love of written word herein. All that you find here are thoughts, opinions and perspectives of Chris Mathers Jackson: me.

I encourage you to contact me directly to continue the conversation about these books (or others) at any time.

Thanks for reading.

“My profession is literature; and in that profession there are fewer experiences for women than in any other, with the exception of the stage — fewer, I mean, that are peculiar to women. For the road was cut many years ago — by  Fanny Burney, by Aphra Behn, by Harriet Martineau, by  Jane Austen, by  George Eliot — many famous women, and many more unknown and forgotten, have been before me, making the path smooth, and regulating my steps.

Thus, when I came to write, there were very few material obstacles in my way. Writing was a reputable and harmless occupation. The family peace was not broken by the scratching of a pen.

No demand was made upon the family purse. For ten and sixpence one can buy paper enough to write all the plays of Shakespeare — if one has a mind that way. Pianos and models, Paris, Vienna and Berlin, masters and mistresses, are not needed by a writer. The cheapness of writing paper is, of course, the reason why women have succeeded as writers before they have succeeded in the other professions.”
-Virginia Woolf