The South Central Regional Library (SCRL) has found a new way to share the love of reading, writing and recommending books. It’s a blog called Novel Experiences.

Janine Wall, a library clerk at SCRL, says her interest in the project was piqued by a recent library conference that featured a session on writing book reviews. That led to the revival of an earlier blog which had lain dormant for several years.

“We've got tons of ideas. Obviously book reviews [are] going to be the major thing that we will do," explained Wall. "Like [what we did] with the Thanksgiving posts, we'll do seasonal recommendations for holidays. I'm working right now on a post for Halloween, spooky thriller, mystery type books. We're going to do posts like “read alikes.” so if you like a certain author or certain book, we'll recommend things that are similar to that.”

One goal behind the blog is to show people what the library has to offer.

“Obviously book reviews, but we'll also talk about things like our audio books and DVD's that we have and book club kits. Right now I’m working on a review for one of our book club kits," said Wall. "So yeah, we want to show people [that] we have more than just standard books. I want people to read it and think, ‘Hey, this isn't a book I would have thought of picking up before, this looks interesting, maybe I'll try it.”

Inspiring others to read more is another aim of the blog.

“Well, I hope so! For me for sure, I'm always thinking, would this be good for to review on the blog or what can they do with this book? So I'm hoping that's helping other staff as well to think, ‘Maybe I should write a blog about this."

“I read a little bit of everything,” added Wall. “There are a few things I don't like, but my hope is that it will help people who are looking at the blog to expand their genres.”

Given the wide range of people working at SCRL, Wall plans on tapping a variety of opinions on different books and genres. Wall believes there’s a book out there for every person and they hope to match the right person with the right book.

Click here to view the blog