Sometimes when I’m in the mood, I like to write book reviews. These aren’t reviews in a traditional sense because I’m not a professional book reviewer. You might say they are, well, weird. Some of my acquaintances have said so anyway.

Take the one I wrote about a Nicholas Sparks book titled The True Believer. The book is about a guy who exposes so-called supernatural hoaxes. He travels to a small town to check on some mysterious lights and falls in love with the town librarian.

I thought this was a rather novel theme, something like Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man who travels to a small town in Iowa for the express purpose of conning the whole town into buying 76 trombones and falls in love with Marion the Librarian.

Only, and this is an important only, Sparks’ protagonist was a guy from New York dressed all in black with a sissy name. Would any self-respecting librarian, the most beautiful girl in the county, ever, under any circumstances in real life, fall in love with someone named Jeremy Marsh?

Not on your tinny tin tin, girlie girl, I thought.

But I was wrong. No more than two days passed before the librarian and Jeremy were in a secluded cabin on a secluded beach engaged in a steamy make-out session which, in the 21^st Century, passes for romance and never ending love.

This is where I learned, too, that a handsome dude from afar will draw women like flies even if he were named Shirley. It’s also when it dawned on me that a man can have the manliest of names, the most stable of names, a name signifying respect, strength, and status, a name like, say, Robert, and he will never be able to con a beautiful librarian into a secluded cabin anywhere in the universe if he looks like Curly, Larry, or Moe.

These are important life’s lessons. If you just don’t have it, pal, your only tactic may be the Pity Ploy. I had a friend in high school that actually looked so pitiable that every woman in town was convinced that she and only she had the sheer animal magnetism to cheer him up. This guy was elated more times than anyone can remember.

Somehow, as I read True Believer, I had the feeling that Jeremy Marsh gave off pity signals and Beautiful Small Town Librarian Lexie’s tender heart went out to him.

That’s when I decided to offer Nicholas Sparks some advice on developing manly male characters. I thus created from scratch an original plot about a cowboy who doubled as a deputy sheriff. At the end of the story, he has to choose between his horse and the beautiful ranch maiden.

As the sun sinks slowly in the West, our hero tips his hat to the lovely maiden and rides slowly away on his faithful horse Jeremy. Now that, by God, is a Western romance story.

Seriously, though, I like the books of Nicholas Sparks. I’ve probably read most of them, and although I wrote a semi-satirical look at True Believer, I liked the book.  He does a good deal of research for his writings and, aside from the rather tortured and problematic romance he injects into them, he writes like an investigator in this case of supernatural phenomena. He knows the subject matter and that is quite a feat for a writer who isn’t an expert in the field.

On the other hand, I am familiar with the writings of an author who writes from experience. She lives a somewhat isolated life in Nevada’s Cowboy Country, and when she writes about ranch life, she knows what she is talking about. How would I know this? When a writer talks about feeding horses with hay flakes, any country boy or girl can tell you, she knows hay and she knows horses.

Her name is Jeannie Watt and she writes Harlequin Super Romances. Ordinarily, I am not a reader of romances but I was drawn to her writings when I stumbled across one of her books on the bottom shelf of a book rack in a Safeway store in the center of Oahu in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Since then, I’ve read all of her books and reviewed most of them on Amazon.

Which brings up one of the guiding principles behind all of my book reviews: I only review books that I like and which I can write about positively. An author works hard to write a publishable book. I can’t write a book because I have the attention span of a gnat. Even writing this essay tasks me.

I thus simply refuse to write a negative review. Book reviews are, after all, merely the opinion of the reviewer. And opinions vary. Let the pros pan a book. I respect an author’s hard work. Who am I to diminish that effort?

Okay, that’s pretty much all of my thoughts on writing a book review. If you want to write one but have hesitated, put aside your reluctance and just do it.

Note: This is a rather unfocused essay that wanders a little bit. But that’s just my style. Maybe one of these I’ll produce a coherent piece worthy of a Pulitzer Prize. ‘Til then, that's just the way it is.