Now that you know my story as a book reviewer, you might be wondering where the title of this blog came from. It all started with the word “athenaeum”. An athenaeum is defined by Merriam-Webster as “a building or room in which books, periodicals, and newspapers are kept for use”. Pronounced “Aah – thaa – nay – um”, it’s also easy to remember how to spell it by breaking the word into two parts: “Athena” + “eum”.
Since Athena was a Greek goddess of wisdom and an athenaeum refers to buildings dedicated to Athena, that makes it a doubly appropriate name. If you’re curious, you can look at the photos on this page and see how they provided some inspiration for the logo. Since this blog will be the online home for all the book reviews I write, this online “building” is where my reviews will be housed and kept for use.
The bulk of the reviews I write for will be for indie-published books, so the word “Indie” was also in the forefront of my mind. So, I combined the two and “The Indie Athenaeum” was born:
As indie publishing continues to grow, I know that the number of reviews I write will increase as well. Currently, I have over 391 reviews that I have written and posted on Amazon, Goodreads, and other bookseller websites. On Amazon, I have over 50,000 views of my reviews overall and over 1,382 helpful votes for those. Of course, there are many more reviews coming.
Now, I’ll be able to share my reviews on this blog for the stories I read and why I like them or don’t like them. By doing so, it’s my plan to place a spotlight onto these stories in the hopes that more people pay attention to them and check them out for themselves.
If anyone finds any wisdom, like that of Athena, in my reviews, I’ll leave it up to the reader to be the judge of that. Maybe you’ll find your next favorite author or a cool new story to enjoy. That might be counted as gaining wisdom, right? 😉
Either way, I hope that by reading the reviews, people can discover great new authors and stories that they’ve never read before and very much enjoy. Even better, maybe they will find an author they enjoy so much, they want to read that author’s entire backlist to find even more to love.
It’s my hope that overall, this blog will celebrate reading and showcase the great stories that I discover.
Come look around The Indie Athenaeum and see what I have for you. With plenty of content coming out soon, I promise that it will be worth the visit.
Tomorrow: The publishing plan for The Indie Athenaeum.
The Indie Athenaeum 
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