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Hi! I am Amanda, and I love to read and write. That’s not all, of course, but those are the things I’ll be talking about here from now on, so I’m glad you’re here and I’m glad you found me and I’d love for you to stick around. And join me on my youtube channel with the same name about the same things!!
If you love reading and writing and YouTube, then check out my channel!
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I have some weird rules involved in my reading process. If you want to watch me walk through this topic instead of reading it, then check out my youtube channel for the latest video about this discussion.
I begin by dividing all my books into a few categories:
I first divide into Audio or Kindle, and then I have a kind of Master System of splitting the books so that I can accomplish a few of my reading goals. What are my reading goals, you might ask?
First, I want to keep reading authors that I like, so they need to frequently be in my rotation.
Second, I want to read new authors and genres that I’ve never read before.
Third, I want to read new releases.
The way I’ve chosen to accomplish these goals is listed below.
Master Audio List:
Old Author
New Author
Audible Plus Catalogue (New Releases)
Old Author
New Author
NPR Book
Master Kindle List:
Old Author
New Author
Kindle Unlimited Catalogue (New Releases)
Old Author
New Author
NPR Book
Now, what does that actually mean?
I break these lists down a little more in the video, but they are pretty self-explanatory. When I do the Audible Plus and Kindle Unlimited Catalogues, I filter out only the things released in the last month so that I will get new releases as options to read. If the books are really short, I will usually pick two of them.
I hope that it all makes sense, and if you watch the video and still don’t understand or want to know more, then feel free to reach out and I’ll answer any questions I can or explain anything more that is unclear.
This is just one of the 5-star reads I’ve read recently. If you want to hear about all of the books I’ve read recently, then head over to my Youtube channel to check our more reviews.
This book surprised me a lot. First, I didn’t know that it had anything to do with Sherlock Holmes, but I suspected it might because the only Sherlock Holmes book I’ve read is A Study in Scarlet, so I was suspicious from the beginning. I thought this might be a book about the women in his life or something like that. I’m not sure if the synopsis on the back cover would give away what it’s really about or not because I try not to read any synopsis about new books I’m reading. I know about some of them, obviously, because I get recommendations from others who usually tell me what a book is about, but for the most part, I don’t read the synopsis because I think they give too much away, and I’d rather be surprised.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was a whole reimagining of the Sherlock Holmes character. I loved it so much.
First of all, I always try to listen to books that are set in other countries because it’s hard for me to imagine the accents, so I like to listen to others read them with the accents the characters would have. It makes the experience more enjoyable to me, so I listened to this book on audible. It is part of the Audible Plus catalogue. The narrator was really good, and I will definitely read the other books on audio as well.
It’s not giving anything away to say that Sherlock Holmes is assumed to be a man, but Sherlock is actually Charlotte Holmes. Her parents never had any sons, and Charlotte is the youngest of 4-5 girls. She tries to tell her parents that she doesn’t want to get married, and everyone just kind of brushes it off as a young girl being ridiculous. So, her dad keeps promising her all these things, like saying that she can go to school to be a teacher and he’ll pay for it if she’ll just try to be a lady and look for a husband.
She goes along with everything he wants, but he never seems to follow through, so when we meet Charlotte at the beginning of the book, she’s used her extremely logical brain to decide the only way out of her existence, is to get herself sullied. 🙂 It was a really funny situation she found herself in.
I was confused at the beginning because this book isn’t told from just one point of view and at the beginning it’s hard to tell who is who. That’s probably mainly a problem with the audio version because if you had the physical book or digital copy, you could flip back and forth and reorient yourself with the speaker at any given time.
Once I got the characters straight, and it didn’t take long, it was easy to keep them separated and it was just a wonderful book. I really liked it and moved this author over to my regular list of authors and I will definitely be reading all the other books in this series and anything else she’s written.
It’s just such a clever twist on a classic, and I loved it. Let me know if you’ve read this, or what one of your latest 5-star reads is. I always have room in my spreadsheet for new books.
This boy changed me in so many ways. He changed my body as he grew in there, he changed my heart as he grew in there, and he changed my name as he made me a mother.
All the clichĂ©s are absolutely true “childhood goes by too quickly”, “enjoy these moments, even if they’re bad”…. But also, there are bad days and sometimes you can’t see the future or even how that one day will get better. I am promising you that it does. And then you turn around and a grown man is standing there.
You are the best. You really are. You have such a big heart and are such a good friend. You worry about being a good friend, and that’s what lets me know that you are. You have always been a wonderful big brother to all the kids we’ve brought into our family. Well, maybe not always ;), but you’ve always been there to help when we needed you to watch a little one or even to sit next to me and bottle feed a tiny baby. You are the best, and I’ll love you forever. Even if you do want to get a cat!
I’m not sure where I first heard this or read it because I didn’t write it down. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it though. I’m pretty sure that I’m a mirror, but I also think that in certain circumstances, I could be a candle. Let me explain.
Candles produce light. Yes, they need a spark to start burning, but once they are lit, they produce light. They are the ones who help us see the big pictures. These are the people who lead. They are out front and help everyone else see what the big goal is. They show us what the group is trying to do and they don’t get put out by some dark times or anything else that might through them off their course.
Mirrors, on the other hand, don’t produce light. They actually don’t produce anything, but they reflect what they see. They are the ones who take the vision or the leader and make it happen. They show others what the big goal is and carry the light and the message to a new group of people who aren’t directly reached by the leader.
I know there are holes in this metaphor when you start talking about the candle being able to stop producing light when the wick runs out or when wind blows on it, but just taking it at face value, I think it’s a great tool for examining what kind of leadership style we have. Do we produce the light and the big goals or do we show the world the light and the big goals that we’re all working toward?
