I love reading and getting lost in the books. My reading time kept seeming to get shorter and shorter, so I started buying audiobooks. It was so much fun to go to thrift stores and find really cheap audiobooks, transfer them to my computer and put them on my iPod. I ended up with quite a collection of books! Even though I had them all saved on my computer I just couldn’t part with the cds, so they were stored in my closet. I did eventually end up selling the all on ebay!

One day when I got the last job I had I learned that I could listen to my iPod and/or phone while working! I then learned of audiobook apps and signed up for a membership and started buying books, but I really didn’t want to spend that much on audiobooks I may never listen to again since there are millions of books to listen to! I discovered that I could use my library card and borrow audiobooks through an app. Wow, where have I been hiding? It was awesome and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to books while I worked. No it never distracted me from what I was supposed to do and I set a rule that I could never wear both earbuds at the same time, you know, safety first and I had to hear if someone needed me for something!

As you may know in 2017 my health challenges forced me to stop working, thankfully I have rediscovered my love for crafting and even opened an Etsy shop. I still continue to listen to books and I love getting lost in them. It is amazing how I will literally be transported into the story and it’s like I am watching it all play out in front of me! I love book series and as I get to know the people in the books, they become my friends, but then I kind of get sad when they leave as the series end!

I do not like romance in books or swearing, just clean fun mystery books. I discovered a Cozy mystery book site. This site is full of thousands of good clean books! I got so sucked into books related to the Amish lifestyle. I am fascinated with the Amish lifestyle (it sounds weird to say it like that, like it could be offensive, but nah, I just think to much!) The simplicity of the lifestyle and everything, I just love being transported there. Now I know that even though these authors do a lot of research about Amish living, everything in these books aren’t true to life, but it’s still amazing. I will tell you I could never give up my English lifestyle, especially my audiobooks and craftiness, computer and Alexa (I love Alexa, she’s how I hear my books & she is so smart too)! Maybe it is partly because I am fascinated by all humans, I like to study them and see how they live and why they do the things they do! We all do things differently and I love to just watch and learn and understand everyone! I am so content just watching and studying people! All humans simply fascinate me!

I will admit I hate that my library has set a very small limit on the books that I can borrow. Only 5 a month, what kind of craziness is that anyway, but I have found ways around that. You see with 3 different library apps that makes 15 a month. Now add in 10 more borrows as the one app gives you 2 partner libraries so that brings the total up to 25 borrows, you’d think that those would be enough, but nope as there is one app that has a much better selection than the others even though you are using the same library in each app, they are all different! How do you fix that? It is so easy, just use a friend or families library card! I have access to 2 other library cards, so that brings up my total borrows to 75!

Seriously, that is a lot of borrows and no I can not use them all in one month, but I sure do try. And then add in the fact that if you have Amazon Prime you can borrow as many prime books as you want and Alexa will read them to you! There were a few months that I didn’t/couldn’t listen to as many books as I would like to, but so far this year (2020) I have listened to 111 books and still have the rest of November  & December to go!

How do I keep track of what I have listened to and want to listen to you ask, okay maybe you didn’t, but I’m going to tell you anyway! One way is Goodreads, it sure is a great app/website that helps you track all you books and you can follow your friends to see what they’re reading and find new books! If you don’t know, I love organization and am constantly organizing and re-organizing! I went as far as to make myself a book binder and I printed out all the books I want to read so far and as I mentioned you can find a ton on cozymystery.com! Then I just put an “X” by the books I have read and I have a 2nd way to keep track of all my books. They are separated all out by type of book and author! I can never remember what I want to read, so this makes the whole process so simple! I love making binders (especially 1/2 binders (5 1/2 X 8 size) for everything and of course bigger sized binders when needed, I guess they can’t all be small & cute! If you haven’t guessed already I love tiny things! I just got a tiny Jumanji game, it’s keychain size and it is so cute!

Do you like to get lost in books? It sure is fun to use your imagination to bring all the characters alive!