#AmReading + #AmWatching + #AmListening - Media Shares And #Reviews 02-01-20

Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.
~Joyce Carol Oates

Welcome to this week's weekly media shares and reviews post!

It's the first post of its kind of the year, so... Happy New Year! I hope 2020 has been kind to you so far.

*Disclaimer: no matter what's being reviewed, all opinions in this post are entirely my own, and I reserve the right to have them, regardless of who may or may not share them. Feel free to express your own in the comments, but please respect my right - and the rights of other commenters - to have opinions that might differ from yours, and to express those opinions too.

Also, please remember that I read/watch/listen to things in a variety of genres, and for all ages, so you should make sure you check that the book/movie/show/song is suitable for the intended audience before reading/watching/listening to it, especially if children are involved. I take no responsibility for anything which may happen as a result of failing to do so.

If you want to know more about the book, or the author, click on whichever it is you want to learn more about, and it will take you to the appropriate page on Goodreads. Clicking on my rating should take you to my actual Goodreads review for the book in question. Please bear in mind that the format I've reviewed on Goodreads may not be the format I actually read.

Alternatively, if it's a movie or TV show you want to know more about, just click on the title to go to a page where you can find out more details about the movie or TV show in question; the title links will usually take you to a page on IMDB.

Unless otherwise stated, all music videos are via YouTube.

OK. Let's see what I've been reading, watching, and listening to, and which song I'm going to share this week, shall we? After all, that's the point of this post, and why you're here today, right?

Reading:This week I read three books. So, here's what I read, along with my book reviews.

Frankly Speaking by Don Massenzio
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is an excellent mystery, which held my attention and kept me eager to keep reading/listening until the end. I listened to the audio version, and though I wasn't sure about the narrator's reading pace at first, I soon started to feel it worked really well to compliment the story's pacing. As for the book itself: the characters are believable, and the plot is both action-packed and full of twists, so kept me guessing and re-evaluating my own conclusions about who did what really well. I definitely look forward to reading more from this author, and continuing the series.

Chronicles of Marsh by Jemima Pett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a fantastic addition to the series. I always love hanging out with these characters, and reading about the creative way they make things work in their wonderful world, and this book is one of my favourites of this series, even though it's more a collection of short stories in chronological order than a novel. Short story collection or novel, this is a creative and well-written book, which I highly recommend, along with the rest of the books in the series (which you should read first, if you haven't read them yet).

After the Snow by Susannah Constantine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Most of this book was really good. The characters were interesting, and the plot was too. But the ending let it down, because nothing really happened in the end, except that suddenly everything was worked out. It was like a piece of the puzzle as to how we got to that ending was missing, or the author got bored and wanted to wrap things up quickly so she could go do something else. So I'm rounding up to four stars, because of how much I was enjoying the rest of the book, but my actual rating is 3.5 stars.

Since this is the first review post of the year, if you want to take a look back at what I read in 2019, check out my year in books on Goodreads. Oh, and, in case you're curious: yes. I did finish that book and make it 114 books I read in 2019, even though it was 2020 when I was actually writing the review. Still finished it in 2019 though, and the review is in this post.

Watching:This week I watched the "Harry Potter" movies. But that's all. Well, I say, "That's all," but that does mean all eight of the actual Harry Potter movies, as well as both Fantastic Beasts movies, and I've seen them all at least once in the past week, so that's actually a lot of movie watching. Sky Cinema Harry Potter has been on pretty much all the time in our place. We've seen the movies enough that we can easily quote scenes, know when our favourite scenes are coming up, etc. But both of us feel you can never have too much Harry Potter - especially me. Plus, Mollie enjoys watching them (enough that she set up a chinchilla alarm call when it changed movies during the day, was one of the ones rated 12, so needed the security pin to be entered so it could be watched, and we hadn't reacted quickly enough... She settled down the moment Harry Potter was back on) and it gives her a break from "NCIS" for a while.

Listening:Since Sky Cinema Harry Potter has been on so much, this week I've not really been listening to anything, unless you count the music from the movies. With that in mind, it seems only fitting that I share this one. So, here's the Harry Potter theme song.