Many people say they would like to read more books but don’t have the time. If you are one of these people, look at your phone’s screen time. If it is above an hour, then you have more time to read.

Here are more practical tips on how to increase the number of books you read. However, a word of caution: this should be so that you enjoy more books, not so you can reach some arbitrary reading goal or compete with others. The main principle of all reading should be to enjoy it.

Audiobooks

When I started listening to audiobooks, I heard all the advice from people who listened on 2x speed and thought, how? The truth is I still do not listen at that speed. But there are books where you can increase the speed, and every little helps.

My biggest tip is not to set yourself a rigid speed that you always listen to. Instead, adjust this for each book; some narrators naturally read more quickly than others. For example, recently I listened to an Elly Griffiths book on 1.8x speed. My next read, Mythos by Stephen Fry, I slowed down to 1.2x.

Another way to fully absorb the books you read is to tandem read. Simply put, you listen to the audiobook whilst reading the physical book. This takes some juggling to get the speed right, but it is a truly immersive way to read.

Quit Hard Books

I worry when people say they have never DNF’d (did not finish) a book. There are so many books in the world that no one will ever read them all, so why struggle through a book you are not enjoying?

Do not be afraid to say, “No, this is not for me,” and walk away. Sometimes you might come back to the book later, and it is simply a case of wrong book, wrong time. Sometimes the book isn’t for you.

This is especially true if you follow BookTok or Bookstagram. Books are recommended there all the time, and you feel like you will miss out if you do not read the book that everyone is talking about. The truth is you will not be the only person who did not like a popular book, and there are too many others you could love instead.

Read more than one book at a time

Most of us watch multiple television shows at a time. Sure, with the invention of Netflix, some of us binge-watch shows. But most of us know that sometimes we sit down and fancy a heavy drama, and sometimes we want to watch The Real Housewives and concentrate on nothing.

This is the same for books. Sometimes I want to read a history book; sometimes, an easy novel. Have multiple books on the go at once. That way, you always have a selection for whatever you are in the mood for.

I also have different formats that I read on. At a minimum, I always have an audiobook and a physical book on the go at once. That way, when you are doing something with your hands, you can still listen to a story. Some books are better in one form than another, so if you DNF’d a book recently, try it on an alternative format and see if you like it.

Read what you love

There is a lot of snobbery around reading, and I have no idea why. “You must read the classics.” “If you haven’t read any Dickens, are you even a reader?” It is all rubbish. Whether you are into fantasy, romantasy, or plain smut, read what you love.

Never let anyone shame you for the books you are reading. Because no matter what you are reading, you are accomplishing something many people don’t: reading a book.

Fun fact: when Fifty Shades of Grey was released, so many people did not want others to see what they were reading that sales of Kindle devices doubled.

Take a book everywhere with you

This last tip is so simple I shouldn’t have to write it, but if you want to read more, you have to have a book with you everywhere you go. Every day, I carry a book in my bag so I can read when I get five minutes.

If you want to keep your books beautiful and can’t bear the thought of throwing them in your bag, then get an e-reader—even if it is just an app on your phone.

You will be surprised how these five minutes, grabbed here and there, can mount up to be a whole extra book in a month.

What is your number one tip to read more? Pop it in the comments and let us all know.

Drop me a comment: Have you read any of the books mentioned let me know in the comments.

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We’ve all been there. You stare at the blinking cursor. The cursor stares back. It’s a silent, digital standoff, and right now, the cursor is winning. That has been me this week.

Sometimes there is not enough time to wait for the mythical inspiration fairy to turn up. Sometimes you just have to write. Even though your motivation is down a hole. If famous writers only wrote when they were motivated, then most of the books, articles, and newsletters out there would never exist.

I have a few methods I use when I feel like this. Maybe one of these will help you when the writing slump hits.

Lower the Bar

Perfectionism is the absolute enemy of progress. When you lack motivation, the thought of writing a masterpiece feels exhausting. So, don’t try to.

Permit yourself to write absolute rubbish. Tell yourself, “I am going to write the worst first draft in human history.” Ryan Holiday talks a lot about how the only goal he sets for himself is two crappy pages a day. It frees your brain from the pressure. You can easily fix a page of bad writing; you can’t fix a blank page.

Change the Scenery

If you’ve been sitting at the same desk, staring at the same monitor for hours, your brain goes into a stagnation loop. Break the circuit.

Move to the kitchen table, sit on the floor, or head to a local cafe. If the screen itself is the problem, step away from it entirely. Grab a notebook and a favourite pen, or pull out an iPad and an Apple Pencil to scribble things down by hand.

There is a strange, tactile magic in physical writing that often bypasses the mental blocks standard typing creates.

Use the 10-Minute Micro-Timer

When motivation is zero, committing to a three-hour writing session feels like climbing Everest. It’s too intimidating, so you procrastinate instead. I have even been known to favour the washing-up over writing.

Trick your brain by bargaining with it.

Set a timer on your watch or phone for just 10 minutes. Tell yourself that you only have to write until the alarm goes off, and if you still want to quit after that, you have full permission to walk away.

Nine times out of ten, once you break the friction of starting, the momentum carries you right past the 10-minute mark.

Follow the Energy, Not the Outline

If you’re working on a longer piece, you do not have to write it chronologically. If chapter one or the introduction feels like wading through wet cement, skip it.

Look ahead at your outline and find the one section, scene, or tip that actually sparks a tiny bit of interest. Write that part first.

Writing is modular; you can stitch the pieces together later. Capturing a bit of genuine enthusiasm anywhere in the piece will help generate the momentum you need to tackle the drier bits.

How do you tackle the blank page when you’re feeling completely uninspired? Let me know your go-to tricks in the comments!

Until next time: Find the time, find the words, find the way.

Sam 😊

Articles

Murder Mayhem UK

The Hindenburg Disaster

When the tragic accident happened with the Titan in 2023, I remember thinking to myself: what made these people get into what was nothing short of a bean tin to travel to the bottom of the ocean…

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2 months ago · 4 likes · 2 comments · Sam H Arnold

Murder Mayhem UK

The Assassination of James A. Garfield

When we talk about presidential assassinations, we talk about Lincoln and JFK. Some might also mention the many failed attempts on Trump, but few mention James A. Garfield…

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The Book Chronicle

The Enigma of Canterbury

Christopher Marlowe has always held a special place in my heart. It isn’t just because of his legendary status in English literature, but a more personal connection: he was born and raised right in the area where I live. I’ve spent many an evening at the Marlowe Theatre, named in his honour, watching pantomimes and plays in the very city that shaped him…

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2 months ago · Sam H Arnold

The era of the traditional mass market paperback (MMPB) is effectively coming to an end. While a few publishers still utilise the format for specific legacy genres, a series of industry shifts between 2024 and early 2026 has signalled its near-total phase-out.

In my opinion, this is incredibly sad. The MMPB has made reading accessible to all; therefore, anything that reduces people’s ability to read must be considered a bad thing.

What is a Mass Market Paperback?

An MMPB is a small, pocket-sized book designed for high-volume sales at a low price point. Historically, they were the ‘disposable’ version of the publishing world. They were perfect to shove into a back pocket or bag to read in those little moments.

Once read, you could easily recycle them or, my favourite, pass them on.

They were not the best quality books. With their low-grade paper and glued pages, they would never make an attractive bookshelf edition, but they were cheap and easy to get hold of.

What truly made a book ‘mass market’ was where it was sold. Unlike hardcovers, which were primarily sold in specialised bookstores, MMPBs were designed for ‘non-traditional’ retailers:

• Grocery stores and supermarkets

• Drugstores (CVS, Walgreens)

• Airport newsstands

• Train stations and bus terminals

• Gas stations

What made them popular with retailers was the return system. Rather than shipping the whole book back to the wholesalers, shops could send the cover and receive a credit. The rest of the book could then be recycled.

The most popular genres for these books were romance, science fiction, fantasy, crime, and thrillers. Many people started reading because of these cheap alternatives to hardcovers. They also made many authors popular.

Stephen King

While Stephen King’s debut, Carrie, saw a modest initial hardcover release, it was the record-breaking $400,000 sale of its paperback rights to New American Library that truly ignited his career.

The spinner rack accessibility of MMPBs allowed King’s early masterpieces— Salem’s Lot, The Shining, and The Stand, to bypass the gatekeeping of elite bookstores and land directly in the hands of millions of commuters and casual readers.

By saturating the market with affordable, portable editions that featured iconic, tactile cover art, the mass market format transformed King from a struggling teacher into a cultural phenomenon. This ensured his name became synonymous with the modern horror genre in every household across the country. He himself has spoken about this and how the sales from these books transformed his life.

So Why Phase Them Out?

The most significant blow to the format occurred at the end of 2025, when Readerlink, the largest distributor of books to mass merchandisers like Walmart, Target, and Kroger, officially stopped distributing mass market paperbacks.

Readerlink had an estimated 60–70% of the market and locations for these books. Sales plummeted because the eBook industry likely replaced the “quick read” market that MMPBs once dominated—dropping from 131 million in 2004 to just 21 million in 2024.

Following this, most major publishers shifted their ‘entry-level’ physical books to Trade Paperbacks (larger, higher-quality paper) or digital formats. Companies such as Penguin Random House and Harper Collins have moved from MMPB to the more expensive Trade Paperback because the larger format offers higher profit margins and fits more easily into modern production lines.

Furthermore, the rise of ‘BookTok’ and the aesthetic side of social media has changed what readers want. Books are now often seen as decorative objects for a ‘shelfie,’ and the flimsy MMPB doesn’t look as good on camera as a sturdy Trade Paperback.

Publishers state that, with rising costs, they could not keep the price as low as people had become used to. To justify increasing the price, they increased the quality of trade paperbacks, pricing some books as high as £18.99. They also state that these more expensive books last longer.

Reader Effect

Look carefully and you will still find some MMPBs from authors such as Danielle Steel and John Grisham as publishers exhaust their supplies. However, unless we as readers do something, the end of the MMPB seems imminent.

This decline is one more example of readers increasingly finding it difficult to have access to literature. Ebooks are priced almost as much as their physical relatives, and paperbacks are becoming as expensive as hardcovers. If you are a vivacious reader, you could be spending hundreds of pounds.

Reading should be for all, regardless of your income. Make sure you purchase those MMPBs when you see them; show the industry they are wrong to phase them out. Tell your reading friends about this, as it is something the industry is reluctant to publicise. And if all else fails and you can’t afford to read—remember there is always a library.

Until next Friday: Read to learn. Read to escape. Read to smile.

When you think of childhood fantasy, two names you would likely ponder are J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Not only did these men change the landscape of fantasy writing, but they were also close friends.

They weren’t just colleagues at Oxford; they were the heart of the Inklings, a small circle of writers who met in smoke-filled pubs like the Eagle and Child to read their unfinished manuscripts aloud. Their bond wasn’t just about sharing a pint. In many ways, we wouldn’t have The Chronicles of Narnia or The Lord of the Rings without their mutual badgering. Lewis was Tolkien’s biggest cheerleader, constantly pushing him to actually finish his “hobbity” stories when Tolkien was tempted to keep tinkering with Elvish grammar forever.

On the flip side, Tolkien played a massive role in Lewis’s spiritual life. After a long, famous nighttime walk at Magdalen College, Tolkien, along with their friend Hugo Dyson, helped convince the then-atheist Lewis that Christianity was the true myth: a story that actually happened.

Even though they were both Christians, they had a famous creative spat over how to put religion into fiction. The result of this tension is seen in both of their writing styles.

Lord of the Rings

Tolkien was firm that he hated obvious allegory; he didn’t want his stories to be a one-to-one map of the Bible. Instead, he wanted his faith to be like the soil the tree grows in. It is what feeds the whole thing from underneath, showing up in themes like mercy and providence, but never actually breaking the fourth wall to preach at you.

This is why he would get frustrated when people tried to say Gandalf was basically Jesus; for Tolkien, that was missing the point. He wasn’t trying to rewrite the Gospels in Middle-earth. Even though he was a devout Catholic, he wasn’t interested in making a ‘religious’ book in the traditional sense. His real goal was much bigger: he wanted to create a massive, epic mythology for England, something to help process the sense of loss and the question of what comes next, questions that hung over everyone after the devastation of the Great War.

The Chronicles of Narnia

Lewis was much more direct than Tolkien with his faith. While Tolkien wanted his religion to stay hidden in the bones of the story, Lewis opted for a more immediate approach, asking the question, “If Christ actually showed up in a world full of talking animals and magic, what would he look like?”

That is how we got Aslan. For Lewis, Aslan wasn’t just a symbol or a metaphorical hero; he was meant to be God, plain and simple, stepping into Narnia to show how the divine might act in a completely different universe. He didn’t mind if the connection was obvious because he wanted the reader to feel the weight of that religious presence right there on the page.

Creative Bickering

Believe it or not, Tolkien actually rather hated The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when Lewis first read it to him. He thought it was a sloppy mishmash of mythologies. To Tolkien’s rigorous mind, you couldn’t just have Father Christmas, a Greek faun, and a talking beaver all in the same world; it broke the inner consistency he valued so much.

Lewis, ever the enthusiast, didn’t care. He wanted to capture the feeling of the numinous, even if the logic was a bit messy. Despite their creative bickering and the fact that they drifted apart slightly in their later years, their impact is inseparable.

Tolkien gave us the depth of a world that feels like it has a soul, while Lewis gave us the wonder of stepping through a wardrobe into a moral universe. They proved that fantasy wasn’t just for kids; it was a way to explore the biggest questions of human existence. They also both entertained generations with their wonderful tales of heroes and adventure.

Which is your favourite?

Until next Friday: Read to learn. Read to escape. Read to smile.

Readers have power; whether you are a writer or a reader, you will understand this concept. As readers, we possess the influence to make a book a bestseller or to condemn it to the back pages of Amazon.

When we read, we each interpret the story slightly differently depending on our life experiences and personalities. However, these two stories from history demonstrate that we also have the power to change the narrative for others.

Great Expectations

Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations remains a beautiful tale of unrequited love and personal growth. However, the resolution of the relationship between Pip and Estella became the subject of intense debate.

When Dickens first penned the conclusion in 1861, he stayed true to the novel’s darker themes of trauma and the permanent scars of the past. In this original version, Pip and Estella encounter each other briefly on a London street many years later. Estella has been widowed and remarried, while Pip remains single. They exchange a few words, and that is it. It was a realistic, albeit sombre, ending that suggested some wounds do not heal.

As the story was being published in serial form in Dickens’s weekly periodical, All the Year Round, the public’s investment in Pip’s happiness was palpable. Readers desperately wanted a “happily ever after” for the protagonist they had watched grow from a terrified orphan into a humbled gentleman.

Before the final chapters were published in book form, Dickens showed the manuscript to his friend and fellow novelist, Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Bulwer-Lytton argued that the public would find the original ending too distressing. Dickens, ever sensitive to his audience’s desires and his own commercial success, decided to change it.

I have no doubt the change will be available for the story... I have put as much as I could into the change of the girl, to make it realistic. — Charles Dickens

The revised version is commonly found in modern editions. In this ending, Pip and Estella meet one last time at the ruins of Satis House. The tone is elegiac but hopeful. As they walk out of the garden together, the novel famously concludes: “I saw no shadow of another parting from her.”

While not an explicit wedding announcement, it provided the emotional closure that Victorian audiences craved. It suggested that their shared suffering had finally made a partnership possible.

Sherlock Holmes

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s relationship with his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, was not always positive. While readers viewed Holmes as a hero, Doyle eventually came to see the detective as a burden that stifled his other ambitions.

By 1893, Doyle was exhausted. He felt that Holmes’s cold, analytical nature was preventing him from focusing on his historical novels, which he considered his true legacy. To free himself, he wrote The Final Problem, published in The Strand Magazine.

In a dramatic showdown, Holmes and his nemesis, Professor Moriarty, supposedly fell to their deaths at the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Doyle famously wrote in his diary at the time, “Killed Holmes.”

The public reaction was unprecedented. More than 20,000 people cancelled their subscriptions to The Strand in protest. Legends grew of young men wearing black mourning bands on their hats in London. For nearly a decade, during what fans call “The Great Hiatus,” Doyle resisted the pressure to bring the detective back, even as he wrote other works like The Lost World.

Despite his desire for freedom, the character proved impossible to escape. The demand was so high, and the financial offers so lucrative, that Doyle eventually relented. He first teased the public with The Hound of the Baskervilles (set before Holmes’s death), but eventually brought him back to life “officially” in the 1903 story, The Adventure of the Empty House.

Doyle invented a clever explanation involving “Baritsu” (a fictional Japanese martial art) to explain how Holmes survived the fall while Moriarty perished.

Much like Great Expectations, the Holmes canon now exists as two different stories; readers decide their preference.

So, which novel would you change if you could? Would you bring Sirius Black back to look after Harry? Would Gatsby survive the shooting, or would Romeo and Juliet live a long, happy life with many children?

Until next Friday: Read to learn. Read to escape. Read to smile.

It is that time of year when social media feeds are flooded with reading tallies and ambitious “reading challenges.”

While seeing those high numbers can be inspiring, it can also feel a bit overwhelming.

I’ve spent time exploring how these numbers are built, and I want to share some techniques that can help you expand your reading horizons in 2026. Throughout this process, keep the most important goal in mind: genuine enjoyment.

Here is a guide to shifting your perspective on reading, along with practical ways to integrate more stories into your life.

Redefining What Counts

One of the easiest ways to see progress in your reading life is to change how you define a “book.” We often get caught up in the idea that only a 400-page novel counts, but literature comes in many forms.

If you are reading a collection like The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, consider treating each story as a milestone.

Each one is a complete narrative arc with its own characters and resolution. By acknowledging each story, you give yourself more frequent “wins,” which builds the momentum to keep going.

Sharing a book with a child is one of the most rewarding ways to read. Whether you are reading a picture book aloud or listening to them practice, these moments are significant. They foster a love of literacy and count toward your time spent engaged with words.

Whilst we are on the subject, audiobooks count as reading, you are still immersing yourself in a story.

The Art of Letting Go

A major hurdle to reading more is the feeling that we must finish every book we start. This often leads to “reading slumps” where we stop reading altogether because we aren’t enjoying our current choice.

If you’ve given a book 50 pages and it isn’t resonating with you, it is perfectly okay to move on. You’ve still gained insights or experiences from those pages.

In a world where we are constantly tracked, it’s easy to forget that reading isn’t a memory test or a performance. If you don’t finish a book, or if you don’t remember every detail of a story you read months ago, it doesn’t diminish the value of the time you spent immersed in it.

Why the Numbers Don’t Actually Matter

Last year, I experimented with seeing how high a “book count” could go. However, the experiment taught me a much more valuable lesson: the total is irrelevant.

To read 100 “standard” 300-page books a year, you would need to dedicate roughly 2.5 hours every single day. For most people, that isn’t just a goal; it’s a second job.

When reading turns into a competition or a race to hit a digital milestone, we lose the very thing that makes it special, the escape.

Focus on the Experience

If you read just one book this year, you are already doing something wonderful for your mind. Statistics often show that a significant portion of the population doesn’t pick up a book at all. Simply being a reader puts you in a great position.

For context, data from the Pew Research Centre suggests that roughly 23% of adults in the US report not having read a single book (in any format) in the past year.

In the UK, various surveys by the National Literacy Trust show that while reading engagement fluctuates, a dedicated minority of “frequent readers” accounts for most of the volume.

For 2026, I’m moving away from setting a numerical goal. The biggest achievement isn’t a “100” or “150” on a screen; it’s the feeling of a story that makes you think, laugh, or see the world differently.

My advice for the year ahead:

• Read to learn.

• Read to escape.

• Read to smile.

Enjoying what you read is the only metric that truly counts.

Until next Friday,

Sam

I read for fun and to relax, but a large amount of my reading is also for Murder Mayhem UK, my True Crime and History newsletter. This is why book notes have become so important to me. Many people ask me how I do this, and today I want to share my process with you.

The first thing to say is that I have many different methods depending on the book and the genre. I approach fiction completely differently from non-fiction. For fiction, I read in a variety of formats: audiobooks, eBooks, and physical copies. Non-fiction, however, I tend to stick to physical copies to aid my process.

The first tip is the most important: When you read something that makes you stop in your tracks, write it down. This could be a powerful piece of prose, a striking fact, or just the precise way an author has phrased something.

My Process for Fiction Reading

Ninety per cent of the fiction I read is for pure enjoyment. That is not to say that I do not take book notes on them, but they are fewer if I am not directly using them for my writing.

When I find a quote or piece of prose I want to save, I highlight it. On a Kindle, this is easy. On a physical copy, I use a little sticky tab which I can go back and collect later. Audiobooks are a little more difficult, and that affects the books I choose to listen to. I bookmark the passage and then try to find it in the text later.

The other 10% of my fiction reading is books like Far From the Madding Crowd and David Copperfield. I am researching a book on Victorian England, and sometimes fiction can tell us just as much about life as non-fiction. For these, I will tab the pages and write notes after every chapter if necessary.

My Process for Non-Fiction Reading

Now I fear I may have some of you shutting the article down at this point! I destroy my non-fiction books, but in my defence, I come back to them time and time again and am never going to pass them on to anyone else.

I read with a pen in my hand. I mark passages, I write notes in the margins, and I summarise every chapter at the end in three to four sentences. And, as if I have not committed enough bookworm crimes, I then dog-ear the pages I have marked so I can find them again.

Non-fiction books are a conversation between the author and me. I also have to admit to really liking the well-read look my books take on.

When I Finish a Book

Once I have finished a book, I let it sit for a week to give myself some distance from it. This helps clear my mind and gives me a fresh perspective on what is relevant and what is not.

• Fiction: Quotes and amazing pieces of prose go into my reading journal so I can look back on them sporadically and revisit some of my favourites.

• Non-Fiction: I write a full book note on everything I have collected that remains relevant after a week away from it. I use a markdown program called Obsidian. You can use any format you like; however, I would suggest typed is easier.

When this process is over, I go back through the notes and pull out parts that can go into articles or books I am writing. Most of what I have collected will be used somewhere because, for me, that is why I read non-fiction. You may be different, but I would still say that unless you write your own thoughts down about what you have read, you will forget it.

For the Uncomfortable Bookworms

The last thing to say is I understand how some of you might be uncomfortable writing in your books—again, this is personal preference. If this is you, treat your non-fiction how I do my fiction: use sticky tabs and a notebook.

Everybody will have a different method, but for me, taking booknotes is a crucial part of my reading and self-development journey.

Until next Friday: Read to learn. Read to escape. Read to smile.

Sitting and chilling this week, I came across a video that detailed the journaling advice of Ernest Hemingway, and I was drawn to how many of the tips can be used within our general writing.

Many of these especially stuck with me as I am currently taking part in a reboot of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). The lessons on overcoming the blank page and maintaining momentum are invaluable for any large writing project.

Write One True Sentence

All writers have a phobia of the blank page. To overcome this, Hemingway advised simply writing one true sentence. What is the truth of your characters? If you set yourself the task of writing just one sentence a day, the blank page will evaporate, and you will then continue writing. Crucially, don’t spoil this initial impetus by editing—just write.

Just Write It

This is similar to the “one true sentence” piece of advice: just write it. It doesn’t matter if you edit everything you have written out at a later date; the important thing is simply to get the words down. I have been rigorously applying this during November. My main focus is to just write the first draft; everything else can be sorted later.

Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself

With projects such as NaNoWriMo, you can set yourself a daily word goal or chapter goal, but the important part is to stop when you reach this. Many famous writers talk about stopping their writing in the middle of a sentence. If you are stopping at the end of a chapter, write the first sentence of the new chapter. The key is to give yourself a starting place for the next day. Stop writing when you still have something left to say.

If you could share just one piece of writing advice what would it be?

Until next Sunday: Find the time, find the words, find the way.

Sam 😊

Articles

Murder Mayhem UK

Kim Philby The Spy Who Stayed in the Shadows

Harold Adrian Russell Philby was an unknown face for many years. He hid in the shadows, spying for the Russians. He described himself as being born into “the ruling class of the British Empire…

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8 months ago · 5 likes · 1 comment · Sam H Arnold

The Book Chronicle

Five Classic Books Every Teenager Should Read

As a teacher who goes into a range of schools, I am always bemused that most of them pick the same three books to teach at GCSE level: A Christmas Carol, Macbeth, and An Inspector Calls…

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8 months ago · 2 likes · 2 comments · Sam H Arnold

The first era of humankind was the land era. We fought over it, we travelled it, and we secured it as our own. Then came the time war, where television, theatres, and gyms competed for our attention.

This was followed by the attention era, with the rise of social media and applications that take us away from our families to stare at a little light box. Thankfully, we are now entering the perspective era, where we will carefully refine and curate what we consume and use.

This is precisely why, with the rise of AI, it is important to use it but not lose ourselves to it.

Think of the skills we have lost due to technological advancements. Our grandmothers could wash clothes by hand; few of us could now. If we allow AI to write every email for us, every sentence, we will lose those essential skills.

That is not to say AI is inherently bad. There are practical ways to use it that progress your writing without losing your spark.

How I Use AI

Unlike many people, I do not use ChatGPT; for me, Google Gemini is the better platform.

The majority of my AI use is in my teaching career rather than my writing. Now, I can bullet-point everything I want to teach in an hour and have it produce a brilliantly formatted lesson plan.

In addition, it can produce the diagrams, worksheets, and everything else I need for the lesson in a couple of minutes, something that would typically take me an hour or more. I can now concentrate on my teaching and let AI take care of the paperwork.

Within my writing life, there are fewer uses for it. I spoke last week about the concerns I have over it being my research partner, although I still ask it to compile a list of websites I can research from.

Once the article is written, AI becomes my editor. As with any of these platforms, I take everything with a pinch of salt and make my own decision. It is, however, brilliant at picking up typos, spelling, and grammar issues.

I then ask it to produce an image, giving it clear instructions as to what I would like included. This is a key benefit of Gemini: the image quality is so much higher. In my experience, ChatGPT does not seem to be able to follow basic instructions such as ‘do not include writing in the image.’

Finally, an area I believe Gemini excels in, I ask it to produce an SEO-optimised title and description to put into the metadata on Substack. Since I have used it for this, I have noticed that my read links include Google, whereas they never did before.

AI is meant to be a tool; it must not take over our writing and thinking processes. Saving time should be the primary goal of your AI use.

When writing my last book, Deadly and Feminine, I had many article links scattered throughout many pages. I put all of this into AI and asked it to remove the links from the whole book and create a bibliography. It took one minute. That is how AI should work for us, as that task would have taken me hours.

If you would like to read Deadly and Feminine, looking at the wonderful bibliography, you can download it as a paid subscriber to Murder Mayhem UK. This month, in celebration of Halloween, you can get a whole year’s subscription for only £1.50.

So, if you want to read a vast catalogue of crime articles, support my writing, and download five true crime books to read at your leisure, then click the link below.

Murder Mayhem UK Offer

Until next Saturday: Find the time, find the words, find the way.

Articles

Murder Mayhem UK

The Great Plague of London 1665

It is 1665 in London. The streets are filthy; people routinely open their windows and throw out their waste. Some of this is rubbish, some human waste. Reeking sewage runs down the middle of the road…

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9 months ago · 6 likes · 7 comments · Sam H Arnold

The Book Chronicle

Hitting the Reading Slump After Robin Hobb

As with many of us who read, we sometimes hit a slump, and that is what has happened to me this month. I have really struggled to settle on a book to read…

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9 months ago · 1 like · 2 comments · Sam H Arnold

My first attempt at AI research was a disaster. Early on, I discovered what a bad idea this was when it confused Reggie with Ronnie Kray. However, there is a far more serious reason why you should take everything AI says with a large pinch, or bucket, of salt.

That is because AI’s main source of information comes from Wikipedia, the site that you were told at school never to use as it was unreliable. It is not surprising it is so unreliable when anyone can write an article, and with 7 million articles, the company boasts only 600 administrators and 10 arbitrators.

There are also many who question the ethical nature of Wikipedia now, and whether it has political affiliations. Has it become manipulated by organisations and politicians?

The Wikipedia Bias

Wikipedia, founded in 2001, appeared at one point to move from an encyclopaedia to a social justice movement.

Around that time, an editor, sometimes referred to anonymously as “Mr X”, made a list of unreliable and reliable sources that could be used in Wikipedia articles. They were designated red and green. Green sources, considered reliable to be used, included CNN, Al Jazeera, the New York Times and the Post. Red sources are censored heavily and include papers such as the Daily Mail because it is considered too right-wing and conservative.

They are also not consistent with the rules. For example, they say you cannot name people before they are convicted, but Kyle Rittenhouse, who was a minor at the time, was named and shamed in several articles they allowed to be published.

They use two or three radical left sources which make wild quotes about a person. The reader would not necessarily pick up on this, but more concerningly, neither would AI. They take radical snippets and plant the seed of doubt.

Be honest: how often do you check the sources in a Wikipedia article? Neither does AI.

The problem is that a single questionable sentence is enough to make both AI and your readers doubt the entire narrative.

More Than Just Wikipedia

If you think the problem is limited to Wikipedia, think again.

The next biggest contributor of information is Reddit, where Sam Altman is one of the biggest shareholders. The very founder of AI.

Check it out for yourself. Ask ChatGPT to research a topic and see how many Wikipedia and Reddit articles it cites.

So, can you use AI as a research assistant?

If you want to check every source it gives you and every quote, then yes, go for it. Me? I prefer the quicker method of doing reliable research myself.

That is not to say that AI is awful for writers, because next week I will share with you how I do use AI and the time it saves me.

Until next Saturday: Find the time, find the words, find the way.

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Rose Dugdale was born into a life of privilege. She was a British heiress who was due to inherit a large fortune. However, this was not the life Dugdale dreamed for herself. She would give it all up …

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10 months ago · 5 likes · 3 comments · Sam H Arnold

Murder Mayhem UK

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9 months ago · 1 like · 2 comments · Sam H Arnold

I am a geek who loves notebooks. Not only do I love notebooks, but I also love learning about them—all the different types and where they originated.

Want to know what drives me mental? More mental than those annoying book stickers? When people mix up a zibaldone and a commonplace book.

What does it matter, you might ask? Honestly, it doesn’t. Call it a pet peeve. In my mind though, if you are making a YouTube video on the subject, you should at least get it right. I’m not mentioning names.

Mad scribblings is not a commonplace book, thank you very much. It’s a zibaldone.

These two very different beasts are lumped into the same bucket like they’re interchangeable. They’re not. They’re cousins at best. Possibly estranged ones.

Most people use the term commonplace book as a catch-all for any notebook with scraps of thoughts, clippings, quotes or random intellectual graffiti. But if you’re calling your chaotic dump of dreams, grocery lists, angry rants about your ex and half-finished poems a commonplace book. Hate to break it to you, but you’re running a zibaldone.

So What Is a Zibaldone?

Zibaldone is Italian for “a heap of things.” No joke. It’s a hodgepodge, a mess. But a beautiful, intimate mess. Think: mind-splatter on paper. No categories. No rigid structure. Just flow.

A zibaldone is personal. Often emotional or observational. A mix of notes, drafts, musings, receipts, letters, and dreams. It is beautiful in its disorder.

Famous examples include:

• Giacomo Leopardi: Over 4,500 pages of thought. Philosophy, linguistics, literature, and depression. The man unloaded his soul onto the page.

• Leonardo da Vinci: Okay, he never called his notebooks zibaldoni, but they are textbook examples of the form. Mechanical sketches next to grocery lists next to dissections of clouds. Brilliant chaos.

• Umberto Eco: While more of a modern indexer, Eco’s private notebooks often resembled zibaldoni in content if not in name. Streams of notes on semiotics and soup recipes side by side.

What About a Commonplace Book?

Now this is something else entirely.

A commonplace book is a place of structure and purpose. It is a tool, not a diary. A curated collection. Think of it like a personal encyclopaedia. People kept them for study, memorisation and retrieval. Renaissance scholars, scientists and Enlightenment thinkers loved them. These weren’t journals. These were intellectual filing cabinets.

They are categorised by topic, sometimes indexed, sometimes cross-referenced. The goal is to make knowledge easier to access and reuse.

A commonplace book boasts an impressive collection of users:

• John Locke: The poster boy for the commonplace system. He wrote instructions on how to organise one.

• Thomas Jefferson: Had several. One was entirely dedicated to legal principles.

• Virginia Woolf: Kept one while studying Greek.

So Which Are You Using?

Are you highlighting quotes for later and then putting them into subject-specific areas? Then you are using a commonplace book.

But if you are jotting down thoughts, dreams and using a catch-all approach, then you are keeping a zibaldone.

Too many writers and thinkers, especially in the digital age, throw all their creative offcuts into Notion or Evernote and call it a “digital commonplace book.” But let’s be honest, half of that stuff is raw zibaldone.

And that’s fine. But let’s call things by their true names.

So embrace the mess.

The best ideas come dressed as scribbles.

Until next week — remember, read to learn. Read to escape. Read to smile.

Sam 😊

Articles

The Book Chronicle

The Brotherhood of Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens

There’s something electric about a good partnership. I have it with my crime partner Edward Anderson. Two creative minds crash into each other and something bigger than them comes out of the wreckage. It’s rare. But when it happens, you get revolutions, not just stories. Think Lennon and McCartney, Hitchcock and Herrmann, and Dickens and Collins in Vict…

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a year ago · Sam H Arnold

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The Night Coventry Burned During World War II

Jean Taylor had spent eleven hours crouching in the corner of a bomb shelter on Masser Road, surrounded by arguing adults and crying children. The air grew heavier with each passing minute, damp and …

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a year ago · 9 likes · 2 comments · Sam H Arnold

There’s something electric about a good partnership. I have it with my crime partner Edward Anderson. Two creative minds crash into each other and something bigger than them comes out of the wreckage. It’s rare. But when it happens, you get revolutions, not just stories. Think Lennon and McCartney, Hitchcock and Herrmann, and Dickens and Collins in Victorian literature.

Most people know Dickens, the factory kid turned social critic, but fewer know the man who helped him reshape the crime genre from the inside out. Wilkie Collins wasn’t Dickens’s sidekick. He was a force. And when their paths crossed, they created a storm that still echoes in detective fiction, psychological thrillers, and courtroom dramas today. Their friendship was messy, creative, and at times deeply co-dependent.

The Addicted Genius Who Reinvented Crime Fiction

Wilkie Collins (1824 to 1889) was no background character. Born into an artistic family, his father was the painter, William Collins, Collins grew up in London surrounded by canvases. He started out studying law, but it never stuck. What did stick was his obsession with writing, and more than that, exposing the rot beneath Victorian respectability.

By the 1850s, Collins had started a career that would take him straight into stardom. His 1859 novel The Woman in White was a bestseller. It was the Gone Girl of its time, mixing suspense, social criticism, and a good old-fashioned gothic mystery. Then came The Moonstone in 1868, widely credited as the first full-length detective novel in English.

But Collins wasn’t just about crime. He used his stories to skewer the Victorian legal system, marriage laws, and how society treated women. He lived outside those norms too, refusing to marry, keeping two relationships running at once, and raising children out of wedlock. The man lived his truth, and his truth didn’t care what the Church of England had to say.

In his books, he portrayed women as strong, courageous, and having their own identity. They were bold characters who pushed the boundaries of social acceptance.

Collins was hooked on laudanum, a legal opium tincture, by the end of his life he was in constant pain from gout and half dependent on the stuff to function. Writing caused him great pain but it was something he couldn’t stop. He left behind more than thirty novels, along with a string of plays.

The Mastermind With a Megaphone

Charles Dickens (1812 to 1870) was twelve years older than Collins and already a literary juggernaut when they met. Born in Portsmouth and battered by poverty after his father was thrown into debtor’s prison, Dickens worked in a boot-blacking factory as a child, an experience that never left him. His anger toward institutional cruelty burned through every novel he wrote.

When The Pickwick Papers hit in 1836, he became a household name. He pumped out classic after classic: Oliver Twist, Bleak House, David Copperfield, A Christmas Carol, and Great Expectations, all while maintaining a public image as the moral compass of Victorian England. He was complex, driven, controlling, and more than a bit obsessed with his image.

Dickens loved theatre, though he wasn’t a fan of visual art. He acted, performed readings to massive crowds, and threw himself into dramatic roles like he was born on stage. That’s how he met Ellen Ternan in 1857, an actress who would become his mistress and cause a massive rift in his marriage. The unconventional relationship was something he had in common with Collins.

He stayed in Folkestone often, maybe to escape the chaos. Despite all the scandals and contradictions, Dickens used his fame to push for real change, tackling issues such as child labour, poorhouses, and corrupt law courts.

A Creative Brotherhood

Dickens and Collins met in 1851 through their mutual obsession with amateur theatre. Dickens saw something in Collins, maybe a protégé, a partner, or a kindred soul not afraid to live outside the norm. Their friendship took off fast. They travelled together, wrote together, and even shared the stage. Collins became a regular contributor to Dickens’s periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round, and their collaboration blurred the line between editor and equal.

It’s possible that Dickens based the character of Richard Carstone in Bleak House on Collins, a young man tossed from institution to institution for work, unsure of where he belongs.

When Collins’s brother married Dickens’s daughter, it caused a rift. Collins’s brother was irresponsible with money and, despite a reasonable allowance from Dickens, found it hard to live within his means. Dickens’s criticism of this caused Collins to defend his brother, which was the beginning of the two writers drifting apart.

When Dickens died in 1870, Collins was left without his closest collaborator. He kept writing, but there was a shift. He never really recovered from Dickens's death.

Not Just Dickens’s Shadow

People like to frame Collins as Dickens’s sidekick. That’s wrong. Collins wasn’t in anyone’s shadow. They pushed each other to be better, and sometimes worse. But their friendship gave Victorian literature its edge. It birthed sensation fiction. It gave working-class readers stories with teeth. It gave us detectives, secrets, and broken men hiding behind polite society’s masks.

They were a complicated, creative, co-dependent mess, and they changed the game. If I could have one literary wish, it would be that Collins had finished Edwin Drood, because I believe he knew the great man well enough to have completed the story in a way that truly satisfied.

Unpopular opinion: I like the Brontë sisters much more than Jane Austen. There are certainly some of Austen’s books I have fallen in love with, but others I have struggled through to the end.

That said, I greatly admire Jane Austen for changing the landscape of female literature forever. She was also a fascinating person who died far too young. Let us wander through the world that created Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, and many more.

Pride

Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775 in Steventon. Her father was a clergyman, always with his head in a book, and her mother cared for the children. They were a respected family, though not a wealthy one. Jane was the seventh of eight children, with six brothers: James, George, Edward, Henry, Francis (Frank), Charles and one sister, Cassandra, to whom she was particularly close.

More than this, they were a family of storytellers and readers. Her mother would invent family tales to entertain guests, while her father encouraged Jane’s education and introduced her to literature from an early age. Jane inherited her sense of humour and storytelling abilities from her mother.

As a child, Austen wrote plays and poems and always created stories. When completed, the family would gather around the fire to listen to her read them aloud. She was just twelve at the time.

Prejudice

Although Austen never married, saying she had never been in love would be wrong. As a young woman, she fell in love with Tom Lefroy. The two were reportedly smitten, but his family sent him away to London to end the relationship.

It is thought that the two sisters in Sense and Sensibility, Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, represent different aspects of Austen’s feelings towards Lefroy.

Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience — or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope. - Sense and Sensibility 

In 1793, she wrote her first adult novel, Lady Susan. The title character is a strong woman who is not swayed by love. This may have been another way for Austen to process her own emotions. It also ran counter to the romantic literature typical of the time, where women swooned at any man who showed an interest in them. 

Behind the scenes, her father contacted publishers on her behalf, though none responded favourably.

Sensibility

Tragedy struck in 1805 when her beloved father died. The family had retired to Bath five years earlier, but Austen was said to be deeply unhappy there. This may be reflected in the fact that she completed no novels during her time in the city.

After her father’s death, Austen found herself without a permanent home and financially unstable. She and her mother spent three years moving between the homes of various family members. These experiences mirror the life of Anne Elliot in Persuasion, who also stays with relatives and shares similar feelings about Bath.

In 1809, her brother Edward bought her and her mother a house. With some stability returning, Austen resumed editing her earlier works, including Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.

Once finished, her brother Henry helped publish Sense and Sensibility, which was attributed only to “A Lady.” Women of the time were not encouraged to have jobs and especially not to write novels. Austen earned the equivalent of £11,000 in today’s money from its success, giving her financial independence; particularly important as Edward later fell into debt and could no longer support her.

Sense

In 1813, Austen published Pride and Prejudice, a huge success. The book was credited to “The Author of Sense and Sensibility.” In 1814, Mansfield Park followed and was her most financially successful novel, though still published anonymously.

However, in November 1815, a major fan uncovered her identity. That admirer was the Prince Regent, later King George IV. He had purchased a first edition of Sense and Sensibility and was such a fan that Austen dedicated her next novel, Emma, to him.

Not all her publishing experiences were positive. In 1816, a second edition of Mansfield Park sold poorly. Austen had to use her profits from other books to repay the publisher for the unsold copies.

It was around this time that her health began to deteriorate. She grew weaker as she worked to complete Persuasion. By April 1817, she could no longer walk. She died on 18 July 1817 in her sister Cassandra’s arms.

Her brother would later publish both Persuasion and Northanger Abbey posthumously.

There has been much speculation about the cause of her death. Possibilities include Addison’s disease, Hodgkin lymphoma, tuberculosis, or lupus, though no official diagnosis was given at the time.

Legacy

Although Jane Austen’s life was relatively short, her literary achievements have had a lasting impact. Her novels, rich in social commentary and psychological insight, resonate with readers across generations. Each reflects the intricate realities of love, family, and class, often inspired by her life and experiences.

Despite the immense challenges she faced in getting published, Austen persisted. Ultimately, she published six major novels during her lifetime or shortly after, and she even gained a royal admirer.

Her characters, from the sensible Elinor Dashwood to the quietly strong Anne Elliot, remain iconic figures in literature. Austen’s legacy lives on through her writing and the lens she offered into the lives of women and the subtleties of human nature.

Jane Austen may have died in 1817, but her voice continues to speak to generation after generation.

One of the things I did a lot of was writing and journaling using good old-fashioned pen and paper. I have also fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole of people showing you their journalling ecosystem, so I thought it was time I shared mine with you.

First, I want to say that all of these notebooks are for the writing side of my life. My tutoring business is run entirely digitally.

Everything Goes

This is a mini-notebook that fits in my pocket and gets typically battered. As you can see, I always try to stick one of my daughter's pictures on it to make it more personal. I also write quotes that grab me on the back cover.

This is mainly a catch-all place where I write anything from article ideas to to-do lists and shopping lists. It even sits on my bedside table for those random ideas at 2 a.m.

I also time-block in this and write down what I do in a day by the hour. It must be the crime writer in me, but I think it might be helpful one day to know exactly where I was on any day or time.

Travellers Notebook

I have three separate notebooks in this traveller's notebook. The first is my writing planner, which is the same as you would expect from any planner.

The second is my ideas notebook, where content ideas are jotted down and fleshed out.

The final notebook is my commonplace book. I am going to do a longer article on commonplace books, but in essence, it is where I store facts and quotes that interest me. These can be from books, articles or television. If they make me stop, then I write them down.

Personal Journalling

My final two books are traditional journals in which I record my thoughts, feelings and fun times with the family. I also write three things every day that I am grateful for, as well as any book thoughts and feelings I have. These are more personal observations, as quotes and analyses of the texts go into my commonplace book.

The last book is a sentence a day for five years and contains one highlight per day every year. Looking back on the previous days and seeing what my highlight was has been a lovely experience every day.

So, tell me in the comments how you journal. What is your process?

Until next week, stay safe

Sam 😊

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Five Books That Dramatically Changed my Life

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a year ago · 6 likes · Sam H Arnold

Many classic tales have been passed down from generation to generation. Some are so well known that they can be told without a book.

My favourite job of the day is reading stories that entertained me as a child to my children. Two of the books here I have told versions of during these times. When we tell these stories, are we so engrossed in the adventure that we don’t think about the origin?

We may presume that they are entirely fictitious and the work of a writer’s imagination. We would be wrong to do this with every story; many have origins in real historical events.

From children’s books to horror novels — here are three of my favourite stories and the events that inspired them.

Hansel and Gretal

Most children and adults are familiar with the story of Hansel and Gretal. The story has scared and thrilled children for years, but few know its origins.

The first thing to remember is that Brother Grimm never intended their stories to be for children. Instead, their initial idea was to write books on German folklore. The stories were dark and filled with murder and mayhem.

The true story originates in the Baltic regions during the great famine of 1314. Due to an increase in volcanic activity in Asia and New Zealand, the climate changed, leading to worldwide crop failure and starvation.

Europe was hit particularly hard as the food supply was already scarce.

During this time, the elderly chose to starve, leaving food for the young. Many abandoned their children.

There was also clear evidence of cannibalism, including digging up the dead to eat.

Mothers were fed their children. Willian Rosen — The Third Horseman

From this grim chaos, the story of Hansel and Gretel was born.

Although horrific, it is clear how this tale led to the story's skeleton. As a writer, I am fascinated by the seeds that grow an idea.

Dracula

Most vampire novels have derived from the original classic, Dracula. In Bram Stoker’s book, the count is an undead menace to most. His main goal is to steal the blood and virtue of ladies.

However, it would shock some to know that Dracula isn’t solely Stoker's invention. The lead character is based on the real-life figure Vlad the Impaler. Vlad was the son of a Romanian ruler who lived during the 15th century.

Vlad fought a long war against the Ottomans. During this time, he acquired the nickname “Vlad the Impaler” from his favoured method of execution. After Vlad’s death, his blood-lust became the subject of morbid legends that Stoker heard.

There are also facts from real body decomposition. When a person dies, their skin begins to shrink away from their hair and nails, giving the appearance of having grown since the body was buried. The gums also recede away from the teeth, which explains why vampires are described as having fangs. Finally, the gas created by decomposition can make the body bloat, giving it the appearance of having been feeding.

Medieval vampire hunters found these corpses and attributed the signs of decomposition to the legend of vampires.

These facts, combined with Stoker’s brilliant storytelling, resulted in the best vampire novel ever written.

The Pied Piper

The story of the Pied Piper is set in the village of Hamelin. The villagers hire a strange man with a magic flute to rid them of the rats' infestation. The village leaders then refuse to pay him for his work. The piper returns and, using his magic flute, abducts the children. The children are led into the wilderness and never seen again.

The earliest mention of this story is from 1300. A stained glass window installed in the cathedral of Hamelin shows a man with a flute leading children from the city.

This isn’t where the story ends, though. In 1384, the town’s official records have the following line:“It is 100 years since our children left.”

Researchers have proposed many theories about this strange tale. The first is that the event is a fictional account of a tragedy that led to the majority of children in the city dying. This could have been a famine or natural disaster such as a pandemic.

The second theory is that the story refers to a 14th-century outbreak of mass hysteria. This condition caused people to dance uncontrollably. At least one group of children was known to have danced away from the city accompanied by musicians. It could be that this mania occurred in Hamelin as well.

One less horrific explanation is that the story references a mass emigration from the town.

The most disturbing, though, is that the story references the actions of a group of predators preying on children.

Whatever the truth, it is fair to say that this story, as well as the other two, has its origins in more than just a writer's imagination. Good writers use actual events to create masterpieces. These three stories have lived through generations and are as entertaining as the day they were written.

When you next pick up a classic and start reading it, take the time to think about its origins.

This week, where I left the house in a rush without my notebook. I missed it so much that it was one of the first things I bought from the first shop I went to. 

Many of you who have subscribed for a while know I love a paper notebook for productivity, idea creation and mental clarity. Not a fancy, perfectly organised ones, but the kind that’s a glorious mess—half to-do list, half brainstorming session, with a few coffee stains for character. I call mine a catch-all notebook; it’s my brain’s best friend. 

You know those moments when your mind is juggling a million things? Random ideas, things you need to remember, the title of that book someone recommended? If I don’t write them down immediately, they’re gone. That’s where my catch-all notebook saves me. It’s the one place where everything goes, no matter how big, small, or completely random. 

I used to try keeping separate notebooks—one for work, one for personal stuff, one for ideas. But guess what? That just made me more disorganised because I could never remember which notebook had what. So, I ditched the system and embraced the chaos. Now, I have one notebook, and it holds everything. 

One page might be a list of things I need to do. The next could be a half-baked idea for an article. A few pages later? A drawing from my daughter. The magic of a catch-all notebook is that it doesn’t have to be neat or structured—it just has to exist. 

Keeping all my thoughts in one place clears up so much mental clutter. Instead of trying to remember things (and failing), I write them down, freeing up brain space for actual thinking. Plus, flipping back through old notes is like discovering time capsules of past ideas—some good, some terrible, but all helpful. 

The best part? My catch-all notebook is just for me. No one sees it, so there’s no pressure to make it look good. I can write in a rush, scribble nonsense, cross things out, and let it be messy. It’s a judgment-free zone where perfection doesn’t matter—only getting thoughts out of my head and onto paper. 

A catch-all notebook might change your life if you’ve ever struggled with keeping track of ideas, tasks, or just random thoughts. Grab a notebook, stop worrying about structure, and start writing. 

Your brain will thank you. 

Before we go, last week's cover vote winner was Cover B, which I am pleased to say was mine. Thank you to all those who helped. 

If you enjoy this email, please share it so more readers can find it. If you need advice or writing tips, I would love to hear them. Drop them in the comments or email me by hitting reply to this newsletter.

Until next week stay safe

Sam 😊

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February Reading Round Up

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This week, I shared a note about how, this year, I have been more intentional with my social media usage, which resulted in me reading fifteen books in January. 

Before you are all super impressed, I have read significantly less this month. Mainly because for ten days of this month, I was struck down by the dreaded flu, and my brain could only do one thing at a time: breathing. Writing and reading went right out of the window.

It is not just the effect of social media on our mental health we should worry about but on our relationships and family as well, which is why I have used this strategy to reduce significantly the amount of time I spend on these sites as well as continuing to build a following.

The strange side effect of this usage has been that I now find social media extremely dull and would far rather pick up a book or write than doom-walk.

The first thing I would advise if you want to reduce your own time is to have a schedule. Every week, sit down and work out what you are going to post on what platforms and on what days. Then, batch-write all your posts. Yes, you can still include a witty, quick thought, but this way, at least you have a plan. 

I am also very deliberate about the content I post on every site. I have niche topics for each platform related to a specific newsletter. For example, on [Threads](https://www.threads.net/@bookchroniclesuk), I share my book content and my history and crime articles on [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/samharnold.bsky.social). 

Yes, I use the same content across multiple platforms; sometimes, I tweak it slightly to fit a specific audience. All of this is done during my planning stage. I have one central platform on which I concentrate all my effort, and for me, that is Notes; everything else is a second concern.

Then, I simply visit social media twice: once at the beginning of the day to post content and once towards the end of the day to interact, reply to comments and chat. 

All my favourite content providers are in lists on my profiles, so I don't have to slog through all the irrelevant rubbish to find the people I like. 

My last bonus tip is that if you spend time on social media, most of them have very little moderation; you will get your fair share of nutters - use the block button. 

Try this and see if you can write more. Donna Tartt was once asked why she did not have any social media. She said that Becky Swift, Margaret Drabble’s daughter, was very emphatic: "You should never get social media, Donna Tartt; it’s a terrible idea for you; it’s noisy and shallow and distracting, and it will sneak into your reading and writing life in a thousand horrible ways and be a monstrous waste of your energy and time. She took her advice, maybe you should.

If you enjoy this email, please share it so more readers can find it.

Until next week stay safe

Sam 😊

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Eighty-two per cent of women have read at least one book in their lifetime. This is in contrast to 69% in men.

As a female writer, I have supported many, who have been treated badly by their male counterparts. This, however, is not a new phenomenon. It has been happening for centuries within literature.

The History of the Novel

Orinoko was the first book ever published in English. It is thought to be Robinson Crusoe, but this is untrue.

Robinson Crusoe was, however, the first book to be a success. England’s first bestseller. After the success of Robinson Crusoe, Samuel Richardson decided to write a novel to appeal to women. Pamela tells the story of a young servants resistance to the advances of her predatory employer. The book is a novel about power and it’s abuse.

From the publication of this novel, women started devouring novels. Reading became a female past time.

One of literature’s most famous classic novels, Frankenstein was written by a woman. It is thought of as being one of the first science fiction novels produced.

No Surrender tells the story of two women’s right to vote. One a mill girl, one a minor aristocrat, the book portrays their struggle to gain the right to vote. The novel was used to raise awareness and provide knowledge to women throughout the world. With the popularity of the novel amongst female readers, it was no wonder it was used by the suffragette movement.

Despite this rich history females were still treated as a poor comparison to men.

Female Authors in History

When the Bronte sisters first published their masterpieces the author was credited as ‘A Women.’ They also published work using male pseudonyms.

Mary Ann Evans chose the pseudonym of George Eliot when she wrote all her novels, feeling that a man would be better received.

Virginia Woolf’s novel A Room With a View tells of a woman’s need for her own space to write. A book criticised at the time. In the book, Woolf tells of not being able to access the Oxford library because she didn’t have a male companions. She also makes the point that whilst the likes of Charles Dickens had offices to write in women were expected to write in the parlour with everyone else.

Even today many writers use initials to hide their gender when publishing.

• E Nesbitt

• E.L James

• P.D James

• J.K Rowling

J.K Rowling chose a male pseudonym to write her adult series, branding herself as Robert Galbraith. Although, this was so she hid her true identity whilst trying to get published. But, it is interesting that even with her success she chose a male pseudonym.

Genre Discrimination.

Another example of female oppression in reading is shown through our genres. The genre Chick Lit was used to describe female literature. Giving it the derogatory title Chick Lit. The term implies that the literature is throw away, as not worth reading, as it is aimed at a female audience.

When we look at income from writing. The average wage for female authors is 89 cents compared to a dollar for men doing the same job.

There are still clear divisions between women and men in literature. Whether you write blog posts, fiction or poetry some males look down on female writing.

Females who before would remain silent, are now standing up and being counted. Some of my favourite books last year were written by extremely talented women.

Tell me your favourite female author?

My daughter, who started school this year, has started to read. It is an exciting time for her as she has always been a book lover, and now she gets the joy of knowing how to interpret those books. However, she is reluctant to start. She doesn't get the same joy through reading herself, she still prefers me to read to her. There is a part of me that is secretly happy about that. 

Watching her being too frightened to take those first steps into reading in case she gets it wrong made me think about how I was when I started teaching. On my first day teaching, I was bright red and so nervous; one of the more experienced teachers put her arm on me and said it would get better. I thought she was mad; how would this even get better? Now, I walk into a classroom and don't give the lesson a second thought. After twenty-five years, it is second nature. 

We are all like this when we start writing: Will the work be received well? Have I made any errors in it? The first thing to say is, yes, you will make errors. Even the most seasoned writer makes errors in their work; it is human nature. That should not stop you from starting, though. 

When you start writing, your words will feel clunky, and it will be hard to truly portray the message in your head on paper, but it will get easier as you write. Even if it is the worst thing anyone has ever written, you have to hit publish. Taking that first step in showing your work is the most important. The next piece will be slightly easier, and as you practice, this will keep getting easier. 

Writing is never easy. I still struggle with some articles, but I know now that I can sit down and write a newsletter with minimum stress. I enjoy the process now and look forward to sitting and chatting with you all on Sunday. 

If you have been lurking on Substack and never had the courage to start your first article, I urge you to make this week the week you start. Starting is the hardest part; from then on, it becomes easy. 

If you're still not convinced, reply to this email and send me your draft, and I will look it over for you. 

If you enjoy this email, please share it so more readers can find it. If you need advice or writing tips, I would love to hear them. Drop them in the comments or email me by hitting reply to this newsletter.

Until next week stay safe

Sam 😊

Articles this week

Murder Mayhem UK

The Wrongful Conviction of Michael Stone

When I write a case like this, I try to keep my opinion to myself; this was especially true in the early days of my writing. When I originally wrote about this case, that was the same. However, it is fair to say that I always believe the police had the wrong man in custody. I even thought I knew who killed Lin and Megan Russell…

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a year ago · 2 likes · 4 comments · Sam H Arnold

The Book Chronicle

Tarnished - Erica Rose Eberhart

I received this book in return for an honest review. Have to say though I am very pleased I did as this became my first five star read of 2025…

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a year ago · 1 like · Sam H Arnold

Ideas can come from many places at many different times, something I have really grown to appreciate over the last six months while carrying my pocket notebook.

The notebook allows me to capture anything that enters my head instantly. When I look back, some of them are random rubbish, but some are the start of an article. The last three months of these articles have come from random thoughts in my notebook.

It is not just articles these random jottings have provided material for but also social media posts and occasionally thoughts to reflect on in my journal.

There are other methods, though, that you can adopt to create ideas. Some creatives have set sessions where they sit down and create multiple ideas.

So how do you do this?

Think about your target audience and come up with several ideas and headlines that fit into these four categories:

1. What fears do your target audience have?

2. What problems and frustrations are they experiencing?

3. What are their short-term goals and wants?

4. What are their long-term goals and wants?

Don't overthink it. Just write your best guesses. These are ideas for your following articles. Write articles that answer these questions, share your ideas and thoughts on the topic, and give the reader new knowledge they will need.

Idea creation is as simple as that. The last thing I would say is that if you discover something new that excites you, then share it with others.

If you enjoy this email, please share it so more readers can find it. If you need advice or writing tips, I would love to hear them. Drop them in the comments or email me by hitting reply to this newsletter.

Until next week, stay safe

Sam 😊

Articles this week

The Book Chronicle

The Joy of Reading a Classic Novel Serially

Can you imagine reading the whole of the Fire and Ice series without stopping? The books are big; if you read them continuously, you will not know where one book ends and another starts…

Read more

a year ago · Sam H Arnold

Murder Mayhem UK

The Holocaust and the Psychology of Mass Violence

To describe the Holocaust in its most basic structure, it would be that it was men killing other men over a prolonged period. What few know is that many of the killers were not soldiers. The Holocaust turned ordinary men into professional killers…

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a year ago · 2 likes · Sam H Arnold