Some end of the year thoughts

01 - Time is just speeding by - It has been an unproductive year but maybe this is due to my procrastination but it really feels as if time went way faster than last year. In the beginning of every year, I thought, I'm going to finish this or that project or do this or that but I never got around to it and the year is almost over and I have done only maybe 50% of what I thought I would do. My procrastination isn't easing up and I have no excuse, no cure. Maybe it's better to give up some of those things I couldn't do and move on. Getting stuck is probably worst than not doing.
    So what have I done this year? I couldn't remember half of it but I read a lot of books, listened to some new music, watched a lot of shows (mostly repeats) and movies, did a lot of work, wrote some fiction, made some art, and did a lot of forgettable things. I think if you can accomplish at least one thing, like cleaning a tiny area in your closet, you're good. It's all good.

02 - A great loss to the blogging community – We had a great loss with Elephant's Child passing a few months ago (aka Sue though I've only known her as Elephant's Child). She was our coordinator/mc for the Words for Wednesday writing challenge and we shall all miss her. I didn't meet Elephant's Child in person but she was a very supportive, steady, presence in a lot of blogger's life including mine. May Elephant's Child rest in a kind and serene paradise.

03 - Blogging still means something – I posted a lot less than last year and I'm a little disappointed in myself but that's fine. I don't seem to be commenting on blogs as much as before and which should matter more. Commenting is like the central part of blogging and if I'm not commenting on other people's blogs, it just seems like I don't deserve comments on my blog. It can't all be one-sided. But I do read and appreciate every comment  left on my blog and I always try to return a comment but sometimes I get lazy. But I still reply to comments left on my blog though they are mostly a month or two behind. I still love blogging and I'll never give it up unless I'm force to do so.

04 - Blogging is therapy – I was very unmotivated this year. Unmotivated to write, draw, do every day chores, work, move. Having a blog helps to motivate me a bit. I think having to contemplate about what to post, what artwork to make with those posts, gives me a push to do stuff. I'm starting to think my blog is like therapy - without it, it feels like I can give up on everything and be lazy. With it, it feels like I can do a whole lot of everything. But the motivation comes and goes but I think my blog, this blog (or any blog I might create in the future), will always give me some motivation whether I post once every couple of weeks or a few times a week. I don't mind being an erratic blogger if I'm still blogging.

05 - When no means yes? – I was paying for an item at Barnes and Noble and the lady cashier asked if I want a shopping bag (you have to pay for shopping bags which are paper bags as all the shops no longer use plastic bags and yet, those had been free), I said no but then she asked again and again, I said no. When I checked the receipt, she had charged me for the bag but I was already out the door so I didn't go back and make a fuss but I was a bit miffed and mystified especially since nothing was complicating the matter - how can they get it wrong? I had a lot of bad shopping experiences with retail people so my expectations of them is very low but what the hell is this? I see no real explanation other than a brain fog but still rather annoying.

06 - Reading preferences can be a bit singular – One of the annoying thing about reading that I had come across lately was the four-letter F word used as a verb - my prudish side really hated this. (Using it as a curse is perfectly fine.) The previous months and this month, I started a lot of books that used this verb and I just dropped them. I would end up thinking of what I had read with that verb so basically, I couldn't really enjoy the book even if I had continued. So this is a dumb reason not to continue/read a book but I don't care. And please don't tell me how many amazing books I'll be missing for not reading them - I don't care. Someone (on youtube) had said how people who don't read books with explicit sex scenes meant they're missing out on amazing books and I would say the same thing - I don't care - I don't read books with explicit sex scenes either. Everyone have their reading preferences so don't encourage people to read what they don't want.
    
07 - Keep calm and read a book – I read a lot this year and I count quantity as good reading because not reading means means a bad year. One needs to get lost in a book once in a while or else real life will seem like hell. Now if only I can find books to read that don't make me give up on them after 20%.  

Do you have any thoughts about this year? What's on your mind these days?

Fiction: Wishes and Hurricanes

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by Wisewebwoman and posted at River's blog over here. This week's prompts are: luscious, motel, wheelbarrow, jogging trail and/or suspicion, speedboat, graveyard, iris.

Fiction: Wishes and Hurricanes
For five dollars, the fortune teller will answer one question. Rose Koa asked if she will see her family again. His reply was, "Follow the black cat with bits of white fur on his nose. He will lead you to what you wish for." The charlatan smelled like he hadn't showered nor combed his wild hair and beard with his black, long-sleeve shirt and pants all wrinkled and even the crystal ball between them on the table was dusty and worn and yet, when he spoke those two sentences, his grey eyes had a strange light in them though the single candle barely lit the incense-smelling tent. She left and didn't think much about it. 

My Best & Worst Books of 2025

I don't read much in December so I'm making this list early. But if I happen to read a really good or really bad book, I'll edit this but it's unlikely since every time I make these lists, none of my best of or worst of are read in December. Apparently, I seem to be reading a lot of murder mysteries now and less fantasy and middle grade which don't know if this is good or bad but at least, I read a lot more this year than last. Here are the worst and best books I read in 2025 in the order of from worst to best.

The Worst

01 - The Bangalore Detectives Club (#1) by Harini Nagendra
What's it about: sari, Indian food, something about a murder mystery
Thoughts: The writing is clumsy with awkward transitions between scenes, some chapters ending abruptly or they seemed to be cut off for no reason, long run-on sentences that probably could be broken up, small actions/events that are out of order or that they contradict each other, characters recapped events/happenings to other characters instead of readers witnessing it (this was written with a man reading a journal of sorts so readers are reading what the man is reading so it's like readers are getting third-hand accounts) and this didn't seem to have been touched by an editor. And yes, this is the author's debut but that's no excuse. As for the mystery - it was mediocre.

Fiction: A Home for a Castaway

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by Wisewebwoman and posted at River's blog over here. This week's prompts are: ambulance, bluebell, Sacristy, fountain and/or magnificent, Connemara, castaway, trumpet. I didn't fit sacristy in there. 

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Fiction: A Home for a Castaway
Bluebell acquired his new name when he was brought by a young lady for a mere hundred dollars but he didn't fret. If there was anyone who should fret, it was the lady, Stevie Knight, but she was as calm as a stone even as she tried to climb onto Bluebell's back.
    Looking on, Bluebell's former owner laughed. After the lady had succeeded on the third try and was on his back, Bluebell showed him his teeth as he rode past. The old man grimaced and probably in remembrance from all the ambulance calls he had to made. Bluebell never bit lightly, not on humans who dared to believe he could be tamed with cruelty. Once a Connemara, Bluebell was old by human standards. He was born small and frail and didn't grow much bigger but if humans tested him, they would know he wasn't a weakling.

IWSG Dec 2025: Annoyed with grammar check

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It used to be my text app (iText Express for mac) just makes spellchecks but now it corrects my grammar (after I upgraded) and I'm annoyed with it. If they were accurate, I might be fine with it but they are not.
    Like the word peace - it kept asking me if I want to change it to piece or if I wrote piece, it ask if I want to change it to peace. Or with words like you're and your or then and than or any words in that similar vein. The suggestions are sort of reasonable but still annoying. (And yes, when I made a spellcheck of this post, it asked me if I want change peace to piece and piece to peace.)
    The question is, why is it giving incorrect suggestions? I can't even turn it off because there's no such option. Sometimes it's helpful and other times I just give up. It actually confuses me more because then I second-guess my own decisions. English grammar is confusing enough so I don't need these oddly incorrect grammar suggestions.
    
Do you hate it when you text or word app corrects your grammar?

Scribtober 2025 Two

Here are the rest of my Scribtober drawings. The previous ones are here. (click on image for larger view)

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one (color version)

Have you been drawing or doing some creative endeavor?

Book Rants - Nov 2025

Time just flew by. I don't think I did anything productive that wasn't provoked by time. Deadlines are good sometimes especially when you're unmotivated. At least I read some books. Here are the books I read (and a movie I watched) in November.

~ Books I read ~

01 - Sweet Bean Paste by Durian Sukegawa, translated by Alison Watts
What's it about: making sweet bean paste, cherry blossoms, leprosy (Hansen's disease), friendship
I enjoyed this though it's a little depressing and characters aren't exactly winning at life or anything. Tokue (main character) is like a mystical figure because she thinks differently than other people and I like her idea - you don't have to be useful to society to live, you just do. This ended kind abruptly as we don't know what Sentaro's (main character) future. I did expect a certain character's end but kind of didn't want it to happen. This is not a happy story and yet this is recommended as cozy book which I think it's a kind of true but we really need to redefine cozy because cozy always somehow comes with sorrow - this book certainly does but I still liked it.

Seven Things: Some little rants

I'm not complaining, I just have things to say...

01 - I don't know why I keep procrastinating. I just keep putting things off. My brain tells me go ahead and do that thing I need to do but then my other brain (or part of it) tells me to put it off, I have plenty of time and maybe sometimes that's true but most of the time, I end up doing everything at the last minute. I don't know, there is no solution.

previous header

new header

02 - Slightly new blog header -  I have changed my header again because the previous felt a bit gloomy so I changed to this lighter one - not a lot of difference, just slightly newish elements added/altered.

03 - My blog's feed or whatever is called isn't working as usual. I subscribe to my blog through the Blogger dashboard so I can see how blog posts looks in the Reading list dashboard. Usually when I published a post, it would show up right away but now it seems to take awhile or sometimes a day to show up - what's up with that? I can see the post is posted because it's there on my blog but not the reading list. No idea why it suddenly become buggy.

04 - Stupid or Not? For years, I have been using the three Affinity apps (Publisher, Designer, Photo) and I've been liking them. I had decided to use the apps because they didn't require a subscription just a one-time payment and because the apps are similar to Adobe's apps (subscription-based Indesign, Illustrator, Photoshop). (I still use adobe apps for work pay for by employer but never for any personal work.)
    The Affinity apps were created/owned by Serif but Canva brought them out in 2024. The Serif people claimed they won't change anything with the new ownership. Then came this October, they began offering their app (now a combination of the three apps into one) simply called Affinity or Affinity Studio (supposedly version 3) for free. I was all ready to upgrade but I didn't. To download and use the Affinity app, you have to sign up for a Canva account which I am not willing to do. 
    I paid for the apps but now I can't use the new version because I refuse to open a Canva account [insert all the cursing here.] I'm actually willing to pay NOT to be involved with Canva. It might be stupid to refuse to use an app for this reason but I just couldn't do it.
    So signing up for a Canva account didn't mean you have to use Canva but that's exactly what it means, doesn't it? You become a customer of Canva the moment you sign up for an account and even if they don't force you to use Canva or make you pay to use the Affinity app, things will not be that way because no big company swallows up a smaller company and that let everything be. I won't speculate how things will change but companies don't give out things for free for nothing. Affinity is free but you pay for it by being involved with Canva.   
    Canva is meant for non-designers, offering pre-made templates and other tools like fonts and images. I'm not saying Canva is bad but I simply prefer to never use them.
    In conclusion, there is no conclusion because one day, I'll probably sign up for Canva account just to use Affinity when I could no longer use the old apps (Serif people aren't going to update the old versions anymore) because technology kept being upgraded and sometimes you are forced to upgrade even when you are reluctant to do so. (Here's the link to Affinity if you want to check it out: https://www.affinity.studio/get-affinity)

05 - Why are so many reviews with hidden spoilers at Goodreads are cut off and sometimes in mid-sentence? Where are the rest of it? This is rather disappointing when I wanted to find out the ending. All these cut-off reviews keep appearing or maybe I keep finding them and they are seemed to be one-star reviews. Do they get cut off because they are spoilers, too long or because they are one-star, two-star reviews? There seems to be an option to blur spoiler text so this hidden spoiler box method is not even needed unless it's super long.
    And also, those hidden because of spoilers didn't have spoilers - why? I don't use Goodreads anymore so I don't know how it's done but I guess people could accidentally mark their review as hidden but so many people did this it must be too easy to do it.
    Goodreads still have no translations for reviews in foreign languages even though it's owned by amazon who had their foreign language reviews with the option to translate them. Goodreads have tons of foreign languages reviews so it didn't make sense not to have the translation option.
    I used to read amazon reviews but then they changed it so all you can read are top reviews and if you want to read the other reviews such as the one-star reviews, you have to sign into your amazon account or create one. I don't get this change. Why do you have to sign in to see all the reviews?

06 - My iphone (an old model) kept giving out notifications to finish setting it up but the thing is I don't want to set up those stupid features that are useless to me. Why should I waste time setting up things that I'm not going to use? It used to be you get to choose but now they just bug you to death until you do things their way. Well, I'm going to keeping ignoring all the notifications until I feel like finish setting up which should be in about ten years or when the phone dies.

07 - I don't like subscriptions - streaming tv/movies, streaming music, apps by subscription, etc. So I don't have any subscription, at least for now. Recently, I found that you have to pay by subscription to read the BBC News articles which had been free to read with advertisements for years. (And during those times, it kept asking you to sign up for an account which I never did.) I think you are allowed to read two articles for free and when you tried to read a third article, a popup screen would show up and ask you to sign up for a subscription to read the rest.
    As a freeloader (which I loath to admit but it's true) of most internet websites, this is extremely disappointing. I know they and almost everybody who runs such websites needs to make a living but I just thought online news should be free. There are other places for news that are free (with advertisements - they all have advertisements) but I'm a creature of habit, so it's hard to change. So now I just read headlines.

What's on your mind these days?

Fiction: Ghosts in Need

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by Sean Jeating and posted at River's blog over here. This week's prompts are: squad, cemetery, flowers, painted, cross and/or barely, money, eat, freedom, courage. Last week's prompts were: technique, think, taught, way, completely and/or learn, write, exist, reading, lost. The week before, the prompts were: dog, night, bed, knowledge, move and/or years, stupid, help, craftsmanship, lost. I couldn't fit craftsmanship in there.

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Fiction: Ghosts in Need
01 - It wasn't that Chrysanthemum 'Chris' Woo was afraid of ghosts but on the rare occasion a ghost might ask her to do them a favor since she could see them. 
    Working at the Dish Mat, an automat that offered pre-made food from vending machines, was as stress-free as she could get. The quiet atmosphere and little interactions with strangers made things easy but left her with too much free time to think about her divorce, her ex-best friend, her failed career, her missing niece or her dead father.
    For the first two days of each week, Chris was the lone worker in the automat and on Wednesdays, she shared duties with Paula Gregson who worked the other days. The overlapping day was Chris's mother's idea. She believed Chris needed a friend. 
    On an early Wednesday afternoon, Chris sat behind the counter in the back of the store and trying to read a novel but her concentration kept swaying. Paula was four hours late. Something in her guts told Chris something was wrong but she didn't know what to do.
    The bell above the door tinkled. She looked up but it wasn't Paula. Chris closed the book and took out a notepad and pen from the drawers. Doodling was a technique that often helped her think.

Cover Stickers! The Horror!

I'm sure most readers know about stickers on book covers. It used to be these stickers are actual stickers that you can peel and remove for good (sometimes leaving glue residues that will never come off) but now publishers are printing them directly on the cover so the only way to remove them is to physically take a scissor and cut them out or stick some other sticker over it or block them out with black markers. Whatever you do, those stickers are there forever. 
    The stickers are mostly to encourage sales, promote books, brag about what the book/author had garnered but basically are advertisements shoved into readers' faces. So what's the point of creating beautiful covers only to have them ruined by these stickers that never come off? 
    Often when I look for book covers for my book posts, I look for covers without these stickers or if it looks like I can remove them (digitally), I would. The ones I hate the most is the one announcing 'made into a movie or a show' and 'Some famous person's book club picks'. 
    There is a point to these stickers but at the same time, they are mostly offering stale information or information readers didn't care about, at least, I don't. But it's not as rampant as I made it sound but they are around and probably will never go away. Do they really work? They don't seem to work for me but maybe they work on other people.
    Here are some samples covers that covered most type of print-on stickers:

#1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Book Club Picks
01 - Read With Jenna - No idea who Jenna is until I looked her up. Jenna Bush Hager, is a co-host on the Today show and daughter of former President George W. Bush - it makes perfect sense not to read her recommendations.

02 - The Good Morning America Book Club Pick! (with exclamation point) - Good Morning America is a morning tv show that I have never watched and I don't see why I would read their picks.

03 - Oprah's Book Club 2025 - I had seen Oprah Winfrey's show and she had some wisdom but that didn't mean I care for her book selections.

04 - Reese's Book Club - I had seen some of Reese Witherspoons' movies but they don't inspire me to read any of her book picks.

05 - Zibby's Book Club - A book club hosted monthly by Zibby Owens who owns a bookshop but I've never heard of her until today when I searched for book covers so no reason to read her picks.

IWSG Nov 2025: Some quirks that might be mad

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I'm skipping the November Insecure Writer's Support Group question and go straight to reading quirks that are also writing quirks. I can only dismiss so many reading/writing quirks but I'm seem to struck on some more than others. But I'm listing just three today.

01 - Sometimes a singular word used often in one book can drive me nuts for no reason other than their repetition. Usually it's the more obvious repetition (such a phrase a character might keep saying) that get noticed but for me, single words getting used repeatedly always kind of annoys me. I don't know why that is or why I see them more often now. But I guess it's one of those reading quirks that some readers have to deal with.

02 - Whenever I read my name or names of people I know, sometimes I feel this certain unease. In a book I previously read, one of the character had the same name as me so I somehow read that name into some other version or else I skim over it. Why should it be weird characters have your name? Unless you have one of those unique names that never gets used in books, which I do not have, you will come across it. But somehow it's just odd reading it.

03 - Fair Enough (or sometimes Fair Point) - this expression (according to the Oxford dictionary) is "used to admit that something is reasonable or acceptable." Something about this sounds like some throwaway or useless phrase people say when they have nothing to say or when they agree to disagree or sometimes it seems it is used as some sarcasm or slight irritations. I don't know why I just get annoyed by this phrase. I don't think there is any good synonym to this other than 'I agree' which is quite simple. I'm wondering if that's why people use such phrases as 'Fair enough' to replaced simpler phrase which might sound bland.

What reading quirks do you think is maybe a bit mad to be mad about?

Messages from the universe or something like it

I spend way too much time browsing youtube or what people are calling 'doom scrolling.' So this means I often come across a lot of thumbnails with different words than the title of the video. Since images are more attractive to the eye than texts, they attracted me. But the question is, is youtube trying to tell me something or am I'm just reading into things for no reason? 
    Anyway, here are some very accurate, mostly true, sometimes too honest, messages found on thumbnails (out of context) at youtube that may or may not apply to me or to you.

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Have you seen any messages lately?

Fiction: Ghosts and Psychics in the Laundromat

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by Sean Jeating and posted at River's blog over here. This week's prompts are: cudgeling, remember, language, translated, coined and/or dead, heirs, between, existing, episode.

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Fiction: Ghosts and psychics in the Laundromat
"Today, you will get shot but some fool will save you but you'll still feel some pain," said Carl Simon a few feet away in his Psy Booth in the Quick Mat, one of two laundromats with that name. People called it the Ghost Mat because of laundry being done by invisible hands as it was documented on Youtube. The Mat mostly ran itself with anyone following wall signs in many translated languages.
   

Book Rants: Oct 2025

Time just sped by so quickly. Already the year is almost over and it seems like I haven't really done anything. But at least I read some books. Here are all the books I read in and a movie I watched in October.

01 - There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura, translated by Polly Barton
What's it about: jobs, work, work relationships
This read like short stories (book is divided by jobs) as told by a nameless, thirty-something woman testing temp jobs to get an easy one because she was burnout from her previous job. She gets very involved with whatever job she was doing and is very competent at it which might make you hate her and yet, you don't. She cares about people and yet, she seems a bit aloof about relationships. But somehow she made us care about the people she cares about. Some of these jobs had a bit of paranormal to them, like a touch of whimsy.
    There was a scene where someone left a threatening message 'Die alone' and she interpreted as someone saying, 'I rather die than die alone!' and I don't know why, I just laughed at this and it's like funniest thing to me but it probably isn't funny at all.
    This is under the category of 'cozy Japanese reads' but I wish they wouldn't use the F word because that somehow took away the cozy. I enjoyed this book very much and the translation is wonderfully un-American.

Books I Unfinished - Oct 2025

I want to say these books aren't bad but I would be lying. But these are my opinions and you know what to do with opinions,right? Some of these books aren't bad, they are just bad to me as a reader. These are the books I stopped reading because I either lost interest or I simply didn't like it enough to continue. Sometimes I do finish a book even if I didn't like it because my brain sometimes refused to listen to the rest of me. Here are the books I unfinished lately. 

01 - Meet Me in the Moon Room by Ray Vukcevich
What's it about: short stories, fantasy, science fiction
Quit at: 17%
Why I quit: I was enticed by the cover art but the oddity, craziness, weirdness was too much for me but mostly because there are no resolutions to these short stories. I know short stories usually don't have resolutions but these were so short, they wouldn't have fit in a resolution. I didn't read them all so I couldn't say if they get longer.

Scribtober 2025

Somehow I dedicated October as a month to draw something but I seemed to have skipped last year. The year before last, I had done Inktober. Inktober takes place every October in which artists try to draw with ink and also there was a theme list. This year, I started very late and not going to ink anything so I'm calling it Scribtober as in scribbling in October.  
    When I did Inktober, I had a theme. So this year I'm going with a theme - Accidently Here - but it might as well be multiplicity because there are a lot of multiples but I'm still coming up with ideas. There's only a few days left in October so I'll probably continue this to November. Some of these I added in color background to get them to show more as they are done in pencil which doesn't show well. I will maybe color them later when I have the time, right now is really all about drawing. Here are just a few that I had done. (Click on image for closeup.)

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Have you been drawing or doing some creative endeavor?

Fiction: Ghosts in the Machines

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by Sean Jeating and posted at River's blog over here. This week's prompts are: innocent, evil, face, expanding, born and/or come, surprise, planet, minor, follow. Last week's prompts are: instruction, stupidity, ignorant, disregards, joined and/or shy, not, means, from, destruction.

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Fiction: Ghosts in the Machines
Jennifer Woo liked the peaceful atmosphere of the Dish Mat. Movements were slow and conversations were held in subdued voices. Most days, she sat and read novels behind the counter in the back. The Dish Mat was an automat that mostly ran itself. Anyone could get a quick meal from the multiple vending machines that lined the walls. During the week days, Jenny was there before 8am and closed a few minutes after 10pm. Despite the many instructions on the walls and the tent cards in various languages on the tables, people still asked Jenny questions. She had learned to disregard the minor irritation answering the same questions.

Fiction: Ghosts in the Laundromat

This month's Words for Wednesday prompts are provided by Sean Jeating and posted at River's blog over here. This week's prompts are: visited, chewing, nudging, saw, point and/or side, honey, companion, silent, loudly.

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Fiction: Ghosts in the Laundromat
The Quick Mat on the corner street was rumored to have ghosts but Gabrielle Woo knew it wasn't true as it was her second sister who started the rumor to get people interested in the place. Their mother thought it was a great idea as she made Jenny their publicist although Gabby didn't think they need a publicist for a laundromat.
    During the week days, Gabby, the fourth sister of five, was behind the counter in the back of the store where she sat for twelve hours until closing time. Most she was there to answer questions such as how much for a cup of detergent even though it said so on the machines. Everything was in the two vending machines at the front so Gabby rarely had to do anything. But if you want her to keep an eye on your stuff, she would refuse. It wasn't her job or so she claimed.

Book series I've only read one book of (Vol. 2)

Maybe my reasons for not continuing a series a bit lame but that's that. I don't think it matters because we can read whatever we want or don't want and it's perfectly okay to put down a book or a series when you're not enjoying it. I like to read books I enjoy rather than try to like books I'm not enjoying. And just because I put it on this list didn't mean I might not continue later on. Here are more book series that I read one book of and will not likely continue. (Most of these I read before 2025.)(My previous list is here.) 

01 - A Wrinkle in Time (#1) by Madeleine L'Engle
What's it about: time, space, another planet
What I think: I should love this because it's the kind of book I do like reading but I can't seem to get into it. Perhaps if I had read this as a child, I might have loved it and even devour the series but it was dull to me.
Reasons to quit series: It was kind of dull

02 - The Case of the Missing Marquess (Enola Holmes #1) by Nancy Springer
What's it about: missing mother, amateur sleuthing
What I think: Being Sherlock Holmes' younger sister, there is some expectation that really wouldn't have been there if that's not the case. For some odd reason, I keep thinking Holmes is going to come and solve the mystery but nope. Apparently Enola backwards spells Alone and that's somehow described her well. At times, she seems awfully mature and at others, she is essentially a child playing a game. I don't dislike her but I also don't like her. The mysteries (there seems to be two here) is a bit bland to me.
Reasons to quit series: If she is her own original character with no relations to Sherlock Holmes, I might like her but mostly the mysteries was dull.