About

Hello! My name is Amanda. Welcome to my tiny corner of the blogosphere!

The Zen Leaf began many years ago as a book blog, and remains primarily book-oriented to this day. I, however, have never been very good at one-track thinking. There are too many things I love, and I can’t stick to just one! So while books will continue to dominate The Zen Leaf, other parts of my life will tiptoe in (and possibly take precedence away from the books) from time to time. Which means that beyond book reviews and book talk, you might find content related to:

• my family and daily life
• photography – my creative passion and part-time business at Gossamer Studios
• health and fitness, including but not limited to: yoga, hiking, mental health, body image/neutrality, disordered eating, running, illness(es), insomnia, and weight
• hobbies, including travel, house/garden rehabilitation, writing, cat foster/rescue, group hikes, journaling, and art
• social issues, including gender issues, queer issues, fat-phobia, conspiracy theorists, pandemic-related, feminism, income/class disparity, treatment of poverty in the US, the healthcare system, global politics, etc – yes, I am liberal and that shows in my posts
• other miscellaneous stuff I love as an extroverted, opinionated force of nature (ha!)

Feel free to look around my blog. I love love love meeting people and look forward to getting to know you! Just please keep the following guidelines in mind while you peek around:

In terms of comments, I don’t mind polite disagreement and discussion, but I will delete any attacking or inflammatory comment outright. I also won’t allow misinformation to be spread in my comment section, and will delete/not approve comments that try to do so. Last, I have no time/energy to deal with trolls and I will not engage. Instant delete or shunt to spam!

There are a handful of password-protected book reviews on this site. I’ve chosen to keep them private because my thoughts about these books are private. Both positive and negative reviews have been password protected, as well as books where I was involved in some way with the creative process. These are all simply reviews which, for one reason or another, I am not comfortable sharing publicly. Thank you for your respect concerning them.

Last updated: 8/6/23