Amy Suto's Blog: Writing, Substack Growth & Travel Guides

My honest Stress Less, Accomplish More review: great meditation concepts for high achievers, buried under plugs for the author’s programs. 3 stars, with caveats.

My Waking Up review: Sam Harris argues spirituality belongs to skeptics too. One beautiful thesis, some dry stretches — 4 stars and a reading-order tip.

My honest Power of Now review: real gems on presence, a structure that wanders, and the two mindfulness books I’d hand you before this one. 3 stars.

My Wintering review: Katherine May on the seasons when life forces you to rest. I read it the year rest became a prescription for me — a warm 4 stars.

My review of Man’s Search for Meaning: Viktor Frankl’s memoir and meditation on meaning is one of the most impactful books I’ve ever read. A book everyone should read.

My honest Deep Work review: real gems about focus and social media, wrapped in corporate prose. Why the ideas earned my respect and the writing kept my score at 3 stars.

My Essentialism review: one of the two best career books I’ve ever read. Doing less to accomplish more sounds counterintuitive right up until it rebuilds your calendar.

My Burnout review: Emily and Amelia Nagoski’s research on completing the stress cycle is stress advice I’ve found nowhere else. A 5-star must-read, especially for women.

My Goodreads review of The Untethered Soul was one sentence long. Here’s the longer version — why Michael Singer’s simple advice is the mindfulness book I recommend first.

If you want to change your life, read this book. My review of Brianna Wiest’s The Mountain Is You — some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten, and the one thing it asks of you first.

My Atomic Habits review: the habit book that beat every other habit book I’ve read. Fresh advice, a simple system, zero 5am worship — 5 out of 5 stars.

My review of Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller: a screenwriter’s verdict on the SB7 framework, the guide-not-hero move, and one honest gripe.

My review of The Dip by Seth Godin: strategic quitting in about an hour, the dip-versus-dead-end question the book leaves open, and my own 2020 answer to it.

My review of Zero to One by Peter Thiel: read critically, argued with in the margins, and mined for the handful of ideas writers can actually use.

My review of Good to Great by Jim Collins: where my freelancing flywheel came from, radical honesty as a business tool, and what to do with the corporate case studies.

My review of The Millionaire Next Door: the data-heavy classic on why income and wealth are different things, what freelancers should take from it, and the parts that aged.

My review of The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business by Elaine Pofeldt: the book that told me a company of one could get big, read weeks after my writers’ room closed.

My review of The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: permissionless leverage, happiness as a trainable skill, and the ideas that became the spine of my writing business.

My review of The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd: the best book I’ve read for anyone afraid to leave the default path, from a former digital nomad who made the leap in 2020.

My review of $100M Money Models: Alex Hormozi’s most technical book, explained simply. What it says about why I priced my own book at $0.99, and who should read the trilogy in order.

My review of $100M Leads by Alex Hormozi: the lead-generation manual I checked against 42,000+ subscribers’ worth of receipts, and how to read it without drowning.

Reading Alex Hormozi at midnight took my freelance rate from $350 to $750 an hour. My spoiler-free review of $100M Offers: the value equation, what it changed about my pricing, and the one translation writers have to do.

House of Leaves is the only book I've read that required rotating the physical object like a steering wheel. My honest review: what the famous labyrinth delivers, and whether the story repays the effort.

I finally read The Alchemist roughly three decades after everyone else, and I get the hype — mostly. My review: the fable that talks people into leaping, and the one thing I wish it did differently.