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Reader Report: October, 2019

Posted: November 13, 2019

Here comes what I read and watched in October this year. I also wanted to mention that I am very much still playing with this format. I’m not sure exactly what it will look like going forward, but I have a feeling it might change.

Just wanted to let you all know, but it’ll stay this way at least until the end of the year.

First up is Bring on the Dusk by M.L. Buchman. A military romance that is oh so good. Matt is an extremely talented writer and his romances are excellent. I’ve read a lot of his romances and most of his thrillers.

This one is a part of a series called Night Stalkers, but considering they are romances you can read them out of order. Although if you enjoy this one, I’d go ahead and get them all.

In fact, as I double-checked some info when writing this I realized I still had one novel left in the main part of the series and I went ahead and bought it.

I look forward to reading it soon!

Next up a bit of non-fiction, Deep Work by Cal Newport. This books talks about concentration as a skill, about being able to do work that needs a lot of focus, and also talks about different practices that are needed or can be used to achieve this focus.

A concept that some would know by the name of flow, rather than deep work.

As someone who grew up with technology close at hand, although I actually had a couple of cellphones that weren’t smartphones because smartphones didn’t exist yet. So I didn’t grow up with tablets, and a computer in my pocket.

I grew up with Nintendo consoles, GameBoys and then migrated to stationary computers, until my late teens when I got my first laptop.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to get across is the fact that I’ve spent a large part of my life online. In fact, I have at times felt locked to my devices as if without them I wouldn’t know how to live.

And if I suddenly had to live without a lot of them, I would be at a loss. So many hours of my day is taken up by a computer. I’d also be devastated at the loss of my ebook library which contains all my favorite books and a long to-be-read pile.

The book Deep Work isn’t about giving up technology or anything like that, but is about reducing the impact of certain things online (social media, for example) to create space and focus enough to do complicated work. And complicated work tends to be a lot more reward in the long run than reading another blog post.

I quite enjoyed the book and it helped me renew my commitment to spending more of my off time away from the computer. There are so many things I enjoy that doesn’t need an internet connection and a screen, and I’d really like to spend more time doing them.

This book helped. I also think it will help me craft good work habits so that I can get what I need done in less time, thereby having more free time to do those fun non-screen activities.

Since that recommendation was a tad bit long, let’s move on to the last one: Good Omens the TV-show. Last month I mentioned Good Omens the book (buy link). A book that I usually call my favorite if pressed to just pick one book.

I didn’t know if the TV-show would be any good, but a friend of mine watched it and said it was.

I can only agree. It was excellent!

It followed the book closely, which didn’t surprise me since Neil Gaiman (one of the authors of the book) was very involved in its development. The script for one thing was written by him. And the TV-show even elaborated on some points from the book.

Crowley and Aziraphale were so much fun to watch. Very well acted, and I also loved the additional scenes for them that aren’t in the book.

I can highly recommend the TV-show even if you haven’t read the book. I think it is only available with Amazon Prime right now (part of their Prime video collection), but it is well worth a watch.

Those are my top recommendations from October. I hope there was something you enjoyed in the bunch.

Reader Report: September, 2019

Posted: October 13, 2019

This my reader report for September. Things I read, saw, played, and ate that I really enjoyed and would recommend to other people.

I have been rereading the whole In Death series by J.D. Robb and finally finished rereading it. 48 books takes a while to read. I began the reread back in April. This is a mystery series, with romantic and science fiction elements that I really enjoy, but I’ve talked about it many times, so let’s move on to something else.

A friend told me about the TV series adaption of the book Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. One of my favorite books. I haven’t had a chance to see the series yet, but I went ahead and reread the book.

It is a fun romp about the biblical armageddon going completely sideways. Some really great laughs. It really doesn’t take itself serious at all, and is very well written. With hilarious footnotes.

I am a fan of musicals and finally watched the movie Perfect Pitch. I’d actually not heard anything about it nor had it recommended, but it was on Netflix, sounded like fun, and I really need a bit of feel good that day. If you like musicals, this will probably be an enjoyable watch.

Since I’m currently living in Japan, it feels almost criminal to not put in anything from that. So let me recommend a meal I recently had at a restaurant: chabu-chabu.

On the table is a pot with soup-stock that is puttering away. You get meat and veggies to put in the pot and then pick them out when they are done and eat them. At this particular restaurant, they made the leftover soup stock into a kind of stewed rice when we’d had enough meat and veggies (we had all you can eat chabu-chabu).

A delicious meal and I’m sure to hit that restaurant again.

Lastly, lets add a game recommendation. I played a few hours of War Grove on Switch (also available on PC and other consoles) and enjoyed this strategy game. I’m sure it gets a lot more complex, but it introduces each mechanic slowly so you have a chance to learn everything well. For me that is a must with strategy games because while I enjoy them, I can find them a bit impenetrable.

That is all for this month. I actually spent most of the month reading In Death, so that is why it felt like I didn’t consume much media, but thankfully I had enough to put together this!

Reader Report: August, 2019

Posted: September 13, 2019

Here we are again, this is what I have read, played, seen, and experienced in August that stuck with me. (Yeah, I don’t mention everything, only things I finished that I thought were great.)

Subsurface Circular is a very short game. Took me about 2 hours to play. It is a mystery game where you are stuck in one place (a subway car), and you talk to the people who get on. And try to solve a mystery.

Short and charming. I enjoyed my time with it. Although it doesn’t really have replay value from what I could research (I haven’t replayed it myself), it is possible to just replay certain sections.

I read a great historical romanced called Someone to Love by Mary Balogh. It was a little confusing in the beginning for me. I haven’t read a Regency romance in a while, so I needed to get used to that time period, but beyond that there were a few too many characters to keep straight for the first couple of chapters. (More name dropping than characters showing up, but still.)

However, I figured I’d get it straightened out eventually, and I did. (Plus there is a family tree at the start of the book, at least the ebook.) And even with that confusion I couldn’t stop reading because it was so much fun.

I throughtly enjoyed the whole book. And the premise is handled really well, in my opinion.

I’ll most likely pick up the rest of the series eventually. (This was the first book.)

Charming Blue by Kristine Grayson (aka Kristine Kathryn Rusch) is on this list because I really enjoyed it, but it was a bit slow to start for me. Still not so slow that it let me go. Charming Blue is part of a world of stories from Kris, all of them very good (I can only speak for the ones I’ve read, but still). Some more fluffy than others, some really good young adult stories. If you like charming (yes, charming) contemporary romance with fairy tale and/or greek mythology magic, then this series is for you.

I particularly like it when I need some light reading in my life. Although it can get serious too.

To finish of this month’s reader report I want to point to two different YouTube channels I enjoy a lot. One of them I only recently discovered, and the other I discovered a few months ago, but I’ve been binging both although I have not seen every video on either channel because there are a LOT of videos.

WeezyWaiter, aka Craig Benzine. I’m not even sure how to describe this channel. Whatever it is, it is usually funny, has great video editing, and also sprinkles in some wisdom. Recent videos are mostly about different monthly challenges Craig Benzine (and sometimes his wife Chyna) have tried and how they went. Pretty hilarious.

The channel has been around for a long time so it has changed in content over time, so there is a lot to see. And a lot of laughs to have.

I actually found WeezyWaiter from watching older videos of Vlogbrothers. The Vlogbrothers are John and Hank Green. (John Green wrote the rather famous book: The Fault in Our Stars, which I haven’t read.) That channel started because the two brothers apparently wanted to do an experiment by only communicating through video for a whole year (or that is how I understand it begun).

And then it went on and on and many things have come from it like these YouTube channels: 100 Days (John and his best friend have a very fit mid-life crisis)—I really enjoyed watching this a couple of years ago—and Crash Course—I have watched several of the courses.

In fact, I think the first Vlogbrothers related YouTube content I consumed was The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, which is a hilarious modern remake of Pride and Prejudice. Lizzie Bennet have a vlog. I can very much recommend this!

(Actually, now that I think about it. I probably watched something from Crash Course first. But still a good segue to talk about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.)

And that will be all for this month. Just the YouTube content would keep you entertained for way more than a month, especially if you get into all the Vlogbrother things. My top recommendation is the historical romance Someone to Love by Mary Balogh though. Enjoyed that one a whole lot.

Reader Report: July, 2019

Posted: August 13, 2019

Since this is my first reader report, let me explain what it is. This is a non-exhaustive list of stuff I read, saw, played, and experienced in the past month. A bit like my Great Entertainment posts. But instead of writing up reviews of each item separately, this is a list of highlights from the past month.

Right on, let’s start with books I read.

Top of my mind is Storm Cursed by Patricia Briggs, book 11 of the Mercy Thompson series. This book was sooo good, but not a good starting point for the series/world.

Read my post on the Mercy Thompson/Alpha & Omega books to find a good starting point.

I recommend every book and story set in this world. Obviously some are more to my taste than others, but if you fall in love of the world, I have still liked all stories I’ve read.

Japanese fairy tales. If you enjoy fairy tales, I can definitely recommend Japanese ones if you haven’t read those. I do not know if the ones I’ve reading are sanitized (like Disney did with the Grimm fairy tales), but I’m enjoying them nonetheless.

I am reading them in Japanese though, in simplified versions written for Japanese learners, so no reason to link them here. (Any Japanese learners out there can contact me through the contact page if interested in them.)

My suspicion is that my versions are sanitized because all fairy tales I’ve read in original form tends to be more gory, but maybe that is just a European thing and I need to read more fairy tales from more cultures.

If you have any good recommendations of books with fairy tales from other cultures, or even from European ones that aren’t Grimm or Hans Christian Andersen. I’m interested in reading them. (I do know of Arabian nights and Aesop too.)

Lastly I’ve been rereading the In Death series by J.D. Robb (pen name of Nora Roberts). I’m almost back to the latest book. The characters, the mysteries, and the relationships are all soooooo good. I really love this series and it will hit 50 books next year. Just wow!

The characters grow/change, but still remain true to themselves; their changing however does shift the feel of the series a bit. Just like happens in many long series.

Rereading the whole series is a huge reading commitment, so maybe it is obvious just how much I love it. (I also wrote a Great Entertainment post on it, read it here.)

And while I wrote about the books above, I remembered another new-to-me book I read this month. Blue Smoke by Nora Roberts. Romance, with a bit of detecting in it (aka romantic suspense). Modern day for when it was written. *Goes to look it up* Published in 2005. Which made me realize it did have cellphones towards the end of the book. (It spans quite a bit of time.)

I enjoyed reading this. While I am a bigger fan of Nora Robert’s J.D. Robb books, aka the series I mentioned above, I certainly tend to enjoy the NR books too. And this was no exception.

Now on to other things!

I visited Nijo castle (二条城) in Kyoto. You can walk around the inside of some of it, and that was amazing. Unfortunately you can’t take photos, so I can’t share any. It showed a lot of the old woodwork details, painted ceilings and wall paintings. Some amazingly beautiful rooms.

Then there was the garden around it. It is a huge complex. There is even a very small Japanese garden right by a tea house were you can get tea and sweets, and some food.

I had some matcha with traditional Japanese sweets. So very good.

I played a Switch game that was recently released. Cadence of Hyrule is a rhythm and rogue-lite game. A Zelda themed version of Crypt of the Necrodancer. I never played the original game, but I really enjoyed Cadence of Hyrule. In fact, I finished my first play through after only a couple of weeks of owning the game. (That is unusually fast for me.)

That is it for July. What did you read/consume in July? Something old (but new to you)? Something new? An old favorite?

Great Movie: Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Posted: July 13, 2019

This series of posts are about entertainment that I recommend when people ask me for recommendations. It also includes place-specific “entertainment”, such as beautiful gardens; it might be stretching the definition of entertainment, but I enjoy myself in the places I recommend.

They are not universal recommendations. I wouldn’t recommend a dark thriller to someone looking for something nice and happy; I’d recommend a romance.

They aren’t perfect or without mistakes.

Art is never finished, only abandoned. ~ Leonard da Vinci

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, great action, and a fun (if implausible) story: What more can you ask of a great movie?

This is something of a theme with me. I love a lot of the big Hollywood action movies.

When I heard the plot for Mr. & Mrs. Smith, I knew it would be a blast. Two assassins unwittingly married to each other going through marriage counseling.

Plus I enjoy watching those two actors and several of their movies are my favorites.

I also enjoyed how the story was told. When they switched between different times in the couple’s life and when it went to the counseling.

Admittedly, I really don’t know much about how to make a great movie. Like camera angles, when to cut, how to cut, what to leave out, how to… everything.

All I know is I really loved how they did it in this movie. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Take it or leave, but if you tend to like Hollywood action movies and haven’t seen this one? Go see it. Then come talk to me so we can gush about it (I can hope!).

Great Books: Mercy Thompson, and Alpha and Omega by Patricia Briggs

Posted: June 13, 2019

They are not universal recommendations. I wouldn’t recommend a dark thriller to someone looking for something nice and happy; I’d recommend a romance.

They aren’t perfect or without mistakes.

Art is never finished, only abandoned. ~ Leonard da Vinci

Mercy Thompson, and Alpha and Omega by Patricia Briggs

This post covers a fictional world/universe more than a specific series.

Some time in the early 2000s I picked up Moon Called by Patricia Briggs. It was the start of a few years of reading urban fantasy and paranormal romance, mostly because of Briggs’ book.

The cover you see for the book to the right is the cover of the mass market paperback I bought back then, and the reason I picked the book up up.

It is a gorgeous cover by the artist Dan dos Santos. Yes, it was gorgeous enough that I actually looked up and made sure to remember the artist’s name.

Moon Called is the first book in the Mercy Thompson series. An urban fantasy series set in the Tri-Cities in Washington state, USA. It has all the usual trappings of a urban fantasy series. And it is great.

The main character, Mercy Thompson, is a coyote shifter and not insanely powerful. She is resourceful, have great friends, and a tenacity and protective instinct that brings her into trouble all the time.

She’s a hero.

Sometimes her thoughts in the books matches exactly what I imagine I’d think in those moments.

A couple of books into the Mercy series, Briggs wrote a novella also set in the world called Alpha and Omega, which turned into the start of the second series. That novella is one of my favorite stories of all time.

There are more short stories set in this world, most if not all of them helpfully collected in Shifting Shadows. A great read with many gems. Especially Seeing Eye. And any story with Asil in it. (Asil is always fun to read about.)

I’ve read every book and story set in this world. I’ve enjoyed them all.

Of all the urban fantasy I read for years, this is the series and author I still keep up with. And whose books I buy as soon as they release and read them until I finish them in the middle of the night.

I also reread them regularly.

Great TV Show: Elementary

Posted: May 13, 2019

They are not universal recommendations. I wouldn’t recommend a dark thriller to someone looking for something nice and happy; I’d recommend a romance.

They aren’t perfect or without mistakes.

Art is never finished, only abandoned. ~ Leonard da Vinci

Elementary

Growing up I had the pleasure of occasionally meeting Sherlock Holmes. I think the main way was an audio cassette with the Hound from Baskervilles and a couple of other tales.

When a new Sherlock Holmes movie came out in 2009, I went to the movies and saw it. And then a few years ago, there were two TV-shows based on Sherlock Holmes that came out.

A British one which is excellent in its own way, but today I want to talk about Elementary with Jonny Lee Miller as Sherlock and Lucy Liu as Watson.

The interesting thing here, beyond changing the gender of Watson, is the relationship between Sherlock and Watson. Sober drug addict with sober companion. Sherlock’s usual brilliant but strange detecting skill, and Watson’s routine-based advice.

While their cases are interesting and twisted. I really watch it for the relationship of Sherlock and Watson.

Watching them react to each other, change, not change, adapt, circumvent, amplify and more. I really enjoy the show for that.

I’m an avid watcher of crime shows, and the one thing I’m always looking for way more than interesting cases are interesting characters/detectives. If the characters catch me, I’m a loyal watcher.

This show has done that.

Great Music: Loke

Posted: April 13, 2019

They are not universal recommendations. I wouldn’t recommend a dark thriller to someone looking for something nice and happy; I’d recommend a romance.

They aren’t perfect or without mistakes.

Art is never finished, only abandoned. ~ Leonard da Vinci

Loke

This might be a strange pick for this series, because I’m going to recommend a Swedish artist who only sings in Swedish as far as I know.

He is a modern bard and goes by the artist name Loke.

I call him a modern bard, because his songs are more about the lyrics which reflect both timely topics and universal experiences in our modern time.

Listening to his music and not understanding the words… I think it loses a lot from that. But at the same time I can’t help but recommend him.

He’s that good.

I love the song “Aldrig Mera Rädd” (roughly “Never Again Afraid”) about being about to be assaulted for being different (different ethnicity, sexuality, etc.) and then deciding to take a stand and be every kind of different those people hates.

“Andas” (“Breathe”) is about a loving man trying to keep his depressed/suicidal girlfriend from hurting herself.

The way he sings, sometimes fast as in the song “ADHD” or soft or slow, is the way he makes music; together with the words he uses.

One of his most impactful and longest songs, which I can’t help but cry every time I listen to it, is “Flykten från Sverige” (“The Escape From Sweden” or “Fleeing from Sweden”). In Sweden, we have a lot of refugees. This song takes those refugee stories and flips them; a Swedish boy and his family have to flee from Sweden which have been invaded.

Every time I listen to that song, my feet lifts out of my own shoes of having been born in safe Sweden, and puts me in the shoes of what it would be like if Sweden wasn’t safe, if Sweden was a place you had to flee from to keep your life.

That is the power of story. In this case, a song telling a story.

Loke have many more great songs telling serious, fun, insightful, and silly stories.

Great Movie: Swordfish

Posted: March 13, 2019

They are not universal recommendations. I wouldn’t recommend a dark thriller to someone looking for something nice and happy; I’d recommend a romance.

They aren’t perfect or without mistakes.

Art is never finished, only abandoned. ~ Leonard da Vinci

Swordfish

If a movie have John Travolta, Hugh Jackman, and Halle Barry in it, what more can you ask for?

Swordfish is a hacker/action movie that plays with the question of morality.

I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it.

Like all action Hollywood movies, there is also a lot of play on sex. As well as some funny moments.

However, when they speak “Finnish” in the movie, it is actually German. Not sure what is up with that, but then it often happens a lot when they speak “Swedish” too.

I find the movie a fun ride that also adds thinking of morality.

The DVD version also includes multiple endings, which I found a lot of fun. Not that the ending they choose didn’t work, because it does, but so do the other endings.

I regularly rewatch this one. The mix of all the elements works extremely well for me.

Reader Report: October, 2019

Reader Report: September, 2019

Reader Report: August, 2019

Reader Report: July, 2019