Neil Gaiman

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.