My eyesight isn’t very good. It’s not as bad as Al Pacino’s vision in Scent Of a Woman but it is getting towards a Mr Magoo level of poorness. Thankfully, I’ve not crashed my car… yet!

I suspect anyone reading this who understands either of these references is also old enough to be experiencing similar vision related problems.

My vision has deteriorated to the point where I am unable to read a book at night. The low light level means my eyes struggle to focus on the letters on a page.

I tried every fix I could think of – turning on all the lights, using a Kindle, reading whilst wearing a head-torch. None of them helped. After a few minutes the words would go out of focus and I’d have to stop reading.

So I threw money at the problem. I decided to spend more money on one lamp than I have spent on all the lamps I have ever bought in my life. A serious problem needed a serious solution so I bought a serious reader lamp – https://www.seriousreaders.com/

And all I can say is that is worth every penny I paid for it because for the first time in years I can now read in the evening. I can read for hours without any eye strain or issues. It is life changing. I can now read properly again in the evening.

Books I enjoyed – Blood, Sweat, and Pixels is the story behind a number of hit computer games. If you’ve ever thought it would be great to write games for a living then read this. It will put you off for ever. Writing games is very difficult and often not much fun.

The Runner: Four Years Living and Running in the Wilderness annoyed me as he didn’t live and run in the wilderness. He would pop into his local town if he needed anything. It should have been called “The Runner: Four years of hard living but thankfully lots of friends visited and I was close enough to civilization that I didn’t feel I was missing out on anything.” but that would have been harder to market.

The Final Empire is written by Bryan Sanderson. I’ve only just started it but its great so far. I bought it after reading that Bryan had created the most successful Kickstarter campaign of all time. He raised nearly $15million dollars in the first 24 hours of launch. If that many people like his books then it must be worth a try….

Breath is the type of book that would be much better if it was a long magazine article. Its worth a read but like a lot of science books it goes on well past the point it needs to.

and lastly the worst book of the year was Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!

Don’t read anything written by anyone who uses an exclamation mark! They must be a moron!