3rd Quarter 2024 - Books, Movies, Goals

[fauxklore]

Continuing the slow catch-up, here’s the 3rd quarter 2024 update.

Books:

Only 7 books this quarter.

1. Jodi Picot and Jennifer Finnry Moylan, Mad Honey. I read this book for my primary book club and found it both interesting and provocative. Asher is the son of Olivia, a woman who left her husband, an abusive high powered cardiac surgeon. He gets involved with Lily, whose mother, Ava, has moved them to New Hampshire to protect her from an abusive father. When Lily is found dead, Asher is accused of her murder. But things turn out to be more complicated and the story takes a major twist which I won’t go into details about because it works best if it comes as a surprise. There are lots of complex issues, which I thought were handled well. Absorbing and worth reading.
   
   
2. Harry Mitsudis, The Curious Case of William Baekeland. William Baekeland is a young man who seems to have the family connections that allow him to arrange extreme travel. Not all of it goes well, but he appears able to gain the trust of travelers, some of whom he bilks for thousands of dollars at a time on trips that never happen. The basic rule of this sort of traveling is that if things seem to be too good to be true, they probably are. It’s an interesting book, but not particularly well written.
   
   
3. Manning Coles, A Toast to Tomorrow. Tony Hambledon is a British intelligence agent who is presumed drowned after World War I. But he really has amnesia and believes himself to be a German. He eventually becomes the Nazi Chief of Police. When, after 15 years, his memory returns, he manages to send encoded messages to London and help some people get out of Germany. It’s an interesting book, but it requires a huge dose of suspended disbelief.
   
   
4. Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead. I read this for the Crones and Tomes book club. It’s a pastiche of David Copperfield (which I’ve never read) set in present-day Appalachia where foster children are exploited for profit and drug abuse is rampant. Football may get a boy somewhere - at least until he’s injured. While there are a few people who try to help Demon, it’s a tough road before he eventually does get set on a path to success. Unfortunately realistic and depressing, but a good read.
   
   
5. Sidney Sheldon, The Naked Face. A psychoanalyst is confronted with a murder in his office and a pair of policemen who believe he must be involved. Then his receptionist, who he had saved from a life of prostitution gets killed and someone seems to be after him. There is a lot of prejudice regarding homosexuality and bad guesses about motives before a Mafia-related plot ties things together and we find out who the real bad guys are. Absolutely terrible.
   
   
6. Jhumpa Lahiri, Interpreter of Maladies. Another Crones and Tomes selection, this is a collection of short stories, some set in India and some in the United States. One of the recurring themes involves couples revealing themselves to one another. My favorite story was the final one, in which a man who has come to the U.S. to study rents a room from a Victorian woman and grows into his arranged marriage. I also liked a story about a wife who keeps finding Christian objects in their house. However, I found the stories set in India to be more depressing for the most part.
   
   
7. Irving Wallace, The Square Pegs. This is a collection of essays about American eccentrics. Some of the subjects are quite well-known, e.g. Victoria Woodhull, a free-love advocate who ran for president, and Emperor Norton, who declared himself emperor of San Francisco. Others are more obscure, e.g. Delia Bacon, who popularized the idea that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays. They can be mildly entertaining, but the writing is weak and not as much fun as I’d hoped for.
   

Movies:
I only saw one movie this quarter.

1. My Penguin Friend: My friend, Kim, and I went to the Cinema Arts Theatre (an excellent independent movie theatre near me) to see this movie, which had been recommended by a couple of people. It’s based on a true story, which has to do with a man whose young son is killed in a storm. One day, a starving, oil-soaked penguin shows up and he takes it under his wing, so to speak, cleaning it up and feeding it. To everyone’s surprise, the penguin comes back year after year, as part of its migration, and he comes to see it as a close friend and the other people in his small village also develop a relationship with it. A team of scientists who tag and study penguins discover that this penguin has been migrating from Patagonia to the Rio de Janeiro area, roughly 5000 miles, every year. It’s a sweet tear jerker and I thought it was worth seeing.
   

Goals:

• I have pretty much figured out what I want to do re: circumnavigating the globe going westward, but my planning is on hold due to a combination of other people having things for me to do, as well as dealing with a couple of injuries. Sigh.
  
  
• I hasn’t made it to any actual national parks this year, though I have been to a national park system related site. For example, last weekend I was at the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park. But for goal counting purpose only full-on national parks count.
  
  
• I have done nothing about cleaning out my saved files of genealogy related emails.
  
  
• I’ve also done next to nothing about organizing my bedroom.
  
  
• I’ve read 32 books, out of my goal of 80.
  
  
• I am about 2/3 done with one afghan (out of a goal of 3). I also have parts of a few others done.
  
  
• I have not made any progress on finding my parents’ slides.
  
  
• I went to one game at a AAA ballpark. I had solid plans for another, but it got rained out.
  
  
• I have been getting almost no exercise from around the end of August until now, again due to injuries.
  
  

I’m going to try to get through what I did during September at least during the next few days.