Wannabe Writer's Ink

Wannabe writer with hobby of art. Stay and you'll glimpse a small piece of my heart.

Recent Media Consumed

Books

  • Trust by Henry Cloud. Cloud has written some good books on interpersonal issues of various kinds, though I notice when he’s not co-writing with Townsend he tends to lean more into the business side of relationships. He’s a consultant, so that does make sense. Trust is a good book on the topic and lays things out pretty methodically. I did not, personally, get any life-changing information but if I’m ever in a situation where I need a refresher it’s good to have this title in my back pocket and on my Audible list.
  • The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile. This book is a journey through the Enneagram personalities, recommended to me by a friend. I ought to be more humble in accepting recommendations, because at first I didn’t think I would learn anything about myself from this, and then I did. It’s well-written, very engaging with a bright, humorous, and compassionate tone that makes for an easy read. Having only taken surface-level enneagram tests online, I was genuinely surprised to learn some of the insights about my “number” that this book had to offer. The tests were correct about my number, but they were much more shallow in their explanations. If you've ever taken an enneagram test online, I highly recommend picking up this book for the full picture.
  • Knowledge and Decisions by Thomas Sowell. I tried to read this book a few years ago, and I had to stop by chapter 2. It delved into highly abstract concepts and I quickly lost track of everything he was trying to say. I thought I’d circle back around to it in a few years. On this, my second try, I got through the entire book. I understood probably less than half of it, but I did understand more than I would have the first time I tried. I get the feeling this is the kind of book I’ll need to read several times to understand. I can’t even recap what it’s about (where the locus of decision-making should be? Who gets to make decisions being the fundamental question?), but what I did glean was interesting. Here’s to my next pass in a few years!
  • The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight, and The Shepherd’s Crown by Terry Pratchett. A young girl on the Disc finds out she is a witch, with the potential to be one of the strongest witches there is, and learns the ins and outs of witchery. Oh, and she is never out from under the eye of the rudest pixies you ever did see, aka the Nac MacFeegles. It is absolutely hilarious to read these little blue thieves and their dialogue. The final book in this arc doesn’t give me the level of satisfaction I hoped for, but when I found out that the author died before completing it, a lot of that made sense. It’s a beautiful arc that takes the idea of witchery in a completely different direction than the Harry Potter series and, frankly, I like this version of witchery quite a bit more.
  • Dream Treaders by Wayne Thomas Batson. The world is imaginative and vibrant and the main character is enjoyable. However, secondary characters and villain motivations confuse me greatly. I never felt like I had anything like enough of the picture to understand when someone did a heel-turn in the story. Aside from that, enjoyable fantasy read about gifted teenagers who enter the dream world most nights to fight a nightmare lord and protect the dream realms.
  • The Door Within by Wayne Thomas Batson. I liked this one quite a bit more than his other book that I picked up. Once again, imaginative creatures and a classic good-and-evil struggle. However I realize I’m outside the range of the target audience. It’s a good story and it’s well-written, but it wasn’t holding me. But, that’s because I’m not an adventurous teen boy/girl who hasn’t yet been exposed to all the fantasy tropes. I think I would have loved it back in high school and college. There are more books in the series but I’ll stop here.
  • The Scholomance books (A Deadly Education, The Last Graduate, The Golden Enclaves) by Naomi Novik. This is one of my favorite writers. She is top notch. I have very mixed feelings about this series and its messages. If you took Harry Potter and gave it the tone of the anime Attack on Titan, you would have The Scholomance books. Grisly and dark, but not without hope, the series examines the archetype of “born bad but trying not to slip into the dark side” as well as themes of power, resource hoarding, and cooperation. Though I don’t agree with all the messages in the book, this is not a ham-fisted throat-cramming piece of propagandistic writing. It is a well-crafted fable that makes its point in that way that MAKES YOU THINK about your own viewpoint and whether it’s really the right one. This book is a perfect example of how you craft your message in a story that makes everyone double check their preconceptions of the world, and I applaud it for that, and I would gladly own it. (Warning, 2-3 explicit sex scenes within)
  • (all the rest of the books on the list are front-porch-introvert-book-club reads) The House of Wolves by James Patterson and Mike Lupica. Interesting novel about a football family’s murderous feud. I’d say it’s 3/4 football family feud and 1/4 murder mystery. Good enough for a one-time read but I’ll be passing it on.
  • Countdown by James Patterson & Brendan Dubois. Introvert porch book club exchange left me with a breakneck-paced chase. One American female operative and one British male operative go rogue and follow their guts in search of the right trail, trying to head off a terrorist attack that would put 9/11 to shame. And they only have five days. Pretty good read, though for some reason I didn’t really engage until the middle, but it was worth it. I let a lot of the lesser names scroll by. I was definitely surprised at the hit a main character took at the end, but bravo to the writers for not giving a complete safety net to our heroes.
  • The 23rd Midnight by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro. To be honest it felt like a fairly generic serial killer book with middle-of-the-road writing. Nothing special.
  • Fire Strike by Clive Cussler. Okay so far this has been the best of the new batch of porch exchange books I’ve gotten. Action, spies, super high tech ships, genetically modified super soldiers, and top tier writing to suspend all disbelief. Yes, I will be keeping this one on my shelf, thankyouverymuch. I MIGHT even track down others from this series… apparently this is part of a saga called The Oregon Files. I’ll have to look into that.
  • Series I'm in the middle of: The Wingfeather Saga and Shadow of the Fox.

Movies

  • Turning Red. Been a little leery of new Disney productions, but I’m curious and I want to see what the semi-recent and recent titles have been like. Turning Red follows Mei-Mei, a Chinese-Canadian girl struggling to keep her family happy and carve out her own personality. When a family blessing/curse kicks in, causing her to turn into a large red panda every time she gets emotional, it brings all the family issues to the forefront. I have mixed feelings on the morals. On the one hand, I don’t like the degradation of 1) the parent-child relationship (relationship with friends is held up as the redemptive ideal over and above a frustrating family situation) and 2) the degradation of the father (henpecked and barely more than a wallflower in most scenes). On the other hand, there is a beautiful message about being real with your messiness and imperfection, as well as integrating your dark side and not suppressing it until it goes out of control. There’s also a beautiful moment where inter-generational issues are acknowledged and understood by Mei-Mei, and she gets to be the voice of healing for her mother. Mixed feelings, but it was a good watch with some very funny moments.

Shows

  • Schmigadoon. Definitely a treat for anyone who grew up with musicals and enjoyed it, the parodying is off the charts funny. However, I noticed it had a similar undertone to A Boy Named Christmas, where purity and innocence are relentlessly mocked with cynicism and “we know more now” that tends to undercut the tone and the joy of the thing. Still it was enjoyable to watch through.
  • Steven Universe (and the movie and the "Future" epilogue season). First re-watch in many years. It takes a bit to get going but by the end of the first season it's very enjoyable and builds great lore. Whoever kept track of continuity for this show was top notch. I feel like it started to fall apart in the last half of the ending season all the way through the movie and epilogue season. Quality of storytelling took a downturn. However, it is still excellent and a lot of fun, and the writing is really quality stuff. Like, it's both funny AND people actually talk like this, whaaaat? It's a good little toon.