Hacksaw Ridge. This movie was ROUGH. It covers the true story of the first conscientious objector to both volunteer for service in WWII and be decorated for valor on the battlefield. Desmond Doss refuses to touch a gun, but goes onto the battlefield as a medic and time and time again drags wounded soldiers to safety long after the rest of the troops withdraw from the field. Watching this movie, to me, is a refutation of the argument that we didn’t need to drop the big bomb because we were already winning the war—that type of winning we were doing has a cost to BOTH sides that you can’t even begin to imagine, but this film brings you a few steps closer to understanding. Do not eat food while watching this movie.
Stand and Deliver. I have seen stories like this but this is a good one. A teacher in a failing school demands that his students rise to the level he believes they can. He drags them up from failing math to taking the AP calculus exam. Can they pass it? Can he deal with a class that has long since given up?… it’s a good movie.
Jesus Revolution. In a time not too terribly different from our own in many ways—the sixties—the concept of who Jesus was and what the church could be underwent a radical change when one pastor took a risk and threw the doors open to the social outcasts of the day—Hippies. It’s a good movie about broken people trying and failing to follow Jesus, the movement that ensued, and the handing off of it to the next generation.
Lex Fridman hosts a 5 hour no-holds-barred debate on Palestine and Israel. So this is not technically a movie but since it was actually very informative and lines up with an avenue of information I'm seeking, I'll put it here. It is one of the most stressful things I've ever had to watch and I had to break it up over three or four days. This two-on-two debate was grueling and would have been far less nerve-wracking if one person in the room had not constantly behaved like a child. I'll leave you to discern who that is, because the answer may surprise you. Even so, it gave an interesting view into where the argument between the two sides bogs down all the time, and unfortunately where they agree, which is that the future looks bleak and unsalvageable at the moment.
Books
Jet Boss by Captain Laura Savino. This is feminism done right. I have a lot of issues with the current wave of feminism, but if there was a book to show me why some of the fight was necessary it would be this one. Captain Laura Savino was one of those kids who knew pretty darn early what she wanted to be, but in those days being a pilot was only for men. Undeterred, she fought for every step she took and ended up getting the seat of her dreams after years of grueling hardship, rejection, and roadblocks. The story is inspiring, though there are some things she says I can’t agree with (she seems to say that anybody can become a pilot but not in the Ratatouille sense. I got the impression from her that if I wanted to, I also could become a pilot with the right training, and I have to stop her right there because math was the absolute most miserable part of my schooling experience anywhere I went). Even so, this is an excellent book and her stories are very interesting. She is obviously as good at writing as she is at flying, so reading it doesn’t drag at all.
Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley. Beautiful fantasy. I remember this from my teen days scouring the shelves in the library. It’s a twist on Sleeping Beauty and lets you enjoy the growing up process of the princess in a land so saturated with magic that it literally falls as dust and you have to ask your kettle and loaf of bread to stay what they are. What I remember most are the descriptions of the spell that searches out the princess for 21 years, and what a terribly shambly thing it feels like to the fairies of the land who are defending her. It’s a lovely story.
Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley. AAAGUUGUGUG it’s good. It’s very slow, but good. It feels like the entire novel is a super slow burn emotional healing so you really have to be in the mood for something like that, but I enjoyed it quite a bit.
Shadows by Robin McKinley. Mostly good, somewhat confusing. In a country where magic has been stamped out, exiled, and genetically removed from people, a few have evaded the rules. One doesn’t even know it, but she starts to find out the day her future stepfather shows up wreathed in living shadows that only she seems to be able to see. This is a really enjoyable story with some moments confusing enough that I was not able to gloss over them and knit the story together retroactively like I usually can at-speed. Even going over these scenes a few times I still am not sure what happened. Still an enjoyable story to read.
The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley. I might be on a McKinley kick. In a land where dragons are no larger than a large dog (though still plenty dangerous) the daughter of the King begins to learn how to make a salve against dragonfire. Little does she know that she is preparing for the defense of her realm against a real dragon… and the sorcerer who sent it. Excellent fantasy read.
The Door in the Hedge by Robin McKinley. My favorite McKinley book so far. A collection of five fairytales retold by McKinley in short story form. Beautiful, short, sweet, perfect. Usually her novels are slow-burns and I do like that, but this forces her to move just a little bit faster and I felt like most of these were just perfect.
Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley. An enjoyable retelling of Beauty and the Beast. After reading multiple novels by her, I notice McKinley has a favorite… recurring motif. When describing magic or something magical, she uses language and imagery so abstract as to leave the reader rather confused about what they just read. Sometimes, where I have seen this elsewhere, it is irritating because it feels like showing off. From her, it feels like it comes organically and is often there to confuse us as much as the main character is confused by the magic, so it bothers me less from her fingers.
The House of Scorpion and The Lord of Opium by Nancy Farmer. This follows the story of a child who is the clone of a great drug lord in a world where clones have no rights and are only there to prolong the original’s life through organ harvesting. I read the first book as a teen-or-twenty-something-er and it was incredible. A great dystopian novel and, as an adult, I can recognize strains of Dracula and Frankenstein. It was wonderful and definitely left room for a sequel. Unfortunately the follow up, many years later, proved to be severely disappointing. I tried, but I could not finish. I only got to the halfway point. There are too many large problems and none of them were being addressed, and the way that some few were being addressed made little or no sense (healing the ecology of the entire world by using the wilds of Opium [the drug land]? Literally cannot, no matter how many zoo animals escaped and bred in this strip of land it isn't even close to believable. Opium's environment isn't suited to all the creatures, plants, and microbes that the world's other eco-systems would need replacements for. Only some of them would get to benefit from transplants). The ecological moralizing got to me too. I don't understand why many authors, including Nancy, are sacrificing good character and plot development by putting (fill in author's choice of) moralizing in the driver's seat of the story. I mean, I kind of do, but it bothers me a lot because the story always suffers for it. There are a lot of interesting concepts introduced, but the mounting things-that-make-no-sense and moralizing killed it for me. I'm sorry. Stick with the first book, it truly was a good read.
Ogre Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. If you enjoyed Ella Enchanted, good chance you’ll enjoy this. A sort of twist on Beauty and the Beast, this follows another of the idiotic fairy Lucinda’s gifts/curses gone horribly awry. Outraged that the local healer will not reciprocate love shown to her, Lucinda curses the healer to become an ogre until someone asks her to marry him and she accepts. What we get is an in-depth development of ogre lore, which we only learned a bit about in Ella Enchanted. Good story, though a few aspects of the ending felt a tiny bit off, it was still a wonderful read.
Defeating Dark Angels by Charles H. Kraft. I wrote an entire blog post covering my reaction to the book up through chapter five, but my husband and I recently completed this book together and… well. There’s a lot we still have to learn, but we’ve already been able to work together to free ourselves of many interferences that have dogged us our whole lives, and our prayers have become meaningful and have real effects on us in our day to day experiences. I would implore you that if you ever wanted freedom from something in your life that you thought you’d always have to live with, treat this book like an experiment. Even if parts of it offend you, treat it like an experiment. Even if the entire concept offends you, treat it like an experiment. See if anything happens. I think more often than not you’ll be shocked by what happens.
I Give You Authority by Charles H. Kraft. I was raised in the church, where has this Christianity been all my life? This books describes a Biblical Christianity of power wrapped in love and compassion, not half the church raining down damnation and the other half accepting everything under the sun. This seemed to be a movement rising in Kraft’s day, and I don’t know what happened to it since, but we need it back more than ever. This was the perfect book to read concurrent with/after Defeating Dark Angels. It delves way more into what our authority is as believers and how we are to use it. This is the second book I’ve read by Kraft and I want more like this, by him or by others.
Introvert Book Club Reads
First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston. Oh nice this is a GEM. Honestly this is a book that is better if you don’t even read the synopsis. If you can manage to go in TOTALLY BLIND then this is an excellent, wild ride. This is a book that epitomizes “Show don’t tell” and was a real treat the whole way through.
Holmes, Marple & Poe by James Patterson and Brian Sitts. Three unknown PIs taking the last names Holmes, Marple, and Poe smash into New York's crime scenes and cold cases. Nobody knows where they came from, but they take after their namesakes in every sense. If someone wanted to write a fanfiction with these three personalities working together, someone did a good and profitable job.
Run, Rose, Run by Dolly Parton and James Patterson. Yes, you read that correctly, Dolly Parton co-wrote a thriller. A country-western singer thriller for a no-name big talent who scrapes herself out of the gutter. Determined to write, play, and sing her way to the top, AnnieLee hits Nashville like a wrecking ball, but her past is hot on her heels. Lots of fun, very well written, nice story. Oh, and it has a companion album written especially for the book? This I have to hear...