FY2020 Movie Challenge and 2020 Reading Challenge
2020 isn't half way over yet, and I have read more than half of my fifty book goal with seven months left in the year. Piece 'a cake.
On the other hand, fiscal 2020 will be over in 25 days, and I'm eight movies away from meeting my goal of 25 movies before June 30th. To do that, I'll need to see a movie every three days. I'm not optimistic.
Stay tuned. FanSee
1.) Dzur by Steven Brust.
2.) Jhegaala by Steven Brust.
3.) Private Lies by Cynthia St. Aubin.
4.) Germania by Steven Winder.
5.) The Cruel Prince by Holly Black.
6.) The Wicked King by Holly Black.
7.) The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black.
8.) Hi Five by Joe Ide.
9.) Blood Memory by Greg Iles.
10.) Past Tense by Lee Child.
11.) The Quiet Game by Greg Iles.
12.) The Turning Angel by Greg Iles.
13.) The Devil's Punchbowl by Greg Iles.
14.) The Siege Winter by Ariana Franklin and Samantha Newman.
15.) An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.
16.) Kindred by Octavia Butler.
17.) Wine-Dark Sea by Patrick O'Brien.
18.) Under Tower Peak by Bart Paul.
19.) Cheatgrass by Bart Paul.
20.) See That My Grave Is Kept Clean by Bart Paul.
21.) The Matrimonial Advertisement by Mimi Matthews.
22.) Night School by Lee Child.
23.) Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky.
24.) Escape by Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer.
25.) Iorich by Steven Brust.
26.) Life Is Funny by E.R. Frank.
28.) Bellevue by David M. Oshinsky. Yes, Bellevue as in Bellevue Hospital in lower Manhattan, the oldest public hospital in the U.S. and one of the largest. Originally, in the 17th century, it was also a poor house/work house and a quarantine site as well as a hospital. Oshinsky's history starts in the middle of the 17th century and covers the changes in medicine and in the hospital through Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Those changes include the introduction of anesthesia in the second half of the 19th century...before that you really didn't want to have surgery...the adoption of sanitary steps such as hand washing, and the development of the medicines and procedures that keep us alive today. Bellevue was in the middle of all that, and it makes for a fascinating story.
28.) Artemis by Andy Weir. Andy Weir wrote "The Martian;" I saw the movie and read the book. I loved both and have always enjoyed 'hard' science fiction (i.e., with no fantasy elements), so of course I wanted to read "Artemis." It did not disappoint. Artemis is s city on the moon...the only city on the moon...where Jasmine Bashara grew up. Artemis' main source of income is tourism, and Jazz has just failed to become certified as a guide. Fortunately, she has a fall-back occupation: smuggler. She'd like to move on to something bigger and more profitable, something which doesn't involve paying off a longshoreman to stamp "Paid" for import duties. The plot of "Artemis" is about Jazz's Big Con, in the course of which I got to learn about the mechanics of life on the moon and to meet Jazz's friends and frenemies. Good reading.
29. Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher. This was the first book I'd read by T. Kingfisher, and I found it charming. Steven is a Paladin of the God of Steel, but when his God dies, His paladins go crazy and try to kill each other. Steven is one of the few that survive the killing frenzy, but without his God, he has no reason to get out of bed in the morning. The Temple of the White Rat, a sort of social services organization, has taken him in. His main function is to look large and dangerous so that the Temple's work force can get about its ministry safely. One evening, on his way back from guarding a medic making visits in a bad part of town, a young woman hurls herself into his arms. Grace is being pursued by followers of the Hanged Mother who will not be nice to her if they catch her. Steven hides her, walks her back to her part of town, and goes his way without having exchanged names with her. Not to worry! They will meet again, will have a lot of adventures, and...wait for it...fall in love. Charming, humorous, and compulsively readable. I went to bed at 3:00 a.m.
30. Clockwork Boys and 31. The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher. T. Kingfisher says that she wrote these two books as one doorstop of a book, then split the work into two books. You've already seen this movie: A small team is sent out to reconnoiter an enemy, knowing that they will probably not survive their mission. Slate, a convicted forger, is offered the chance to recruit her team from the palace dungeons. Their mission: to travel to Anuket City, home of an army of huge clockwork soldiers, currently chewing its way through its neighbors. Once there, they will gather information on the house-sized soldiers and try to figure out a way to destroy them. Slate recruits two fellow prisoners: Calaban, a failed paladin infested with a dead demon, and Brenner, an assassin and Slate's former lover. The fourth member of the group, gifted to them, is Learned Edmund, an adolescent scholar/monk who cannot look straight at his (shudder) leader who is (more shudders) a woman. Although the first book flows into the second seamlessly, there is reason behind how they are divided. Clockwork Boys is about the team's assembly and its journey to Anuket City. The second is about their efforts to learn as much as possible about the clockwork soldiers and how they can be defeated, if possible. Along the way, we have great dialogue; some wild action, especially in Wonder Engine; and a satisfactory romance.
32. Swordheart by T. Kingfisher. Still digging into the Kingfisher oeuvre and still being charmed by what I find. Set in the same world as the three previous books, there is no grand quest in Swordheart. There is just Halla, a poor widow who has spent the last ten years keeping house for her great uncle. When he dies...not unexpectedly...she is the sole beneficiary of his estate. That is unexpected, especially by his nearer relations. They lock Halla in her room, telling her they will only let her out to marry her odious cousin. That would be a fate worse than death, so she takes down the sword mounted over the fireplace, planning to fall on it. It's a very large sword, so how she will manage to fall on it is unclear. Nevertheless, she pulls it from its sheath, and Sarkis emerges. He expects to defend her from any invading army approaching, any attempt to over-throw the government. Okay, there is no invading army, no attempt at revolution, just Halla's relatives. Fine. Sarkis will defend her from them. And we're off on a romp of a novel. I loved it, and you will, too.
33. The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher. Perhaps I had just over-indulged in T. Kingfisher...this was my fifth in a row...but I wasn't as drawn in by this one as by my previous reads. Rhea is a miller's young daughter, helping her father at the mill, when a local nobleman, Lord Crevan, asks for her hand in marriage. Well, he doesn't so much ask as demands, with a strong hint of coercion, such as, "Otherwise, something bad might happen to the mill." Rhea travels, alone, except for a hedgehog she meets on the way, to Lord Crevan's castle. There she meets five of his previous six brides; one bride died. Lord Crevan sets her a series of challenges, each to be completed in one night; otherwise he will marry her and steal one of her attributes. "The Seventh Bride" didn't grab me the way the previous four books by Kingfisher did. The only two characters that felt fully fleshed out were Rhea and Lord Crevan's first wife, Maria, now his cook/housekeeper. Even Lord Crevan was more of a stock villian than a real person. Nevertheless SB was a pleasant read, just not up to what I expect from T. Kingfisher.
34. Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine. Gina Royal is a normal, suburban housewife with two children in their early teen years, living in Wichita, Kansas. Then he husband calls and asks if she would pick up the kids from school today. Afterwards, the three of them arrive home to find that a car has careened across their lawn and slammed into the garage. Only it's not functioning as a garage anymore. Gina's husband, Mel, converted it in to a workshop for his woodworking hobby and kept it locked and the door bolted shut. Gina has never been inside and neither have her children, but now the police have forced the door open. Inside is the body of a woman, tortured to death. In the aftermath of her husband's arrest, trial, and conviction, Gina obtains new identities and documentation for herself and her children and moves to Stillhouse Lake, Tennessee. Her struggles to restart a normal life and to maintain their anonymity were both plausible and interesting, but not to the point where I stayed up all night to read. This was a put-down-able book. Note: When I finished SL and read the cliffhanger ending, I thought it odd but shrugged it off. It was only when I started to write this summery that I realized that it was the first of a five-book series. Will I read 2 through 5? I'm not sure yet. I have to think about it.
1. Rust Creek with Hermione Corfield and Jay Paulson.
2. Yesterday with Himesh Patel and Lily James.
3. Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet.
4. Mansfield Park with Frances O'Conner and Jonny Lee Miller.
5. Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Bentham.
6. Downtown Abbey with Michelle Dockery, Allen Leach, and a host of other familiar faces.
7. The Aftermath with Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård, and Jason Clarke.
8. The Bronx, U.S.A. directed by Danny Gold.
9. Decade of Fire directed by Gretchen Hildebran and Vivian Vazquez.
10. Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood with Leonard DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.
11. Jojo Rabbit directed by Taika Waititi.
12. The Thing About Harry directed by Peter Paige.
13. Ford and Ferrari with Matt Damon and Christian Bale.
14. Parasite directed by Bong Joon Ho.
15. Little Women with Emma Watson and Meryl Streep.
16. 1917 directed by Sam Mendes.
17. Galveston with Ben Foster and Elle Fanning. "Galveston" is a mess of a movie. Ben Foster plays Roy, a 40-year-old hitman on the run; Elle Fanning is Rocky, the 19-year-old mother of a three-year-old girl. Roy becomes their sometimes unreliable protector as the three of them flee across Texas. Much of the movie takes place in Roy's car; the rest seems to have all been filmed after dark. I spent a good part of my viewing squinting at the screen, trying to figure out what was happening. Perhaps the film makers had the same problem. That would explain why the 'action' jumps forward twenty years to show us Sophia, Rocky's child, interviewing Roy and 'splaining the film to us. Strangely enough, Sophia never asked the one question I wanted answered. Like I said, a mess.
18. Christopher Robin with Ewan McGregor. The Christopher Robin of this movie is a married man with a child of his own and a job he dislikes even though it dominates his whole life. His childhood is behind him and almost forgotten. His little family have made plans to spend the weekend in the country in the cottage where Mr. Robin grew up, but Mr. Robin has a project he must finish at work. He sends his wife and Madeline off to the country by themselves. At some point in this working weekend, Mr. Robin sits down on a park bench and, lo and behold! sitting next to him is Pooh, a "not very smart bear." He is smart enough, though, to talk Christopher Robin into going to the cottage to help him find Eeyore, Piglet, and the rest of their friends. I wanted to love this movie. I wanted it to make me smile, I wanted to be inspired to keep fun in my life, I even wanted to tear up a bit at Christopher Robin's redemption. Nope. None of that happened. On the other hand, if your kids want to see it, you don't have to worry they'll see nudity or violence. In fact, you might even use it as a jumping off place for talking about life choices.
On the other hand, fiscal 2020 will be over in 25 days, and I'm eight movies away from meeting my goal of 25 movies before June 30th. To do that, I'll need to see a movie every three days. I'm not optimistic.
Stay tuned. FanSee
1.) Dzur by Steven Brust.
2.) Jhegaala by Steven Brust.
3.) Private Lies by Cynthia St. Aubin.
4.) Germania by Steven Winder.
5.) The Cruel Prince by Holly Black.
6.) The Wicked King by Holly Black.
7.) The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black.
8.) Hi Five by Joe Ide.
9.) Blood Memory by Greg Iles.
10.) Past Tense by Lee Child.
11.) The Quiet Game by Greg Iles.
12.) The Turning Angel by Greg Iles.
13.) The Devil's Punchbowl by Greg Iles.
14.) The Siege Winter by Ariana Franklin and Samantha Newman.
15.) An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.
16.) Kindred by Octavia Butler.
17.) Wine-Dark Sea by Patrick O'Brien.
18.) Under Tower Peak by Bart Paul.
19.) Cheatgrass by Bart Paul.
20.) See That My Grave Is Kept Clean by Bart Paul.
21.) The Matrimonial Advertisement by Mimi Matthews.
22.) Night School by Lee Child.
23.) Polio: An American Story by David M. Oshinsky.
24.) Escape by Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer.
25.) Iorich by Steven Brust.
26.) Life Is Funny by E.R. Frank.
28.) Bellevue by David M. Oshinsky. Yes, Bellevue as in Bellevue Hospital in lower Manhattan, the oldest public hospital in the U.S. and one of the largest. Originally, in the 17th century, it was also a poor house/work house and a quarantine site as well as a hospital. Oshinsky's history starts in the middle of the 17th century and covers the changes in medicine and in the hospital through Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Those changes include the introduction of anesthesia in the second half of the 19th century...before that you really didn't want to have surgery...the adoption of sanitary steps such as hand washing, and the development of the medicines and procedures that keep us alive today. Bellevue was in the middle of all that, and it makes for a fascinating story.
28.) Artemis by Andy Weir. Andy Weir wrote "The Martian;" I saw the movie and read the book. I loved both and have always enjoyed 'hard' science fiction (i.e., with no fantasy elements), so of course I wanted to read "Artemis." It did not disappoint. Artemis is s city on the moon...the only city on the moon...where Jasmine Bashara grew up. Artemis' main source of income is tourism, and Jazz has just failed to become certified as a guide. Fortunately, she has a fall-back occupation: smuggler. She'd like to move on to something bigger and more profitable, something which doesn't involve paying off a longshoreman to stamp "Paid" for import duties. The plot of "Artemis" is about Jazz's Big Con, in the course of which I got to learn about the mechanics of life on the moon and to meet Jazz's friends and frenemies. Good reading.
29. Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher. This was the first book I'd read by T. Kingfisher, and I found it charming. Steven is a Paladin of the God of Steel, but when his God dies, His paladins go crazy and try to kill each other. Steven is one of the few that survive the killing frenzy, but without his God, he has no reason to get out of bed in the morning. The Temple of the White Rat, a sort of social services organization, has taken him in. His main function is to look large and dangerous so that the Temple's work force can get about its ministry safely. One evening, on his way back from guarding a medic making visits in a bad part of town, a young woman hurls herself into his arms. Grace is being pursued by followers of the Hanged Mother who will not be nice to her if they catch her. Steven hides her, walks her back to her part of town, and goes his way without having exchanged names with her. Not to worry! They will meet again, will have a lot of adventures, and...wait for it...fall in love. Charming, humorous, and compulsively readable. I went to bed at 3:00 a.m.
30. Clockwork Boys and 31. The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher. T. Kingfisher says that she wrote these two books as one doorstop of a book, then split the work into two books. You've already seen this movie: A small team is sent out to reconnoiter an enemy, knowing that they will probably not survive their mission. Slate, a convicted forger, is offered the chance to recruit her team from the palace dungeons. Their mission: to travel to Anuket City, home of an army of huge clockwork soldiers, currently chewing its way through its neighbors. Once there, they will gather information on the house-sized soldiers and try to figure out a way to destroy them. Slate recruits two fellow prisoners: Calaban, a failed paladin infested with a dead demon, and Brenner, an assassin and Slate's former lover. The fourth member of the group, gifted to them, is Learned Edmund, an adolescent scholar/monk who cannot look straight at his (shudder) leader who is (more shudders) a woman. Although the first book flows into the second seamlessly, there is reason behind how they are divided. Clockwork Boys is about the team's assembly and its journey to Anuket City. The second is about their efforts to learn as much as possible about the clockwork soldiers and how they can be defeated, if possible. Along the way, we have great dialogue; some wild action, especially in Wonder Engine; and a satisfactory romance.
32. Swordheart by T. Kingfisher. Still digging into the Kingfisher oeuvre and still being charmed by what I find. Set in the same world as the three previous books, there is no grand quest in Swordheart. There is just Halla, a poor widow who has spent the last ten years keeping house for her great uncle. When he dies...not unexpectedly...she is the sole beneficiary of his estate. That is unexpected, especially by his nearer relations. They lock Halla in her room, telling her they will only let her out to marry her odious cousin. That would be a fate worse than death, so she takes down the sword mounted over the fireplace, planning to fall on it. It's a very large sword, so how she will manage to fall on it is unclear. Nevertheless, she pulls it from its sheath, and Sarkis emerges. He expects to defend her from any invading army approaching, any attempt to over-throw the government. Okay, there is no invading army, no attempt at revolution, just Halla's relatives. Fine. Sarkis will defend her from them. And we're off on a romp of a novel. I loved it, and you will, too.
33. The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher. Perhaps I had just over-indulged in T. Kingfisher...this was my fifth in a row...but I wasn't as drawn in by this one as by my previous reads. Rhea is a miller's young daughter, helping her father at the mill, when a local nobleman, Lord Crevan, asks for her hand in marriage. Well, he doesn't so much ask as demands, with a strong hint of coercion, such as, "Otherwise, something bad might happen to the mill." Rhea travels, alone, except for a hedgehog she meets on the way, to Lord Crevan's castle. There she meets five of his previous six brides; one bride died. Lord Crevan sets her a series of challenges, each to be completed in one night; otherwise he will marry her and steal one of her attributes. "The Seventh Bride" didn't grab me the way the previous four books by Kingfisher did. The only two characters that felt fully fleshed out were Rhea and Lord Crevan's first wife, Maria, now his cook/housekeeper. Even Lord Crevan was more of a stock villian than a real person. Nevertheless SB was a pleasant read, just not up to what I expect from T. Kingfisher.
34. Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine. Gina Royal is a normal, suburban housewife with two children in their early teen years, living in Wichita, Kansas. Then he husband calls and asks if she would pick up the kids from school today. Afterwards, the three of them arrive home to find that a car has careened across their lawn and slammed into the garage. Only it's not functioning as a garage anymore. Gina's husband, Mel, converted it in to a workshop for his woodworking hobby and kept it locked and the door bolted shut. Gina has never been inside and neither have her children, but now the police have forced the door open. Inside is the body of a woman, tortured to death. In the aftermath of her husband's arrest, trial, and conviction, Gina obtains new identities and documentation for herself and her children and moves to Stillhouse Lake, Tennessee. Her struggles to restart a normal life and to maintain their anonymity were both plausible and interesting, but not to the point where I stayed up all night to read. This was a put-down-able book. Note: When I finished SL and read the cliffhanger ending, I thought it odd but shrugged it off. It was only when I started to write this summery that I realized that it was the first of a five-book series. Will I read 2 through 5? I'm not sure yet. I have to think about it.
1. Rust Creek with Hermione Corfield and Jay Paulson.
2. Yesterday with Himesh Patel and Lily James.
3. Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet.
4. Mansfield Park with Frances O'Conner and Jonny Lee Miller.
5. Emma with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeremy Bentham.
6. Downtown Abbey with Michelle Dockery, Allen Leach, and a host of other familiar faces.
7. The Aftermath with Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård, and Jason Clarke.
8. The Bronx, U.S.A. directed by Danny Gold.
9. Decade of Fire directed by Gretchen Hildebran and Vivian Vazquez.
10. Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood with Leonard DiCaprio and Brad Pitt.
11. Jojo Rabbit directed by Taika Waititi.
12. The Thing About Harry directed by Peter Paige.
13. Ford and Ferrari with Matt Damon and Christian Bale.
14. Parasite directed by Bong Joon Ho.
15. Little Women with Emma Watson and Meryl Streep.
16. 1917 directed by Sam Mendes.
17. Galveston with Ben Foster and Elle Fanning. "Galveston" is a mess of a movie. Ben Foster plays Roy, a 40-year-old hitman on the run; Elle Fanning is Rocky, the 19-year-old mother of a three-year-old girl. Roy becomes their sometimes unreliable protector as the three of them flee across Texas. Much of the movie takes place in Roy's car; the rest seems to have all been filmed after dark. I spent a good part of my viewing squinting at the screen, trying to figure out what was happening. Perhaps the film makers had the same problem. That would explain why the 'action' jumps forward twenty years to show us Sophia, Rocky's child, interviewing Roy and 'splaining the film to us. Strangely enough, Sophia never asked the one question I wanted answered. Like I said, a mess.
18. Christopher Robin with Ewan McGregor. The Christopher Robin of this movie is a married man with a child of his own and a job he dislikes even though it dominates his whole life. His childhood is behind him and almost forgotten. His little family have made plans to spend the weekend in the country in the cottage where Mr. Robin grew up, but Mr. Robin has a project he must finish at work. He sends his wife and Madeline off to the country by themselves. At some point in this working weekend, Mr. Robin sits down on a park bench and, lo and behold! sitting next to him is Pooh, a "not very smart bear." He is smart enough, though, to talk Christopher Robin into going to the cottage to help him find Eeyore, Piglet, and the rest of their friends. I wanted to love this movie. I wanted it to make me smile, I wanted to be inspired to keep fun in my life, I even wanted to tear up a bit at Christopher Robin's redemption. Nope. None of that happened. On the other hand, if your kids want to see it, you don't have to worry they'll see nudity or violence. In fact, you might even use it as a jumping off place for talking about life choices.