FY2020 Movie Challenge and 2020 Reading Challenge
I've been self-quarantining since 9 March or for more than ninety days. What did I do with all that time? I cooked a lot more than usual, I kept my apartment moderately clean and neat, I watched TV, and I read. I read a lot, which is how I have reached 80% of my goal of fifty books read in 2020. I may have to change that goal to 100, or at least to 75.
My movie goal for fiscal 2020 which ends in less than a week is 25; I'm at 22. I could easily watch three movies between today, June 25, and June 30th. I am doubtful. However, watch this space. I will come back at the end of next week, and update FY2020 for any movies I do watch between then and now. FanSee
2020 Reading Challenge
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.
28.) Artemis by Andy Weir.
29.) Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher.
30.) Clockwork Boys and 31. The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher.
32.) Swordheart by T. Kingfisher.
33.) The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher.
34.) Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine.
35.) Time Zero, 36. Time Next, and 37. Times Up by Carolyn Cohagan. This YA trilogy is set in a dystopian New York one hundred years hence. Mina, age 15, has grown up in a dirty, crowded Manhattan where, at 15, she is old enough to be married off to someone higher up on the social ladder than her bureaucrat father. Mina herself will not have a say in her groom; instead she will only meet him when she gets engaged. Mina herself accepts that this is the way of the world until she meets her spoiled and petty fiance...and his bodyguard, Juda. Juda is only the second boy Mina had ever met, and he is no more happy about her engagement than she is. He is in a far better place than she is to do something about it: i.e., flee. In "Time Next," after a harrowing escape from Manhattan, Mina and Juda find themselves in a lovely, suburban community with spacious homes, green lawns, and plentiful food. All seems idyllic, but Mina slowly realizes that her life as a young woman is hedged about here with as many rules as the ones she experienced in Manhattan. The penalties for disobedience are as dire as those in Manhattan and maybe more painful. In "Times Up," I expected Juda and Mina to once again run, this time to a third culture somewhere to the west of New York state. Instead, she and Juda are sent back to Manhattan with instructions to assassinate its Divine Leader, Uncle Ruho. The penalty for failure: Manhattan would be bombed into rubble. As an adventure story, the trilogy worked, but by the time I got to book #3, I had gotten tired of being lectured on the many ways girls are objectified and mistreated. I know it's unkind of me, but I just kept thinking Margaret Atwood did it so much better in "A Handmaid's Tale."
38.) The Player by Stella Riley. Adrian, the protagonist of this romance set in the Georgian period, is quite literally a player, in at least two meanings of the word. When his flighty, young fiancée died in an accident, Adrian's parents believed he was complicit in her death and forced him to leave England. Having had the usual aristocratic education, he had no marketable skills with which to support himself but manages to make a life by winning at cards and by acting on the stage under the pseudonym, L'Inconnu (The Unknown). He never expects to return to England, much less inherit the earldom but, after ten years in Paris, he finds himself Earl of Sarre. His parents s have died, followed unexpectedly by the death of his older brother. Once back in England, he knows he should look for a wife although he expects that to be a difficult task because of the scandal attached to his name. Instead, he meets Caroline Maitland, the granddaughter of a factory owner who is funding her London debut. Both of the pair bring issues to the relationship, but Riley has the pair deal with them rationally. Altogether, a pleasant read but I didn't feel I had to rush out and read another in this series of six related romances.
39.) Hawk by Steven Brust. Steven Brust's first book in his Vlad Taltos series came out in 1983; I read it in 1983 or shortly thereafter, so we go back a long way. Mostly, I love Vlad and Vlad's evolution from a brash, young Jhereg assassin to the man he is now, a man on the run from the Jhereg who want him very dead. However I did not like, or understand, the last book in this series, "Iorich," so it was a great relief to read "Hawk" and to understand what happens and why. Vlad is still in the capital, Adrilankha, headquarters of the Jhereg, and so the most dangerous place on the planet for Vlad to want to stay. Adrilankha is also where his estranged wife, Cawti, lives with their 8-year-old son, so Vlad is highly motivated to figure out a way to get the Jhereg off his back, preferably without getting killed in the process. Having read "Hawk," I'm one book closer to a series reread.
40.) The Emperor's Blade by Brian Staveley. The Emperor of Annur is assassinated, leaving behind three young adult children: a daughter, Adare; his heir, Kaden, a novice monk; and a second son, Valyn, training to be a member of the Kettral, a elite fighting unit. Adare, the oldest, is the only one of the three brought up in the capital; she cannot inherit the crown, but she is a minister (Finance?) in the government. Kaden is has spent the last eight years in a remote monastary, fasting and meditating; for most of the book, he doesn't know his father is dead and that he is now Emperor. His brother, Valyn, does learn closer to the event, and he realizes someone should go get Kaden but he cannot until he passes the final test in his training and becomes a full Kettral. He also has no idea how naive and uneducated Kaden is and how unsuited to be thrust into the Emperorship. Adare, the only sibling with any royal training, gets...I think...three whole chapters out of the book, while Kaden and Valyn split the rest of the pages. In each chapter of her chapters, Adare reminds herself not to react to events in a silly, girlish way then proceeds to react to an event in a silly and girlish way. Grrr. I will not be reading the next two books in this trilogy.
41.) The World at Night by Alan Furst. All of Alan Furst's novels are set in Europe between 1933 and 1945; all are stand alones. The protagonist of this one, like many of Furst's, is a Parisian; in Jean Casson's case, he is a film producer. As the book open in May of 1940, the Wehrmacht is invading France from Belgium, heading for Paris. That disturbing fact does not interfere with Casson's plans to dine that night with a close circle of friends though it does throw a shade over their meal. They prefer not even to discuss the invasion, but when they do, they agree that the German forces will be turned back quickly. They are wrong, of course, but life goes on. Casson finds his life gradually and sporadically drawn into resisting the occupying forces, sometimes almost inadvertently. I found this a strange book to be reading now, with all Trump's antics destabilizing my civilized life in my lovely apartment overlooking the park. My attention would switch back and forth between 1940 Paris and 2020 U.S.A. on the TV and wonder, Which one is real?
FY2020 Movie Challenge
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.
18.) Christopher Robin with Ewan McGregor.
19.) Rocketman with Taron Egerton as Elton John and Jamie Bell as Bernie Taupin. "Rocketman's" story arc follows what I think of as the familiar Star-Is-Born story arc: discovery, take off, enormous fame, malignant effect of enormous fame, crash and burn, with one important exception. That exception is John's collaboration with his lyricist, Bernie Taupin. Their collaboration began when they were equally unknown kids and continued, unbroken, through John's meteoric rise and his disastrous fall from grace. The movie ends before John met David Furnich, the man he has now been in a relationship with for 25 years. For once, I would have liked to see a movie that included, or focused on, that partnership. Surely there is an interesting story there, with a less cliche story arc.
20.) Lorenzo's Oil with Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte. I watched this movie because I remembered reading about the successful efforts of Augusto and Michaela Odone to find a treatment or a cure for their son's rare, hereditary disease, ALD. When I saw that the couple were played by Sarandon and Nolte...then I had to watch. As far as I can tell, the docudrama sticks closely to the facts, with Michaela immersing herself in caring for her bright seven-year-old child as he deteriorated further and further as the disease progressed. In the meantime, her husband dug deeper in deeper into the science of the condition. Augusto, a World Bank economist was ultimately awarded an honorary medical degree for finding a combination of oils that arrests but does not reverse the deterioration. An impressive and touching film.
21.) Knives Out with Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas. "Knives Out" follows the Murder-on-the-Orient-Express arc. Wealthy crime novelist Harlan Thrombey is murdered following the celebration of his 85th birthday. At home in his mansion are an assortment of relatives and employees, all with reasons to kill him and possibly the opportunity to do so. Daniel Craig plays a private detective on site to investigate and...one assumes...determine just who did the deed. Hercule Poiret he is not. That is, he doesn't do much investigating, just lurking in the background, listening to everybody trot out their alibis. This one never grabbed me. I wanted more action, more wit, more suspense: more something. Ho hum.
22.) Shaft with Samuel L. Jackson, Vanessa Williams, and Christian Bale. My grandson, Ryan, posts regularly to his Shame Files; i.e., those movies he should have seen but has not. Not all of them are great movies, but all are important in one way or another. With this in mind, I watched this version of "Shaft," made in 2000. Was it a great movie? No, but no movie with Samuel L. Jackson can be called 100% poor, especially when he's wearing a truly boss ankle-length leather coat. Also, the body count was truly impressive. Small wars have probably had fewer rounds shot off. Was it an important movie? No. Further research told me that I should have watched 1971's "Shaft" with Richard Roundtree as John Shaft. That was the ground-breaking blaxploitation movie I thought I was watching. Oh well.
My movie goal for fiscal 2020 which ends in less than a week is 25; I'm at 22. I could easily watch three movies between today, June 25, and June 30th. I am doubtful. However, watch this space. I will come back at the end of next week, and update FY2020 for any movies I do watch between then and now. FanSee
2020 Reading Challenge
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.
28.) Artemis by Andy Weir.
29.) Paladin's Grace by T. Kingfisher.
30.) Clockwork Boys and 31. The Wonder Engine by T. Kingfisher.
32.) Swordheart by T. Kingfisher.
33.) The Seventh Bride by T. Kingfisher.
34.) Stillhouse Lake by Rachel Caine.
35.) Time Zero, 36. Time Next, and 37. Times Up by Carolyn Cohagan. This YA trilogy is set in a dystopian New York one hundred years hence. Mina, age 15, has grown up in a dirty, crowded Manhattan where, at 15, she is old enough to be married off to someone higher up on the social ladder than her bureaucrat father. Mina herself will not have a say in her groom; instead she will only meet him when she gets engaged. Mina herself accepts that this is the way of the world until she meets her spoiled and petty fiance...and his bodyguard, Juda. Juda is only the second boy Mina had ever met, and he is no more happy about her engagement than she is. He is in a far better place than she is to do something about it: i.e., flee. In "Time Next," after a harrowing escape from Manhattan, Mina and Juda find themselves in a lovely, suburban community with spacious homes, green lawns, and plentiful food. All seems idyllic, but Mina slowly realizes that her life as a young woman is hedged about here with as many rules as the ones she experienced in Manhattan. The penalties for disobedience are as dire as those in Manhattan and maybe more painful. In "Times Up," I expected Juda and Mina to once again run, this time to a third culture somewhere to the west of New York state. Instead, she and Juda are sent back to Manhattan with instructions to assassinate its Divine Leader, Uncle Ruho. The penalty for failure: Manhattan would be bombed into rubble. As an adventure story, the trilogy worked, but by the time I got to book #3, I had gotten tired of being lectured on the many ways girls are objectified and mistreated. I know it's unkind of me, but I just kept thinking Margaret Atwood did it so much better in "A Handmaid's Tale."
38.) The Player by Stella Riley. Adrian, the protagonist of this romance set in the Georgian period, is quite literally a player, in at least two meanings of the word. When his flighty, young fiancée died in an accident, Adrian's parents believed he was complicit in her death and forced him to leave England. Having had the usual aristocratic education, he had no marketable skills with which to support himself but manages to make a life by winning at cards and by acting on the stage under the pseudonym, L'Inconnu (The Unknown). He never expects to return to England, much less inherit the earldom but, after ten years in Paris, he finds himself Earl of Sarre. His parents s have died, followed unexpectedly by the death of his older brother. Once back in England, he knows he should look for a wife although he expects that to be a difficult task because of the scandal attached to his name. Instead, he meets Caroline Maitland, the granddaughter of a factory owner who is funding her London debut. Both of the pair bring issues to the relationship, but Riley has the pair deal with them rationally. Altogether, a pleasant read but I didn't feel I had to rush out and read another in this series of six related romances.
39.) Hawk by Steven Brust. Steven Brust's first book in his Vlad Taltos series came out in 1983; I read it in 1983 or shortly thereafter, so we go back a long way. Mostly, I love Vlad and Vlad's evolution from a brash, young Jhereg assassin to the man he is now, a man on the run from the Jhereg who want him very dead. However I did not like, or understand, the last book in this series, "Iorich," so it was a great relief to read "Hawk" and to understand what happens and why. Vlad is still in the capital, Adrilankha, headquarters of the Jhereg, and so the most dangerous place on the planet for Vlad to want to stay. Adrilankha is also where his estranged wife, Cawti, lives with their 8-year-old son, so Vlad is highly motivated to figure out a way to get the Jhereg off his back, preferably without getting killed in the process. Having read "Hawk," I'm one book closer to a series reread.
40.) The Emperor's Blade by Brian Staveley. The Emperor of Annur is assassinated, leaving behind three young adult children: a daughter, Adare; his heir, Kaden, a novice monk; and a second son, Valyn, training to be a member of the Kettral, a elite fighting unit. Adare, the oldest, is the only one of the three brought up in the capital; she cannot inherit the crown, but she is a minister (Finance?) in the government. Kaden is has spent the last eight years in a remote monastary, fasting and meditating; for most of the book, he doesn't know his father is dead and that he is now Emperor. His brother, Valyn, does learn closer to the event, and he realizes someone should go get Kaden but he cannot until he passes the final test in his training and becomes a full Kettral. He also has no idea how naive and uneducated Kaden is and how unsuited to be thrust into the Emperorship. Adare, the only sibling with any royal training, gets...I think...three whole chapters out of the book, while Kaden and Valyn split the rest of the pages. In each chapter of her chapters, Adare reminds herself not to react to events in a silly, girlish way then proceeds to react to an event in a silly and girlish way. Grrr. I will not be reading the next two books in this trilogy.
41.) The World at Night by Alan Furst. All of Alan Furst's novels are set in Europe between 1933 and 1945; all are stand alones. The protagonist of this one, like many of Furst's, is a Parisian; in Jean Casson's case, he is a film producer. As the book open in May of 1940, the Wehrmacht is invading France from Belgium, heading for Paris. That disturbing fact does not interfere with Casson's plans to dine that night with a close circle of friends though it does throw a shade over their meal. They prefer not even to discuss the invasion, but when they do, they agree that the German forces will be turned back quickly. They are wrong, of course, but life goes on. Casson finds his life gradually and sporadically drawn into resisting the occupying forces, sometimes almost inadvertently. I found this a strange book to be reading now, with all Trump's antics destabilizing my civilized life in my lovely apartment overlooking the park. My attention would switch back and forth between 1940 Paris and 2020 U.S.A. on the TV and wonder, Which one is real?
FY2020 Movie Challenge
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.
18.) Christopher Robin with Ewan McGregor.
19.) Rocketman with Taron Egerton as Elton John and Jamie Bell as Bernie Taupin. "Rocketman's" story arc follows what I think of as the familiar Star-Is-Born story arc: discovery, take off, enormous fame, malignant effect of enormous fame, crash and burn, with one important exception. That exception is John's collaboration with his lyricist, Bernie Taupin. Their collaboration began when they were equally unknown kids and continued, unbroken, through John's meteoric rise and his disastrous fall from grace. The movie ends before John met David Furnich, the man he has now been in a relationship with for 25 years. For once, I would have liked to see a movie that included, or focused on, that partnership. Surely there is an interesting story there, with a less cliche story arc.
20.) Lorenzo's Oil with Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte. I watched this movie because I remembered reading about the successful efforts of Augusto and Michaela Odone to find a treatment or a cure for their son's rare, hereditary disease, ALD. When I saw that the couple were played by Sarandon and Nolte...then I had to watch. As far as I can tell, the docudrama sticks closely to the facts, with Michaela immersing herself in caring for her bright seven-year-old child as he deteriorated further and further as the disease progressed. In the meantime, her husband dug deeper in deeper into the science of the condition. Augusto, a World Bank economist was ultimately awarded an honorary medical degree for finding a combination of oils that arrests but does not reverse the deterioration. An impressive and touching film.
21.) Knives Out with Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas. "Knives Out" follows the Murder-on-the-Orient-Express arc. Wealthy crime novelist Harlan Thrombey is murdered following the celebration of his 85th birthday. At home in his mansion are an assortment of relatives and employees, all with reasons to kill him and possibly the opportunity to do so. Daniel Craig plays a private detective on site to investigate and...one assumes...determine just who did the deed. Hercule Poiret he is not. That is, he doesn't do much investigating, just lurking in the background, listening to everybody trot out their alibis. This one never grabbed me. I wanted more action, more wit, more suspense: more something. Ho hum.
22.) Shaft with Samuel L. Jackson, Vanessa Williams, and Christian Bale. My grandson, Ryan, posts regularly to his Shame Files; i.e., those movies he should have seen but has not. Not all of them are great movies, but all are important in one way or another. With this in mind, I watched this version of "Shaft," made in 2000. Was it a great movie? No, but no movie with Samuel L. Jackson can be called 100% poor, especially when he's wearing a truly boss ankle-length leather coat. Also, the body count was truly impressive. Small wars have probably had fewer rounds shot off. Was it an important movie? No. Further research told me that I should have watched 1971's "Shaft" with Richard Roundtree as John Shaft. That was the ground-breaking blaxploitation movie I thought I was watching. Oh well.