What I'm Reading Now -- Misadventures in Nature's Paradise

Further to my study of southeasst Asia, my next read is Misadventures in Nature's Paradise: Australia's Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Christmas Island During the Dutch Era. 

At the opening, my honest opinion is that this sounds a little dull and esoteric, and frankly I may not get through it.  But as with so much of the world, the current political, economic, and social situations in these places stem from their colonial history.  So, I'm going to give it a whirl and see what I can learn (or how far I make it...).

What I'm Reading Now -- A Brief History of Indonesia

My friend C lent me a copy of his book, A Brief History of Indonesia: Sultans, Spices, Tsunamis: The Incredible Story of Southeast Asia's Largest Nation.  Despite its long name, the introduction indicates that it was written by a non-historian traveler to Indonesia who, many moons ago, was looking for a readable yet reasonably comprehensive history.

When he could find none, he spent decades researching, and wrote his own.  I'll see how he did.

What I'm Reading Now -- The Small and the Mighty

K's next book for our Postal Book Club is The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement.  It got a good review from E, and it sounds like the sort of thing that is right up my alley, so I'm looking forward to it.

Plus, I have already taken a peek at the introduction, and the author seems to have a good sense of humor.  I hope that carries throughout the book!

I Am Pilgrim -- Take 2

I finished I Am Pilgrim over a series of nights when I was having trouble sleeping.  Listening to an audiobook is a good thing to do because it requires minimal light and minimal movement, so I'm less likely to keep S awake.  (The one problem that it does create is that, when I eventually fall asleep again, the book continues playing for some amount of time, which means I have to back up the next day to the last thing I remember.  But, such is life.)  Despite my occasionally falling asleep, it was overall an egaging listen, especially -- as was its original purpose -- when I was already awake and doing other things but need a little entertainment.

It is a bit of a sprawling story with multiple plot lines that are left hanging until you get closer to the end.  There was a fair amount of political commentary in the one particular story line that involved a character referred to as the Saracen, but even at that it felt reasonably balanced to me -- some critical, some not.  There was enough nuance to make it feel at least a little bit thoughtful.  There was another line that started with a murder in a New York hotel, which opens the book.  Then it disappears for a long time but it does come back to set the scene for another murder later on.

As with most books that have larger-than-life, I-can-do-miraculous-spy-things-despite-pretending-to-be-a-totally-normal-guy main character, this one required some suspension of disbelief.  "There's no way he would have just guessed at that!"  Just keep going.  "He would never have survived that!"  Doesn't matter, just keep going. But I don't mind that for the sake of entertainment.  Proceed with caution, however, if you do.

In The Gloaming -- Take 2

I like reading short stories for the reasons I already said.  One of the difficulties with short stories, I find, is that you have to remember that (most of the time, anyway) the characters don't carry over from story to story.  They read like chapters in a book, but unlike chapters, you have to completely reset your brain vis a vis setting, plot, and characters with each new beginning.

The exception where, at least in this particular collection, one's brain does not have to be reset is theme.  The jacket notes describe the stories in In the Gloaming as ones that "reveal the ache of adoration and devotion that so poignantly [mark] our inner lives."

And for perhaps the fourth time ever, I don't think the jacket notes are a bunch of hooey.

These really are stories about devotion - between parents and children, between actual or would-be lovers, between siblings, between friends - and all the different ways a person can be wrecked by it.  They are not entirely melancholy; many of the stories have at least moments of joy and levity, and often leave a mixed taste at their conclusion, both bitter and sweet.  Regardless, the theme can get tiring; if you're looking for unmitigated joy, you won't find it here.

As with any collection of stories, some are better than others.  But overall, it was a good collection about love, loss, and the choices we make, even if we don't think about or aren't yet capable of knowing the consequences of those choices.

What I'm Reading Now -- I Am Pilgrim

Recently I needed something to keep me entertained while I did load of things around the house, a whole weekend full of chores, wall to wall. 

I wanted something entertaining and that would give me enough to think about, but not so serious that if I spaced out for a few minutes I would be completely lost.

I ended up with I Am Pilgrim, by Terry Hayes.  So far, it's a pretty entertaining parudo-spy thriller. There are lots of storylines and it's not yet clear how they'll weave together, but I expect time will tell.

What I'm Reading Now -- In the Gloaming

In the grand tradition of easy-to-read-while-traveling books, my next pick is a short story collection called In The Gloaming, by Alice Elliott Dark. It's another pick from my 2025 Reading Challenge,  so I am moving right along on that!

Movies -- A Recap -- Part XLV -- American Stories from Recent Decades

Dazed and Confused follows a bunch of high school stoners through the end of one particular school year in the 1970s. Matthew McConaughey is the best-known star - and this movie is where his "all right, all right, all right" catchphrase comes from - but loads of other recognizable actors are packed in there as well. As for the plot, there isn't much of one; it's just a bunch of kids doing dumb kid things.  But it does capture a specific combination of age and culture in America.

While MMc may never escape the aforementioned "all right, all right, all right," Tom Cruise will never escape the scene from Risky Business where he slides into frame in his tighty-whities, button down, and socks singing "Old Time Rock and Roll" into various household implements.  And he shouldn't want to escape it, because it's iconic! A Chicago kid whose parents leave him home alone goes dancing around the house to celebrate his freedom? It doesn't get much more American than that.  In fact, two other similar stories spring to mind, and I'm sure there are others.

Okay, enough of Chicago.  Let's go to New York, one of my favorites and the fifth main character in the Sex and the City franchise. Sex and the City: The Movie remains set primarily in NYC and has some really great backdrops: the iconic main branch of the New York Public Library, a beautiful and expansive apartment that no one can actually afford, the Met, MoMA, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Ladies Pavilion in Central Park, and loads of others (this site has a pretty comprehensive list). The story is more of the same from the show, with the added delight of Louise from St. Louis, played by Jennifer Hudson, and her fantastic song "All Dressed in Love."

It's too much to say that Live Free or Die Hard is another New York City movie, but it does involve NYPD stalwart John McClain (Bruce Willis in perhaps his most iconic role) who is out to save America ... yet again. This time, some hacker baddies are taking down computer systems and financial networks all over the country and McClain comes to the rescue yet again, saving his estranged daughter along the way.  And if that's not a classic story of redemption, McClain style, I don't know what is.

Dark Waters is the next in a long line of based-on-a-true-story movies which expose corporate greed and malfeasance.  There was A Civil Action, Erin Brockovich, Flash of Genius, and the list goes on. Dark Waters' hero, played by Mark Ruffalo (who put on some serious weight for the role), turns against his own law firm to go after DuPont for dumping chemicals into groundwater which is killing local livestock and poisoning the people in the nearby town.  What's not American about that story? Sadly, if it weren't so true to life, there wouldn't be nearly so many versions of what is basically the same movie.

I started watching Miracle, and I was about 15 minutes in before I realized I may have seen it before.  Or perhaps I was confusing it with another come-from-behind, everybody-loves-an-underdog sports movie.  No matter, because I love an underdog sports movie, so I watched it (perhaps again) regardless.  And boy is it a good one! Kurt Russell plays Herb, the coach of the 1980 USA men's hockey team that's going to the Olympics which, that year, were in Lake Placid, NY. The kids he's coaching are mostly college players, young guys who don't have a lot of experience playing together (you'll recognize a lot of the actors). Their big rival is the team from the USSR, which is both more experienced and better trained at playing together. You layer all the lingering Cold War animosities on top of that, and it turns out that Herb and his little college players had quite a hill to climb.  But climb it they did. 

What I Read -- Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas

This was one of my 2025 Reading Challenge books. Why did I elect to read it in the summer, despite its subject matter?  Simple, and usually the reason that I'll pick a book our of season: convenience. We have been undertaking -as is common this time of year - some summer travels. This particular little book was perfect. Its attributes in that regard include the following: 

• It's pocket-sized, even for me (as long as I'm wearing pants with cargo pockets, which I usually do for travel). That makes it easy to stow away quickly when the line suddenly begins to move, but equally as easy to pull out again when it comes inexplicably to an abrupt halt a few steps later.

• It's unserious. There are a few moments of serious content, but even they are, for the most part, told in a pretty unserious way. There are one-liners. It's a little bit like reading the script of a stand-up comedian's set, and frankly I found it to be more entertaining if I pretended that's exactly what it was; timing is everything.

• It's made up of vignettes. This is helpful for the same reason that it being pocket-sized is helpful: it's easy to dip in and out quickly. Each story, told in chronological order somewhat in the format of a journal entry, is a stand-alone tale that may be as short as a few sentences. This is perfect for when your attention is regularly pulled elsewhere by the constant streams of people and PA announcements. 

Also, let's not forget that this was actually my June book selection ("something funny"), so I'm not that out of season after all.

Having said all those positive things, this is not destined to become a classic. It feels like the guy had some funny or clever stories he wanted to tell and used the hook of Christmas to string them all together whether that really made sense or not. But if you need a book for an airplane - especially in July - this one does the trick.

What I Read -- Courage Under Fire

Somehow - and right now I can't remember how this happened - Stoic philosophy came into my consciousness recently.  I took a couple of philosophy classes in college but, as a political science minor, they all leaned more towards political philosophy and ethics of governance rather than the management of oneself. 

By chance, I mentioned Stoicism to my very smart friend M, and she right away offered me up some reading material from her personal collection. Among her offerings was Courage Under Fire: Testing Epictetus's Doctrines in a Laboratory of Human Behavior, which is actually more of an essay than a book, but still worth a mention here.

James Bond Stockdale had been a wing commander in Vietnam when his plane was shot down. He spent over seven years as a prisoner of war in various North Vietnamese institutions, often tortured for information. He fell back on his earlier studies of Stoicism to see himself through those hard days. In his speech, he walks the reader through the application of certain Stoic principles to his circumstances to demonstrate how they look in action. 

As a newcomer to the ideas, this was a good introduction to some of the basics of Stoicism in a concrete form. I find that philosophy, broadly speaking, can be a challenging subject because so much of it is only ever discussed in the abstract, never applied.  This is applied.