June...Where Did You Go?

This summer is flying by. That's good. It means we're busy and having fun. Birthday came and went, Father's Day, I got a new tattoo, and G went to space camp. And I even got in a hike or two. 

I have not read very much this summer. I'm reading big books and it seems like I'm not actually finishing any. It's a weird reading time for me. I'm in a bit of a slump. But I'm still really enjoying what I'm reading; it's just taking me a lot longer than normal.

And I have only just barely finished one book today since my last update...😅. We shall see how my focus goes the rest of this month.

We've got a small camping trip at the end of the month and a quick weekend trip up to Boise at the beginning of August.

Also trying to get in a lot more hiking than usual. Two of my friends and I are planning on hiking a local peak that is 15ish miles in one day towards the middle of August. We just completed a 6-miler and have plans for a 10 miler in a couple of weeks. Plus I'm getting my son out for one in a few days and the next week one on my own. I haven't hiked this peak since I was 24 years old! It's been a really really long time. It's a fantastic goal for me. I'm excited. I've got a few in-between hikes to do to make sure I'm really ready...😬

My friend Melissa just moved with her family. Her son and mine are great friends and it's a huge blow for all of us. They're just a state over so at least it's not super far but far enough. Two great friends have moved this year! But we are heading up there next month for her son's birthday and a concert to see The Chicks! I'm not a big concert-goer but I'm excited for this one.

Now our car broke down! We are hoping they get it all fixed before our camping trip in two weeks... yikes.

Melissa and I on a night out right before she moved away 

This was so hard! That cat killed me. But it was sure fun.

Top of Grandeur Peak

Selfie on the way up! It was sooooo hot.

The other side of the peak

Currently Reading 

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

Free Speech: A History from Socrates to Social Media by Jacob Mchangama

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

Leviathan Falls (The Expanse #9) by James S.A. Correy. Last book in the series!

Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington by Jamie Kirchick

What Do You Say? How to Talk with Kids to Build Motivation, Stress Tolerance, and a Happy Home by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson

Read

Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal Your Mind by Judson Brewer

Publisher's Summary:

We are living through one of the most anxious periods any of us can remember. Whether facing issues as public as a pandemic or as personal as having kids at home and fighting the urge to reach for the wine bottle every night, we are feeling overwhelmed and out of control. But in this timely book, Judson Brewer explains how to uproot anxiety at its source using brain-based techniques and small hacks accessible to anyone.

We think of anxiety as everything from mild unease to full-blown panic. But it's also what drives the addictive behaviors and bad habits we use to cope (e.g. stress eating, procrastination, doom scrolling and social media). Plus, anxiety lives in a part of the brain that resists rational thought. So we get stuck in anxiety habit loops that we can't think our way out of or use willpower to overcome. Dr. Brewer teaches us map our brains to discover our triggers, defuse them with the simple but powerful practice of curiosity, and to train our brains using mindfulness and other practices that his lab has proven can work.

Distilling more than 20 years of research and hands-on work with thousands of patients, including Olympic athletes and coaches, and leaders in government and business, Dr. Brewer has created a clear, solution-oriented program that anyone can use to feel better - no matter how anxious they feel.

My Thoughts: 

This is an excellent book and teaching mindfulness and how to use that to understand our triggers and how they cause bad habits. Being curious and mindful and using self-compassion allows us to figure out where and why our bad habits come from. 

He starts off a bit about his background and how he came into mindfulness and how it helped him get through medical school. The beginning chapters start off small and in sizeable chunks and each chapter builds from there. I'll need to keep going back to absorb the small steps and build. Plus, I have a ton of bad habits so I feel like I can only work on one at a time! I bought this one knowing I'll be referencing it for a very, very long time.

Highly recommend even if you feel like you are perfect and have no bad habits...

The Icepick Surgeon: Murder, Fraud, Sabotage, Piracy, and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science by Sean Kean

Publisher's Summary:

Science is a force for good in the world—at least usually. But sometimes, when obsession gets the better of scientists, they twist a noble pursuit into something sinister. Under this spell, knowledge isn’t everything, it’s the only thing—no matter the cost. Bestselling author Sam Kean tells the true story of what happens when unfettered ambition pushes otherwise rational men and women to cross the line in the name of science, trampling ethical boundaries and often committing crimes in the process.

The Icepick Surgeon masterfully guides the reader across two thousand years of history, beginning with Cleopatra’s dark deeds in ancient Egypt. The book reveals the origins of much of modern science in the transatlantic slave trade of the 1700s, as well as Thomas Edison’s mercenary support of the electric chair and the warped logic of the spies who infiltrated the Manhattan Project. But the sins of science aren’t all safely buried in the past. Many of them, Kean reminds us, still affect us today. We can draw direct lines from the medical abuses of Tuskegee and Nazi Germany to current vaccine hesitancy, and connect icepick lobotomies from the 1950s to the contemporary failings of mental-health care. Kean even takes us into the future, when advanced computers and genetic engineering could unleash whole new ways to do one another wrong.

Unflinching, and exhilarating to the last page, The Icepick Surgeon fuses the drama of scientific discovery with the illicit thrill of a true-crime tale. With his trademark wit and precision, Kean shows that, while science has done more good than harm in the world, rogue scientists do exist, and when we sacrifice morals for progress, we often end up with neither.

My Thoughts:

This is more of a collection of essays that Sam Kean tried really hard to link together as a coherent book. Some chapters were a lot better than others. Towards the end he had some interesting tidbits about modern frauds in science.

I felt like he was a bit hard on science in general which I thought odd for a science author. I also didn't appreciate how every single chapter ended with a plug for more info we subscribe to his podcast...really?

I've really enjoyed Kean's other books but I feel like he's dry on ideas and this is what we get...meh. I'd recommend if you've enjoyed his books.

Aru Shah and the End of Time (Pandava#1) by Roshani Chokshi

Publisher's Summary:

Twelve-year-old Aru Shah has a tendency to stretch the truth in order to fit in at school. While her classmates are jetting off to family vacations in exotic locales, she'll be spending her autumn break at home, in the Museum of Ancient Indian Art and Culture, waiting for her mom to return from her latest archeological trip. Is it any wonder that Aru makes up stories about being royalty, traveling to Paris, and having a chauffeur?

One day, three schoolmates show up at Aru's doorstep to catch her in a lie. They don't believe her claim that the museum's Lamp of Bharata is cursed, and they dare Aru to prove it. Just a quick light, Aru thinks. Then she can get herself out of this mess and never ever fib again.

But lighting the lamp has dire consequences. She unwittingly frees the Sleeper, an ancient demon whose duty it is to awaken the God of Destruction. Her classmates and beloved mother are frozen in time, and it's up to Aru to save them.

The only way to stop the demon is to find the reincarnations of the five legendary Pandava brothers, protagonists of the Hindu epic poem, the Mahabharata, and journey through the Kingdom of Death. But how is one girl in Spider-Man pajamas supposed to do all that?

My Thoughts:

This is a re-read with G. It's been so long since we read the first two books that we figured we needed to go back so we can officially finish the series together! 

It is still a fun and clever read. Lots of great action and humor. There are a lot of references that adults will get that I don't think a regular middle schooler would so it's like those Pixar movies: Great for both parents and kids alike.

I'm so glad Rick Riordan has put his brand on these books to help authors share their stories about their folklore, myths, and culture.

The Fervor by Alma Katsu

Publisher's Summary:

A psychological and supernatural twist on the horrors of the Japanese American internment camps in World War II.

1944: As World War II rages on, the threat has come to the home front. In a remote corner of Idaho, Meiko Briggs and her daughter, Aiko, are desperate to return home. Following Meiko's husband's enlistment as an air force pilot in the Pacific months prior, Meiko and Aiko were taken from their home in Seattle and sent to one of the internment camps in the West. It didn’t matter that Aiko was American-born: They were Japanese, and therefore considered a threat by the American government.

Mother and daughter attempt to hold on to elements of their old life in the camp when a mysterious disease begins to spread among those interned. What starts as a minor cold quickly becomes spontaneous fits of violence and aggression, even death. And when a disconcerting team of doctors arrive, nearly more threatening than the illness itself, Meiko and her daughter team up with a newspaper reporter and widowed missionary to investigate, and it becomes clear to them that something more sinister is afoot, a demon from the stories of Meiko’s childhood, hell-bent on infiltrating their already strange world.

Inspired by the Japanese yokai and the jorogumo spider demon, The Fervor explores a supernatural threat beyond what anyone saw coming; the danger of demonization, a mysterious contagion, and the search to stop its spread before it’s too late.

My Thoughts:

I really wanted to love this one. But...Katsu seemed to have a hard time keeping her story ideas together. We followed too many people across too many time frames. And thus each character was give short straw. I just didn't care about what happened. If one wants to read about the Japanese internment camps this is definitely not the book for that. Even the scary elements didn't quite work. 

The ending felt very rushed and those who "helped" at the end? Well, I just don't buy it. A little deus ex machina for me.

It wasn't terrible. But the book is just a bit over 300 pages and it took four weeks for me to finish it. I never got drawn in. Which is so unfortunate. I had high hopes for the plot but it just didn't draw me in.

You Died: An Anthology of the Afterlife edited by Andrea Purcell and Kel McDonald

Publisher's Summary:

Death—the one aspect of life we all have in common—is waiting for everyone, yet our practices, beliefs, myths, and stories about it are as diverse as we are. You Died celebrates these vibrant cultural expressions of the great equalizer in a thrilling, life-affirming whirlwind of a book, an inspirational volume to be treasured through times of both loss and abundance (and every day in between).

At turns both brazen and insightful, morose and optimistic, You Died asks a wide array of cartoonist newbloods and all-stars to relate their most unforgettable tales of death and what comes next. Filled with beautifully illustrated accounts of grief and mourning, ancient myths, memorial rites around the globe, afterlife in the far reaches of space, and the simple and touching ways both the living and the dead carry on, this lively collection starts a comforting and much-needed dialogue about death as a natural part of life.

Featuring an introduction by death positivity movement pioneer and activist mortician Caitlin Doughty and a murderer’s row of comics talent, including Raina Telgemeier, Shae Beagle, and Lisa Sterle.

My Thoughts:

I'm glad I picked this one up. Overall, it's worth the read even though some of the stories weren't as strong as I was hoping for.

There are a couple in there, though, that made me cry! They open up about grief and death and moving through it all with love and hope. There are one or two that focus on some quirky and interesting historical stuff like how the Victorians dealt with death. And some were just really really confusing and didn't translate well.

Movies Watched:

It takes a match to light a fire

Fire Island (2022) on Hulu

My Thoughts:

It was just what I needed: A silly gay romance that hit all the tropes and based on Pride and Prejudice. What's not to love?  

Murder was just the beginning

Death on the Nile (2022) on Hulu and HBO Max

My Thoughts:

It was fun. I figured out who done it! lol. Not fantastic but I didn't pay money in the theater so I'm OK watching any and all Agatha Christie book-movie-adaptations where I can find them.

Private detective Easy Rawlins has been caught on the wrong side of the most dangerous secret in town

Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) watched on HBO Max

My Thoughts:

Yeah, classic Denzel Washington. Love me some crime noir and so glad I finally watched this! I'd like to read the series as well.

The epic conclusion of the Jurassic era

Jurassic World: Dominion (2022). Saw in theater

My Thoughts:

I didn't even see the second one in this series...The first one was bad enough. The only reason I saw it was because of Jeff Goldblum, Sam Neill, and Laura Dern agreed to be in this. They are the only reason to see this mess of a film. It's done. Please oh please do not make any more.

Never talk to strangers

The Black Phone (2022). Saw in theater.

My Thoughts:

This was sooooo much fun! Ethan Hawke killed it. Yeah, a great horror film to see with friends and lots of others on opening night. It was a great crowd and it was the movie that helped me remember what going to the theater with others is all about. 

The universe is so much bigger than you realize

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022). Rented online.

My Thoughts:

This movie just blew me away! It's so weird and visually stunning and it has such a great message about being present for your life. It's the best movie I've seen all year and probably in a very long time. If you only see one movie all year, make sure this is it!

TV Watched:

DH and I binged Amazon's The Terminal List a couple of weekends ago. Highly entertaining but nothing new to say and nothing morally uplifting either. 

Finished up Star Trek: Strange New Worlds on Paramount+. Highly entertaining. Love the characters so far. I hope they can do more episodes per season. This is how we get to know the characters is through character-driven episodes full of strange new worlds and ideas...

And of course, last but not least, Stranger Things season 4 on Netflix with the whole family. Not great but once  again, highly entertaining. I do wish the ending had ended on a more cleaned up note as we head into the fifth and final season.

Working my way through The Orville: New Horizons on Hulu. And rewatching Star Trek: The Next Generation. And FX's What We Do in the Shadows just released its new season! And I just started the second season to Hulu's Only Murders in the Building.

Joining up with Deb from Readerbuzz and her Sunday Salon.