Stuck Up and Stupid by Angourie and Karen Rice

I read broadly. Not a week goes by where I do not read some or all of a murder mystery--I hesitate to say daily, because sometimes I am flying, or sick, but really, while I read award winning fiction and non-fiction, I also read across the spectrum of what is available in written form. I point this out because rarely do I rate a book at 2-stars, and that is my assessment of this book. I also have read more than half of Reese Witherspoon's monthly picks--as celebrity book clubs go, hers is far and away my favorite, and I picked this because it is one of her picks. For me it fell flat. This is a modern-day Australian take on Pride & Prejudice--for me, this is one of the issues with the book, that it adheres too closely to the original, which you might think would be an advantage, but for me at least it made some of the events seem oddly out of place and the ending abrupt and unsupported by what happened before it.

Holiday in Santa Fe (2021)

This is very standard holiday made for TV fare, maybe a little less charming than you might hope for, and chock full of fake things about Santa Fe. That said, first of all, it is is fluff and romance centering on family, art, and the holidays, so when you really need a diversion this is just right in terms of lightness. After all, the President of the United State did just say this week that the brutal murder of a Hollywood legend and his wife was because he critisized him and basically got what he deserved--so low brow and yet completely on brand that a movie with this little to think about hits the spot. It is all sweetness and light. Not a thing about Santa Fe is correct, other than its gorgeous plaza. No one eats traditional New Mexican food, and the Winter Fest is complete fiction. But the bottom line is that we are about to start watching a series of movies short listed for the Oscars, and the bulk of them will be serious--interspersed with the Visual Effects films, which are pure action and eye candy--and something this phony is a welcome diversion before we get down tot the serious business of seeing everything that is wrong with the world.

The Antidote by Karen Russell

This is a novel of fiction with a tincture of magical realism, but built upon a foundation of history, also known as historical fiction. The book has four protagonists, all with some connection to uncanny powers. It takes place in 1930s Nebraska, amidst a terrifying Dust Bowl wreaking havoc on hundreds of rural communities. One of these communities is Uz, a small agrarian town , where a prairie witch who calls herself “The Antidote” does business. Prairie witches serve as a kind of memory ‘vault,‘ taking in the weight of people’s memories, good or bad, in exchange for a feeling of lightness and hope. When The Antidote loses her memory deposits in a dust storm on Black Sunday, she fears for her safety yet cannot leave the dying town of Uz, as she awaits her long-lost son stolen from her in infancy. Then there is Harp Oletsky is a farmer who finds his land is miraculously spared from the catastrophic “Black Sunday” dust storm; in its wake, the sky is blue over his fields alone, and they fill with healthy wheat. His teenage niece, Dell, is dealing with the murder of her mother by obsessively playing basketball and apprenticing herself to the Antidote as a trainee witch. Cleo Allfrey is a black photographer, sent to Nebraska by the New Deal’s Resettlement Administration to document the suffering of farmers. She buys a camera in a local pawn shop that turns out to have uncanny powers of its own: its photographs show scenes from potential futures and forgotten pasts. The novel also has brief sections from the perspectives of a haunted scarecrow and a stray cat. The story is a bit of a meander, but it cannot be denied that this book is wholly unique and thought provoking. As there is an effort at the national government level to white wash our history, there will be powerful voices reminding us of it.

Kanazawa, Japan

During the Edo Period (1603-1868), Kanazawa (金沢) served as the seat of the Maeda Clan, the second most powerful feudal clan after the Tokugawa in terms of rice production and fief size. Accordingly, Kanazawa grew to become a town of great cultural achievements, rivaling Kyoto and Edo (Tokyo). During World War Two, Kanazawa was Japan's second largest city (after Kyoto) to escape destruction by air raids. Higashi Chaya District is located in the Higashiyama area of Kanazawa, adjacent to the Asano River. It is the largest among three well-preserved historical geisha districts in Kanazawa along with Nishichayagai. We walked through on Cultural Day.

Big city Japan is very nice, but this much smaller town (half a million) was our favorite--yes, it had some large roads and modern buildings, but it had lots of small neighborhoods--including the small boutique hotel we stayed at--and lots of charm. It does not have a metro, but we were able to walk everywhere we wanted to go, so we didn't even try to decipher the buses, but would have managed that if need be.

Middle Spoon by Alejandro Varela

This is a novel about polyamory and in this one at least it is poly-problematic, as one reviewer coined. In my professional experience this is almost always the case. The push you-pull me of what each person in the relationship wants and needs is hard when there are only 2 people in the mix, and the complications multiply when 3 or 4 people are involved. This novel is told in epistolary form through the narrator’s unsent emails and it opens in the immediate aftermath of a breakup. The breakup, like the relationship, was complicated. He is happily married to his husband, has two children (one of whom is nonbinary), lives in Brooklyn, has an active social life, and works as a public health researcher and professor. Until recently, he was also in a polyamorous relationship with Ben. A whirlwind romance that deepened quickly into love, their relationship was great until the moment Ben dumped the narrator unceremoniously. Nearly swallowed by grief, he fills his overwhelmingly vulnerable letters with sorrow, pining, obsessive thoughts, anxiety, tangents, gay history, therapy speak, pop-culture diatribes, and everything in between. We see very little of the husband's experience--he is pained by how devastatingly heartbroken his spouse is to lose the relationship with Ben but he is equally clear that he is happy enough to see the end of it. The narrator is not down with his spouse seeing another man--that has happened in the past and it did not go well--so there is a lot of polyamory that is left unplumbed in this, but it is a good window into that world if you yourself don't get how it might work.

Yakitori Tsukada, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan

We tried a lot of different types of places our first couple of days in Tokyo—a tendon place, a ramen place, a yakiniku place—all costing about $10 per person. We did a fancer meal our last night at Yakitori Tsukada, a yakitori place specializing in chicken, and really enjoyed it! The other thing to point out is that there is a lot of fish and beef in Japan, and it is nice to have another option altogether when you are eating out each and every day.

I love skewers, but the meal started with something I plan to try to make at home--potato leek miso soup. We managed to score quite a few different types of miso when we were in Osaka, and I think it would be possible. The fortune cookie style chicken cut out stuffed with chicken liver is not on that list, but we did pick up some persimmons at home because we had so many good ones, including here. Every part of fowl was offered, including some grilled quail eggs, duck breast, and even a chicken meatball to dip in a raw egg! My favorite was that, and my spouse liked the chicken shoulder best, but really, everything was delicious and I would recommend it.

Flashlight by Susan Choi

The Booker Prize short list for 2025 had some real gems in it, this among them. Flesh was the winner, and while it wasn't my favorite, it was very good. The Audition was weirdly innovation, The Rest of Our Lives was excellent up to the ending, and The Loneliness of Sunny and Sonia was an excellent, long, messy saga that embraces both love and immigration. This one is also very good and quirky in it's story telling, which in the end I liked, although it took some time for me to get used to. Here goes. The the Kang family is damaged. Serk grows up an impoverished Korean in Japan. He immigrates to the US as a grad student after his family sets off for North Korea, lured by promises of socialist paradise. Anne has a child, Tobias, that she gave birth to at nineteen and signed away to her older lover and his wife. Her college plans are derailed, but she is able to find work as a transcriptionist for an eccentric academic, which is how she meets Serk. There is a mutual identification in their remoteness yet neither can figure out how to overcome it. Louisa—Serk and Anne’s only child—is not consciously aware of all that precedes her, but it is the water she swims in--nobody communicates. Anne welcomes Tobias back into her life without consulting Serk, and Serk takes an opportunity to relocate to Japan for a year without telling Anne of his primary goal: surreptitiously seeking out a path of return for his family. Louisa witnesses to shreds of each of her parents’ secrets and over time learns to nurture her own. So, yes, another messy family saga--I had the added luck to read it while I was vacationing in Japan, which added an extra layer to an already multi-level story.

Karate Kid Legends (2025)

What is it with the 1980's reboots? I watched this one on a long haul flight recently, and whil I did not like the other one I watched (one the critics and audiences alike did like), I enjoyed this--which was not true of the aforementioned critics and general audience. So proceed with caution. This is the sixth entry in the series, gives its intended audience—which is to say, anyone who enjoyed any part of the other movies—what they came looking for. No more, and for me at least, no less. Li Fong (ably played by Ben Fong, who is both acrobatic and charming, and I hope to see him again) is a teenager who moved from Beijing to New York City’s Chinatown because his doctor mom (Ming-Na Wen) got hired by a Manhattan hospital. Li is a character we haven’t seen before. There are early scenes at kung fu school where we see him being mentored by Mr. Han (Jackie Chan). Like every protagonist before him, Li gets bullied by unlikable thugs. They train at a dojo near his school. Their leader is karate prodigy Connor Day , two-time winner of the Five Boroughs tournament. Li’s school also happens to be near an independent pizzeria owned by former boxer Victor Lipani. Victor’s charming and witty teenage daughter Mia (Sadie Stanley) works the cash register. She and Li hit it off. Naturally, in order to turn the heat up, Mia was once Connor’s girlfriend. Connor’s father, who owns the dojo, is a mob-connected underworld figure who loaned Victor the money to open the pizzeria and expects to be paid back soon. You see where this is going, and this movie is all about nostalgia, so there are no surprises, although it was surprisingly nice to see the chemistry between Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio. Chan in particular remains the all-time best at getting laughs through martial artistry, and there’s ascene between him and Fong that wouldn’t look out of place in any other of Chan’s stuntwork ballets.

Inventing Japan by Ian Buruma

As you might suspect with a book that covers a hundred years of history and the core of a nation's identity in under 200 pages, there is some reductionism at work here. I read this in preparation for a tourism trip to Japan, and it reinforced other things that I had read, and seemed less anti-Asian than many other things I had read. Japan has been assiduous in its early days about isolation. The original opening of Japan came in the mid-1500s when European traders and Christian missionaries arrived. But the nation was closed back up at the start of the 17th century when the overt practice of Christianity was snuffed out and all trade reduced to Dutch sailors in Nagasaki. They didn't completely cut themselves off--Japanese intellectuals studied Western science and ideas — known as Dutch learning — in order to borrow what was useful. But the culture continued in seclusion until Commodore Matthew Perry appeared in Edo Bay on July 8, 1853, with four armed ships. This book covers the time from American Commodore Matthew Perry’s explosive appearance in Edo Bay to the end of the shogunate, the failed attempts at democracy that followed, the rise of militarization and colonialism, a war against Russia, a war against China and finally World War II, the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Douglas MacArthur as American overlord and a post-war commitment to an overheated economy with an emphasis on construction for the sake of construction. And in the epilogue the author takes the story even further with the boom of the Japanese economy and talk of a “Japanese Century” — and then the bursting of the bubble. There is so much more to the story, but this is a kind of Cliff Notes introduction.

Gardens in Tokyo

There are some huge beautiful green spaces in densely populated Tokyo, where you can sit on benches, listen to birds and get away from metros where you might on occasion have to shove yourself in backwards and hope the door closes—my close encounter involves having to stand n one foot initially because my other foot kept the door from closing. These were imperial grounds, shrines, and feudal gardens that remain today—and are free to roam. We visited two and it is amazing just how far from a busy city you feel in the The Imperial Palace East Gardens is a historical garden in the Tokyo Imperial Palace. The gardens were first used by the Tokugawa shogunate. The garden was built on the grounds of Edo Castle. Meiji Jingu Shrine is a Shinto shrine in Shibuya, Tokyo, that is dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shōken. There are wide open spaces and on a weekend day there were dozens of couples and families fanned out over the lawn enjoying the peaceful surroundings.

Twist by Colum McCann

Here is the thing about this author. He is a very good writer, I enjoy the story mostly because the story teller is talented, but mostly I just do not care for the characters. The story starts off straight forward enough, but there is truth in advertising--the title lets you know that it is going to get messy. Anthony Fennell, an Irish writer down on his luck, gets an assignment from an online journal to write a piece on the undersea cables that carry the world’s data and the repair teams that patrol the oceans, fixing ruptures. He agrees to this because he has a bit of writer's block and he has an image of cruise ship rather than working ship and thinks he is going to get some time to write his own stuff as well. Fennell’s editor sends him to Cape Town, where he is to sign on with a repair ship and meet a man named Conway, who is in charge of operations. Conway is, and will remain an enigma: immediate and engaging at first, later aloof and noncommittal — and capable, as we’ll see, of extraordinary actions. Though they’ve just met, he straightaway asks Fennell to come meet his partner, Zanele, a South African-born stage actress. The three of them weave in and out of each other's stories throughout the book, all with an undercurrent of moving against the grain of society. It is a story well told.

Naked Gun (2025)

I guess I should have thought twice before watching this movie on a recent Trans Pacific flight. If I thought the original was dumber, what made me think that this wouldn't be dumber? Don't let me dissuade you though, because reading through reviews, I am pretty much alone on this. Liam Neeson plays Det Lt Frank Drebin Jr, who is the son of the LA cop once played by Leslie Nielsen, and haunted in a rather Freudian way by his late father’s reputation. He is given to making yearning monologues addressed to Drebin Sr’s presence, begging him to send a sign that he is there in spirit if not in person. Paul Walter Hauser plays his stolid partner Capt Ed Hocken Jr, son of Drebin Sr’s partner who was once played by George Kennedy. The new Drebin (who is old, BTW) investigates the possible murder of a man found dead at the wheel of a hi-tech electric car, and must confront the sinister plutocrat who invented this vehicle (sound like anyone we know?). There is a love interest, which I will not go into because even though this harken's back to an earlier sensibility, it is exaggeratedly offensive--and no where near far enough back for the likes of the current autocratic misogynist administration would like to go--Make Suffregettes relevant again kind of stuff--it is still beyond the pale. The new Naked Gun has the look and feel of an 80s LA action movie, with sense-memories of Beverly Hills Cop and Terminator, but not in a good way, at least for me. It did make me think i should not rewatch Beverly Hills Cop but rather leave it safely in my memory as not nearly as offensive as this.

A Marriage At Sea by Sophie Elmhurst

I read this when it was on Obama's reading list, and it is now also on the New York Times 100 Notable books for 2025. This is a story that is almost unbelievable yet true. ​​On June 28, 1972, 40-year-old Maurice and 32-year-old Maralyn Bailey, newly married but with this long held plan, set sail aboard a 30-foot sailboat they named Auralyn on what they hoped would be a yearslong voyage from England to New Zealand. Their plan was to travel across the Bay of Biscay to Spain, then to Madeira and the Canary Islands, then 2,700 miles across the Atlantic Ocean through the Caribbean, Panama Canal, across the Pacific Ocean to the Galapagos. After that, they’d sail to the Marquesas Islands, the Tuamotu Islands and Fiji, and then their final destination. But on March 4, 1973, eight months into their expedition, a disaster happened: a 40-foot sperm whale slammed into their boat, creating a gash in its side. Within minutes — just enough time for the Baileys to grab their passports, a log book, a compass, Maralyn’s diary and a few other essentials, before jumping into their 4.5-foot-in-diameter life boat and attached dinghy — their boat sank about 300 miles from the Galapagos. Of note, they did not have a radio on board, so there was no way for anyone outside them to know where they were. They survived for 4 months and several ships passing by that did not see them before they were rescued. They were emaciated, ill, and in need of long term nursing back to health, he more than she--but then what happened? They set out to do it all over again. It is very reminiscent of the Shackleton story--not only was their marooning of note, their inability to survive on land was also quite impressive and for me, incomprehensible.

Sumida Hokusai Museum, Tokyo, Japan

I love the Japanese Edo era woodblook prints, as did the impressionists, who I also love. This museum has just the works of Katsushika Hokusai. He moved dozens of times, but he was born in now Sumida-ku now and spent much of his life there. He also wrote some pieces of ukiyo-e of this area. This museum has collected only works of the artist. He is most famous for his wave print, and I love his Mt. Fuji series, but we saw depictions of courtesan life. These were produced in huge numbers and were hugely popular during the Edo period (1615 – 1868). They are known as ukiyo-e, and depicted scenes from everyday Japan. Ukiyo-e literally means 'pictures of the floating world'. The 'floating world' referred to the licensed brothel and theatre districts of Japan's major cities during the Edo period. Inhabited by prostitutes and Kabuki actors (Kabuki is a traditional Japanese form of theatre), these were the playgrounds of the newly wealthy merchant class. Despite their low status in the strict social hierarchy of the time, actors and courtesans became the style icons of their day, and their fashions spread to the general population via inexpensive woodblock prints.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

This is a lot about what the immigrant experience is like--in this case it is immigrating to America, but I suspect there is overlap with immigrating to other places. The United States is a place with a rich and deep Native American culture that is largely unknown and ignored and otherwise it is a jumble of cultural influence that is shallow and often troubled. So imagine having familial ties in a place that has deep cultural roots and centuries of conflict over them? On the surface, this is a novel about the relationship between Sunny Bhatia and Sonia Shah, whose families are neighbors but not friends, and whose attempts to make a match begin their on-off liaison. Where Sunny dreams of journalistic success, Sonia’s heart and mind lie in writing fiction. The sheer exhaustion – mental, physical and artistic – caused by the constant need for self-invention and reinvention, whether individual, societal, national or global--it does seek to accurately and productively capture this yearning for gravitas. Yet just underneath the surface of what they say they want is a search for belonging and being valued. It leads them to be together and apart, in India and the United States and back again, and yes, it spans years and it messy and complicated.

The Christmas Contract (2018)

It is December, let the holiday movie season begin--right before the short lists for the 10 categories that are announced by the end of the month and the season of well respected documentaries and international movies begin. A little fluff before getting down to that more serious business. This is all too predictable, as a holiday movie should be, and yet I found it easy to watch. The story is this--Jolie is a New York website designer reluctantly heading home to Louisiana for a traditional family Christmas. She loves her family and their traditions around Christmas is a year-round job for them, they love it so much, but the problem is that her long-time former boyfriend, from the same home town and who recently broke up with her, will also be there and with a new girlfriend. Jolie would love to have a plus-one to save face, but thre is no one in the queue. He best friend Naomi suggests her brother Jack. He is a struggling freelance writer who had already stood up Jolie on their first date way back when. Jolie reluctantly says yes to the plan--she really doesn't have any other viable options and Jack is on board because he can research the Louisiana-set romance novel he's been asked to ghostwrite. Her family is charming, they embrace the two, and you basically know the rest. If 2025 has been rough for you and you enjoy this time of year, check this one out.

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan

This somewhat sentimental and ultimately tense novel follows the interwoven lives of two married couples in the fictional town of Bonhomie, Ohio. One half of the first of these couples is Cal Jenkins, the sweet-tempered son of a gruff and traumatized first world war veteran, born in the spring of 1920 with one leg shorter than the other. This is a pivotal problem for Cal--he is marginalized because of it, is challenged romantically by it, and it keeps him out of WWII so he is home while others are away. He instead ends up spending his days in drudgery at the local concrete factory. As luck would have it, a chance meeting with Becky Hanover, a young woman with a dark bob and a loveably whimsical way about her, sees Cal and they are soon married. The second couple are the Salts--Margaret and Felix. Margaret grew up an orphan, never feeling safe or loved, so she can be forgiven for not understanding what was going on with Felix, but while he was away on a battleship in the Pacific, she begins an affair with Cal. That is how the couples become entangled with each other, and the rest of the story would be quite comfortable in a Faulkner novel--overdone a bit, but engrossing none the less. The book also takes us through racism, classism, and homophobia in mid-century America.

Nippori Fabric Town, Tokyo, Japan

Tokyo has neighborhoods and Nippori Fabric Town lies in a quiet part of Nippori, just east of the Yamanote Line station and makes for just as exciting of an adventure for fabric aficionados, as it does for most of us non-connoisseurs. There are dozens of shops selling anything from fabrics, leather, buttons, zippers, beads - you name it - Nippori Fabric Town has established itself as a hotspot for Tokyo’s textile lovers over the past century and is an ideal place to get some inspiration for your next creative endeavor. Start your journey through Nippori Fabric Town by making your way up the central street (Chuo-dori) that runs towards the east of Nippori Station and you’ll soon notice the yellow signs that mark the beginning of textile heaven. Tomato is perhaps the neighbourhood’s most famous and easily most recognizable establishment, boasting several shops along the main street and a main building that stretches over a whopping five floors. Each of Tomato’s stores is dedicated to slightly different types of fabrics including textiles for interiors, a shop dedicated to sewing kits and even an outlet where can have your very own fabric designs printed. There is a lot of high quality Japanese fabric for very good prices, but if you are looking for kasuri or shibori, you need to go to a used kimono store to find that.

Looking For Smoke by K.A. Cobell

I read this for a Goodreads challenge and to celebrate Native American Heritage month. It is a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick as well--and mirrors another one of her picks, a YA book called The Firekeeper's Daughter. It is also a novel where a teen girl has to figure out what is happening in her community. Mara Racette is a high school student who recently moved to the Blackfeet Rez in Browning, Montana. The book is told from a number of different viewpoints, and includes Loren Arnoux, whose older sister Rayanne went missing three months earlier, Brody Clark, who has a crush on Loren and the joker of their friend group, and Eli First Kill, whose biggest concern is his younger sister. During Indian Days weekend, Loren’s family honors the memory of her grandfather by doing a giveaway, and soon afterward Samantha White Tail, Loren’s best friend, is found murdered. The FBI gets involved because unlike with Rayanne’s disappearance, there is a body and a chance for the agent on the case to pretend like he cares. As happens all too frequently in real life, the tribal police are under-resourced, and the killing of native women goes un solved and unpunished.

A Paris Christmas Waltz (2023)

This movie should only be watched when you are doing a string of Xmas movies. It is Hallmark Christmas movie material (even though it is not, strictly speaking). It will be very satidfying if that is the urge you are looking to itch and the streeet scenes of Paris are an added bonus. Emma is enraptured watching classical dancing, and she finds Leo, a professional dance competitor, to be divine to watch. He is so inspiring that when friend gives her dance lessons, she takes a deep dive and gets pretty good for a beginner. Most importantly, she loves how it makes her feel and you can tell by looking at her. So when Leo, recovering from a broken heart and trying to recapture his love of dancing decides to enter a por-am competition--in Paris--he picks Emma and she accepts. Leo's old partner doesn't at all like the look of Emma or how Leo looks at her, and goes about spooking her AND getting in her head, which works up to the point that it doesn't and it ends exactly as you expect it will, which is okay, because that is what Christmas movies are supposed to deliver. Happy Holidays!!

History Lessons by Zoe Wallbrook

This is part murder mystery and part romance novel--I picked it out for a Goodreads challenge fulfillment and enjoyed it. Daphne is a Black woman in academia mobilizes her research skills to investigate the murder of an unlikable collogue who she is on the verge of accusing of plagiarism. She is a brainy junior professor at illustrious Harrison University, Daphne studies the history of Black families under French imperialism and has some very enjoyable best friends who keep her spirits up. When a fellow professor in the anthropology department, Sam, is killed, a last-minute text message from him subjects her to the perpetrator’s continued threats. With the encouragement of Rowan—a local bookseller, former police officer, and Daphne’s crush—and for self-preservation she investigates Sam’s death while uncovering the misogyny, racism, and lies of her college’s new dean. This is by no means ground breaking work, but it was an enjoyable read that ticked a lot of boxes for me.