The Wright Brothers by David McCullough

I have enjoyed a couple of other of historian David McCullough's books, and think he is a good story teller. This biography, which is not just about Wilbur and Orville, but also about the family that nurtured them and the time in which they lived, is fascinating when considering the components in the story that led to their ultimate success. It starts with their parents. Susan Wright was the daughter of a carriage maker. Growing up in her father’s workshop she had learned to design and build things. It was she who taught the boys to notice how things worked, how to draw out plans for things before building them, and how to use tools. She taught them about wind resistance when they were designing and building a sled together. Their father encouraged them to explore as well. Another thing that makes this book interesting is the way it illustrates how one project or invention led to another. First it was building a sled. Then they built a rudder to steer it. When the snow melted they built a wagon using wheels from discarded tricycles. Next they built and flew kites. Next, a chair for their mother. When it became Will’s job to fold copies of the newspaper their father edited and their church published, they invented a machine to fold the newspapers. Next was a toy helicopter, then a printing press. Since a printing press is useless without something to print they began a newspaper, The West Side Tatler. They sold advertising and saved all their profits. Then they needed bicycles to deliver the papers, so they built them out of discarded bicycle parts. They became more interested in building bicycles than writing and selling newspapers so they opened a bicycle shop. You can see where this is going. It’s a good lesson for us mothers on how children’s interests, when nurtured in the right kind of environment and with the guidance and encouragement of an understanding parent, can lead those children into successful careers. I love the way this book shows that this invention of an airplane, which changed the world and the future of everyone in it, was something that grew out of the skills and interests and habits learned within the context of their family. The author does not explore the question of whether of not the brothers were neurotypical, but I suspect at least Wilbur was not--and the importance of that for fostering innovation now and in the future.

Bad Guys 2 (2025)

I watched this in the immediately pos-op period from a joint replacement, so my standards for what I would find entertaining might have been more generous. Even so, I cannot recommend this beyond diversionary animation. This is the second installment, and as so often happens, enemies in the first movie end up as love interests in the second. There is a reappearance of the whole gang, both the good guys and the bad guys, so if you are a fan of sequels, this ticks all those boxes, and truly, if you likes the first one you are likely to fall for this one as well. If you missed the first in the series, this is a movie about a crew of fun-loving criminals who also happen to be animals, maintains the pizazz of its sleekly angular visual style. And the game voice cast returns, led by a reliably roguish Sam Rockwell. But increasingly, the antics feel strained, and the action grows needlessly complicated. The reason everyone winds up in space is especially convoluted. Even in the wake of the successful Artemis mission this month, this was not what I would call a fun animated movies that takes you yo outer space--and 2025 had some other and better choices.

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

This is a Parnassus "if you haven't read it, it is new to you" recommendation--I have to say that every time I think that I am an above average reader, something comes along to knock that sentiment right out of my head, and these recommendations that Ann Patchett and her friends make are almost 100% books that I not only have not read, but very often have not even heard of. This is a short, humorous and poignant novella that is ostensibly about Queen Elizabeth II developing a passion for reading after her corgis lead her to a mobile library, changing her worldview and disrupting the routines of the monarchy as she discovers the joy and subversive power of literature. The book follows her journey from a dutiful monarch to an avid reader, aided by a kitchen porter named Norman, much to the alarm of her staff, and explores themes of literature's ability to change lives and question the status quo. The subtext, for me, is about what reading can and will do to you if you spend enough time doing it--no wonder the alt right wants to ban all these books, because when yo read, your mind is opened up to all sorts of ideas and where you go with them is anybody's guess (parenthetically, you would basically have to ban all books in order to better control the thought pathways that people undergo when they read)--and this book is about the power and the danger in that.

Laura Hartrich: Liner Notes and Labels: Learning to Love Quilt Documentation

This artist presented her case for upping your documentation game to my quilt guild, and she made a great case for both why you should do it and how you can do it. I took a class with her at QuiltCon 2025, jusy monthd after one of her children had committed suicide and her quilt about them was in the show. So, emotionally complicated and she did not hide behind the messiness. Instead she disclosed, talking about how she was struggling with it. She is a storyteller and no all stories have hsppy endings. She taught me about more than a fast way to embroider letters that dat.

Laura Hartrich is an award-winning quilter who lives in Oak Park, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, with her family, and she graduated mid-career from a master’s program in occupational therapy. Her work explores themes of reflection, acceptance, time, and memory, and is driven by a deep love of color, texture, and meaning. A documenter of her life from a young age, she immediately connected with the tradition of labeling quilts and has been a dedicated labeler ever since. When she speaks about quilt labels, she emphasizes motivation over technique, believing that while many strong techniques exist, labels are often neglected without the right mindset. She is passionate about sending her quilts out into the world with their stories firmly attached, an idea that resonates deeply with many other quilters. Her key is to journal. She likes to do it long form, but you can do virtual, but the key is excessive documenation and then translating some of to the quilt label.

Woman Of Interest by Tracy O'Neill

The pandemic was like a flood--disasterous for everyone but not an equal opportunity disaster. Those of us in healthcare were run ragged and many of us saw severe suffering. Others were given a lot of time to think, and that is what happened with this author. She was born in South Korea in 1986 and adopted as an infant by an Irish-American couple. Raised in New England, she was not surprisingly taught to love the one you are with, that family is who you choose and not where you came from. Until she was thirty-three, she hadn’t given much thought to learning more about the woman her adoption papers named as Cho Kee Yeon. But during the lockdowns of spring 2020, O’Neill — gripped by the thought that her birth mother might be dying alone in Korea. This is another great story about the power of DNA. For centuries people could lie about it--mostly men who wanted to avoid admitting to infidelity or accepting responsibility for paternity. Now that is simply not possible, and the author uses her DNA to find her relatives and tries to connect with her birth mother.

The Secret Agent (2025)

The disappearance of people believed to be dissidents in Argentina in the late 1970's and early 1980's was well known to those of us who live in North America, albeit after the facts. There are still people protesting that part of their history in Buenos Aires to this day. The fact that is happened in Brazil as well was not known to me. The film I'm Still Here details the mostly true story of a high profile Brazilian who was killed by the government and his wife went to great lengths to prove that. This one is a little different. Set in 1977 Brazil, roughly at the midpoint of a 21-year military dictatorship, this is a drama, a satire, an intriguingly laid-back espionage film, and a recreation of a time and place, with expressionistic and surreal flourishes that must be accepted on their own terms. Wagner Moura stars as Marcelo, a tall, bearded fellow with gentle energy and sad eyes. He arrives in Recife, the state capital of Pernambuco, Brazil, in a bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle. We don’t know why he’s come to Recife. We won’t know for a long time. You have to pick up on subtext in order to understand certain conversations. Marcelo and the other characters in his orbit try to avoid saying exactly what they mean, because someone might be listening. There is a casualness to the killing that I think is probably a true capture of what happened, and is what we are experiencing in 2026 in the United States with ICE, where people are being dissapeared without warrents, cause, trial, or due process. It can happen antwhere and at any time.

To The Moon And Back by Eliana Ramage

This is a book that is one of Reese Witherspoon’s book of the month choices and I have been slowly but surely reading my way through those. This one I found to be a little confusing period I read it over several weeks so in bits and pieces and that may have been a contributing factor. In the end I was glad that I read it especially when you consider um that there are very few Native American authors writing fiction. Thirteen-year-old Steph Harper knows she is different from her friends and classmates living in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, in 1995. Determined to be an astronaut, she notes, “I only had about a decade or so to rid myself of every fear I had left,” replacing them with what NASA calls “awareness and preparedness and disaster response protocol.” Steph’s single-minded drive forms the heart of a drama that unfolds from those teen years through 2027 while deftly exploring Cherokee identity, queer love and the price of ambition. Steph’s father, whom she, her mother and younger sister Kayla fled eight years ago, instilled in her a love of space while warning her about the end of the world. Those mixed emotions and strengths end up dictating the course of Steph’s life in wildly unpredictable ways, especially when endless obstacles seem to stand in her way. She is surprised to fall in love with a Cherokee college classmate, Della Owens, who as a baby was adopted and raised by a Mormon couple, and, after a highly public custody battle, allowed only one day of visitation a year with her birth father. While Della fully embraces her Cherokee heritage, Steph focuses on escaping to space.

No Other Choice (2025)

This Korean film was short listed for the 2026 Academy Awards in the Foreign Language category, and in my mind the Koreans can give the Danes a run for their money when it comes to dark dark comedy. It does not get bleaker than this. It opens in happier times for Man-su and his family, including a supportive wife, Lee Mi-ri, two beautiful children, Si-one and Ri-one, and two gorgeous dogs. As they celebrate their perfect lives outside of their perfect home, storm clouds appear on the horizon. The symbol becomes real when Man-su is downsized from his paper company, forced back into a brutal job market. Man-su realizes that the only way to beat the competition for the job he wants is for them to be unable to apply for it, so he puts in motion a series of plans to literally eliminate his competition. What starts as relatively playful and almost silly, a tone enriched by Lee’s layered performance that mingles Man-su’s desperation, intelligence, and broken pride, eventually gets much darker, but also angry, a commentary on what happens when fragile masculinity is fractured by corporate greed. Something has to give. And it does. This did not make the final cut to be nominated, but it is well worth seeking out.

A Witch's Guide To Magical Inn Keeping by Sangu Mandanna

This is not my typical genre of book, but one of the multiple things that I like to do as a reader is to read somewhere around half of the New York Times 100 Notable Books each year. They are about half fiction and poetry, half non-fiction, and while I mine the list for non-fiction ideas (I need the help in that arena, and try to read at least some no-fiction, even though it is not my first love), I tend to read more fiction. In any case, that is where I found this, which I would call a cosy, romance fanatsy. Sera Swan used to be a magical prodigy—Guild golden girl, full of promise—until she did the unthinkable: resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine (and, accidentally, a rooster). The Guild exiled her, stripped her magic, and left her to piece her life together. Fifteen years later, she’s running a magical inn that only appears to people who need it, surrounded by an oddball mix of humans and magical misfits. Then Luke Larsen, a prickly magical historian, shows up with his little sister Posy. Luke might just have the key to restoring Sera’s magic—if she can convince him to help without attracting the Guild’s attention. What follows is equal parts mystery, magical hijinks, and slow-burn partnership between two stubborn people who are much better at helping others than accepting help themselves. It all works out in the end with a few bumps along the way and while adequately charming, it did not win me over to the genre.

Nuremburg (2025)

There are countless variations of the saying “history repeats itself.” Nuremberg is a movie that wants us to remember. The story revisits the final days of World War II and the Nuremberg trials. The movie begins with Göring attempting to flee at the end of the war before being captured by Allied forces. We see him, along with other leading figures from Hitler’s inner circle, taken into custody. Douglas Kelly, played by Rami Malek, is brought in to create psychological profiles of these men. In the background is the effort of Justice Robert Jackson, played by Michael Shannon, who believes these men must stand trial for their crimes. He argues that they should not simply be executed. There must also be a public accounting for the horrors carried out in the name of the Third Reich. It is interesting that they brought a psyc Russell Crowe’s Göring is charming to the point of being almost disarming. We watch the two men talk and probe one another. Kelly is writing a book about what he is learning from Göring and the others. His questions cut to the heart of how such atrocities came to be. When Kelly asks why he followed Hitler, Göring describes a devastated Germany after World War I, a nation humiliated and made to suffer. Hitler told them that foreign powers were feasting on their pain and promised that Germany could reclaim its former glory. He made them feel proud again. Kelly’s obsession with Göring becomes his downfall, costing him his position, but not before Göring is put on trial. We watch Göring skillfully maneuver through Jackson’s questioning. Despite its flaws, there is something worthwhile in Vanderbilt’s attempt. Kelly eventually wrote his book. It revealed that what occurred in Germany could happen anywhere. The perpetrators of Nazi crimes were ordinary people who embraced a message that told them walking over the bodies of others was worth obtaining power. No one wanted to hear thst warning, and here we are, back at the beginning again.