Books Wabi Sabi The stories Beth was able to experience while living in Kyoto are outstanding and have lead to some great life lessons and down to earth definition of wabi sabi. Wabi Sabi is you being in your most natural, authentic place.
Books Man's Search for Meaning Victor is a holocaust survivor and phycologist before the war that was tells a compelling story of first hand experience of his time in both Dachau and Auschwitz as well as the therapy techniques that he created called logotherapy. His stories are concise, cohesive, and emotional
Movies The Equalizer 3 The filming of this movie is much more artistic than anything done in the previous two movies. I really enjoyed this movie. There is a saying "Respect an Old Man in a Young Man's game" and I have always seen that phrase really come to life from the operators and infantrymen that I have known.
Books Altered Carbon Altered Carbon is what you want in a Cyberpunk novel and the world created is so well presented, I wish that CDProjektRed had used this as their template rather than the CyberPunk RPG. The characters make for a well loved world and the story makes sense, with one very notable exception.
Movies Table 19 Overall, the story is also really cute. Art is supposed to imitate life and life imitates art and this is art that is matching a messy relationship where people just don't know how to communicate and how text messages don't relay emotion so having a heavy conversation is better in person.
Books Ego is the Enemy This book does a great job of presenting both personal and historical stories about times where ego was the mind killer and control of it was what lead to something great. Just like in Stillness Is the Key, Ryan presents what seems like easy concepts in a way that are digestible for daily content.
TV How I Met Your Mother This show ended a decade ago and while some of the pop culture references are a bit dated, the rest of the show has really held up. The cast is outstanding and after years of working together, it really shows the amount of love and faith they had in each other.
Books Tough Terry Crews recounts the lessons he is still learning as he has moved through his life from school, growing up in an abusive home, the NFL, and acting. These lessons are presented to you in a way that almost feel like you should feel guilty for learning these lessons in the way he did.
TV The Witcher (Netflix) Geralt, The White Wolf, tackles monsters, mages, and all other manners of creatures fighting evil… lesser, greater, middling. It's all the same. If I have to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.
Books The Lions of Lucerne This is the first book in the Scot Harvath series and it shows. The book shows an age to the style of writing as well as the research on terminology. I know the author got some heat in that in this book and has since made changes to correct those.
TV Secret Invasion Look lets be honest. This show did not do well and for good reason. It was entertaining, but was all filler episodes for the next big movie. They should have left it as a movie like it was originally pitched, because the TV show did not do it.
Books The Republic of Pirates There are some really interesting stories that happened and the people that you follow in the book are some big names, most I know/recognize from Assassin's Creed Black Flag, but also some that you probably have never heard of. Minus of course the pirate nerds... there has got to be at least one
Movies Kandahar I know that I originally thought that this was going to be a closer plot to The Covenant, but I was so wrong. While yes it is about the translator and their ability to know the area, but nothing close to same depth of that story.
Books Ordination I am going to call this the surprise of the year. I expected this book to so different from what it was and could not have more wrong. Allister is a great character as are most of the main characters. This book's biggest issue for me is the lack of coherent world
Movies Clear and Present Danger This movie did not age well. The Jack Ryan series just finished when I watched this and with that in mind I was showing my wife other Jack Ryan movies and this was the first one on the list because the scene of the sniper doing the stalk showed up on social media so I wanted to watch it.
Books Think Like a Rocket Scientist So I really enjoyed this book and the stories that are presented. In general the principals that he presents are reminiscent of items you probably have heard previously in others books, but the stories behind them make this book worth reading.
Movies Air Force One This movie is weirdly entertaining and has really held up over the years. The fights, not so much. The story really does make cohesive sense and the cast is a powerhouse. I mean Gary Oldman is there playing a fantastic bad guy.
Books Black Order The Sigma team books in general follow the same pattern and this one is kind of funny that it references Zero point energy (ZPE) which I recently learned about in Unacknowledged. The story overall does a great job of working through all the items that it introduces.
Movies Leave the World Behind Ok I finished the movie and they are all way wrong so much so that even tell you that isn't spoiling the plot at all. The biggest reason they are wrong is because the movie finishes half way though. A "One sentence review" = "A cyber/dystopian Swiss Cheese that sprinkles in steroid injected animals"
TV Boy Meets World I have watched this show probably a dozen times in my life and as I am writing this, I think I see this show COMPLETELY differently than I ever have before. Even with that I think some of the overall lessons are still great and wholesome
Books Dune Messiah This book does not continue where I thought it would and wasn't the story I expected. The first book ending with a great fight, I expected to talk more about the jihad that was constantly mentioned in that book.
Movies The Meg 2: The Trench This is a good movie to keep you quasi entertained while on a plane. It isn't good, but somewhat entertaining for what would have been a direct-to-dvd/tv movie. It is a 5 for sure. At best.
Books Unacknowledged Steven Greer's reliance on repetition of an individuals credentials and work history, single source stories, and boogeymen in the night make this book feel like a conman's playground.
TV Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan This is one of my favorite shows. John Krasinski is an outstanding actor and this show is really one of the primer examples of that. The entire team does such an amazing job that it is really a disappointment that this show has ended.
Books Children of Memory Tchaikovsky is one of the authors out there. This book is a disappointing finale to a weird series of books that ends with a pointless story, world building, but a storyline that otherwise doesn't fulfil the promises of the previous books.
