Movie Monday: Next Exit

My husband and I took a break from the hectic holiday season recently with a movie. I chose Next Exit. I'm not sure where I first heard about this movie, but it was on my very long list (an Excel spreadsheet!) of movies I want to watch. The premise sounds a bit dark (and my husband doesn't like dark), but I liked the trailer and read that it had some humor in it. We both enjoyed it very much, though it is hard to categorize, as it includes elements of drama, comedy, and even science fiction.

The movie is set against a science fiction backdrop, but that only comes into the story at the very beginning and the end. A scientist has proven there is an afterlife, and her video of a little boy playing cards with the "ghost" of his dead father brings wide media attention to her work. She's overseeing a large study, where people volunteer to go into the afterlife (i.e. die), and she has developed a way to track them into that world. But this film focuses in on just two people who have signed up for the study: Rose, played by Katie Parker, and Teddy, played by Rahul Kohli. Rose is haunted by a ghostly presence that seems to be her dead father, and she copes by drinking heavily. We're not sure at first why Teddy signed up for the study, except that he seems to be mostly alone in the world, with no family. The two of them are both headed cross-country to California and only have five days to get there. Due to a series of travel mishaps, they end up sharing a rental car. Rose is especially prickly at first and not interested in getting to know Teddy, but the long hours on the road, plus some challenges they encounter together eventually lead to them talking and gradually sharing their stories and connecting, in spite of Rose's reticence. 

If that sounds depressing--two strangers sharing a ride on their way to commit suicide--it's not! In fact, it's a surprisingly uplifting movie. It has a great sense of humor, with plenty of funny moments to add levity to the somber plot. The two lead characters are both excellent, and it's entertaining to watch them slowly engage with each other. As they each gradually reveal information about their history and the reasons why they embarked on this trip, the viewer comes along for the ride (if you'll excuse the metaphor). And, yes, it's a road trip movie, so there is plenty of inherent fun in that trope (though, as a veteran road-tripper, I thought their route made no sense--but it was good for the story). All in all, this isn't a story about death; it's a story about life. It's about hope, meaning, and connections. We both thoroughly enjoyed it.

Next Exit is currently available on Hulu and for a fee on many other streaming platforms.

It's Monday 12/30! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

Wow, how can it be the end of the year already?  The last few months have been a bit of a time warp for me, with a bad relapse of my chronic illness. I am ready for a new year!

I felt pretty awful on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, though I wore a smile (and a mask) and tried to make the best of things. And I did enjoy being with my family, especially our sons. It was all quite exhausting and overwhelming, but we were smart this year and had Christmas dinner catered! My husband picked up an entire turkey dinner the day before. We still had to reheat everything, set the table, etc. but we had some help, and it was definitely easier than making everything from scratch. And it was delicious! We exchanged piles of wonderful presents--you can check out all of the books we gave and received--and celebrated my mom's husband's birthday.

Our younger son, my husband, and I on Christmas morning

Me with our older son and his girlfriend

All of us around the table

 

The day after Christmas, we had our annual cookie/Grinch party with our oldest friends, a 25-year tradition! Luckily, it was their turn to host this year, and we shared leftovers for dinner to keep things easy. We started this when our own sons were just 2 and 5 (and their girls were 6 and 8). The "kids" are mostly in their 30's now, but we still enjoy getting together, decorating cookies, and watching the Grinch (the original, of course).

Some of the kids (and a few friends) in 2000!

Once everyone left and the holiday fun was over, I was able to stay on the couch and rest, and I am doing a bit better the past few days. I took a break from one of my immune medications (they tend to stop working if you stay on them), and just restarted it last night, and I'm feeling quite good today, with only mild aches. I'm hoping this is the start of a better trend, so I can start the new year feeling better and able to return to my "normal" life!

Here's to a happy & healthy 2025 for all of us!

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On the Blog

I will have some extra end-of-year blog posts coming up in the next two weeks! First,

Books We Gave and Got for Christmas

And I will be participating in First Book of the Year, hosted annually by Sheila at Book Journey. 

 

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On Video

The Christmas Music Tag - this fun video, inspired by the titles of holiday songs, gave me the chance to talk about some of my favorite books that are lesser-known.

Friday Reads 12-27-24: My Last Books of the Year! - a brief discussion of the books I am currently reading & listening to, my last books of 2024.

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 What We're Reading

I am almost finished reading A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, which has been on my to-read list for over a decade! It won the Pulitzer Prize, is still being listed on all kinds of Best Books lists, and garnered rave reviews. Each chapter is a separate but interrelated story about a group of characters who are connected to each other in different ways. Bennie, the center of the novel, is an aging music producer who still has the heart of a punk rocker. Sasha was his assistant for twelve years and is now struggling to control her kleptomania. One chapter went back to Bennie's teens, another focused on a character he interacted with back then. Some chapters are about various periods in Bennie's or Sasha's lives, while others focus on other characters who one or both of them interacted with. One chapter at the end even ventures into the future (ours and theirs). The novel gradually builds an intricate web of stories that define these people and their lives. It's all about connections, and it's an absolute delight to find and see those--sometimes seemingly tenuous--connections between the characters and how each person touched so many other lives. I love the writing style and the sense of humor. This will definitely be on my Top Ten Novels of the year list! (and this is why I don't make my Best Of lists earlier).

On audio, I am listening to The Giant's House by Elizabeth McCracken, a finalist for the 1996 National Book Award in Fiction. In a small town on Cape Cod in 1950, librarian Peggy meets an unusual eleven-year-old boy. James is already 6'5" by age twelve, and he keeps growing until he reaches eight feet tall. Both of them feel like outsiders in the small town, and they form a friendship, beginning with Peggy finding a wide assortment of books for the avid reader. As he continues to grow, health problems develop, and Peggy gradually gets to know James' family, too. It's a love story, which seems a little ick at first (she's 26 and he's 11), but it begins with friendship and there's really nothing sordid here. The story includes tragedy and sorrow but also joy, as the two of them form a unique bond and support each other. I'm enjoying it, and the audio, narrated by Vivienne Leheny, is very good.

My husband, Ken, is reading The Searcher by Tana French, a birthday gift from me, though he is still spending more time watching football than reading (he's a big fan of college football and an Oklahoma State alum)! We are both huge fans of Tana French and have loved her Dublin Murder Squad series, including In the Woods, The Likeness (my favorite), Faithful Place, and Broken Harbor. This is the start of a new series, featuring a retired American police detective now living in Ireland.

I finally had a chance to catch up with our son's (30) reading, and I was way off! ha ha The book I thought he was reading at Thanksgiving, he still hasn't started yet. So, here's the run-down. He wanted to read When Wizards Follow Fools by Andrew Rowe, book 5 (the final book) of the Arcane Ascension series, but as he is wont to do, he first reread book 3, The Torchlight That Ignites the Stars, and book 4, The Silence of Unworthy Gods. Now, he is rereading Marshal Arcane, book 15 of the Spellmonger series by Terry Mancour so that he can read book 16, Preceptor ... which is what I thought he'd been reading this past month! Glad we got to catch up.

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What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

You can follow me on Twitter at @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog's page.

 

What are you and your family reading this week?

Books We Gave and Got for Christmas!

I hope you're enjoying the holiday season with your family! I just popped in to share our Christmas Book Hauls. We're a reading family, and these are the books we gave to each other and received as gifts this Christmas. If you want to hear more about these books and why they were chosen, I recorded a Christmas Book Haul video that I will post to my YouTube channel in the next few days. 

We gave these books to our son, 30. A slightly unusual mix for him this year that includes two nonfiction titles (he's a big fantasy reader) that were chosen for specific reasons. He's excited to read all of them: 

Plus, I ordered these custom Where's Waldo type books for my sons and their girlfriends! They loved those books as kids and were thrilled with the custom versions.

I gave these books to my husband. As luck would have it, many of them are by favorite authors of both of us, so I am looking forward to reading many of these after he does!

I picked out these two novels for my mom:

• Sipsworth by Simon Van Booy (a top pick from Booktopia this year that she missed)
• The Rent Collector by Camron Wright (got one of my book group's highest ratings)

 

And here is my stack from my husband. LOTS of great novels that I can't wait to dive into, plus a surprise pick that will help us plan our longer road trips for the coming year!

Did you give or receive any books this holiday season?

Let me know in the comments below!

It's Monday 12/23! What Are You Reading?

Hosted by The Book Date

Life

12/23? Eek! There's still so much left to do before tomorrow evening! The good news is that a second round of steroids seems to be helping me. This awful eight week-long relapse of my chronic illness is finally easing a bit. I was up off the couch the past two days! We drove about an hour away Saturday to pick up a new-to-us dining room table that perfectly matches out existing set but is larger. Yesterday, though, I threw caution to the wind and helped my husband with some cleaning. All I do is dusting, but after two months of lying down, it was definitely too much for me! I'm very achy and worn out. So, I'm trying to take it easy today, though I have a long list of things to do. We're making progress, slowly but surely. Hope you all enjoy a wonderful holiday week with your family and friends!

We got a few outdoor decorations up!

But our next-door neighbor went all out!

We got the last of our cards out this weekend!

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On Video

Chronic Illness Vlog 12-17-24: Relapse Continues - an in-depth look at a week in my life with chronic illness, during this bad relapse.

Friday Reads 12-13-24: Two Excellent Novels - my brief weekly reading update

 

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 What We're Reading

 

I finished The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara. Most people know this author for her best-selling novel, A Little Life, but her debut novel was The People in the Trees. My mother read it back in 2015 or so and still says it's one of her all-time favorites. She bought me a copy ... and it took me much too long to finally read it! It's the immersive story of a doctor, Norton Perina, who goes on an expedition with an anthropologist in 1950 where they discover a "lost tribe" on a remote Pacific island. Some members of the tribe appear to be astoundingly old and physically robust, though with diminished mental faculties (that's all revealed on page 1). His quest to discover this "fountain of youth" leads to all kinds of unintended consequences, including his conviction for sexual assault (still page 1!). Most of the book is Dr. Perina's memoir, written from prison, and the story of the original expedition, his discoveries that followed, and his adoption of over 40 children from the island is engrossing and fascinating. Though you know the general outline of what will happen from the start, it is still a tense and gripping read, with some extremely thought-provoking moral questions. However, this is also an intensely disturbing book, and those last pages were an absolute gut punch (though not completely surprising). I've heard the same can be said of A Little Life. Consider yourself forewarned.

Now, I am reading A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, which has been on my to-read list for over a decade! It won the Pulitzer Prize, is still being listed on all kinds of Best Books lists, and garnered rave reviews. I'm not too far into it yet, but each chapter is a separate but interrelated story about a group of characters who are connected to each other in different ways. Bennie is an aging music producer who still has the heart of a punk rocker. Sasha was his assistant for twelve years and is now struggling to control her kleptomania. One chapter went back to Bennie's teens, another focused on a character he interacted with back then. The novel is gradually building an intricate web of stories that define these people and their lives. I love the writing style and am enjoying it so far.

 

Just yesterday, I finished The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich. She is one of my favorite authors, so I was excited to read this novel that focuses on a small farming community in North Dakota. Crystal drives a truck for the local sugar beet farms. Her eighteen-year-old daughter, Kismet, is smart and planning to go to college, but her sometimes-hook-up, Gary, has other plans. Gary is a football star in their high school and asks Kismet to marry him. Kismet is also seeing Hugo, a brilliant guy who's homeschooled and is also in love with her. The reader hears from many other characters as well, with plenty of plot twists and a bit of a mystery around a recent trauma that affected the whole town. This is a novel about family, friendship, and love, but most of all, community. Details about farming, the oil and gas industry, and the environment make the narrative even more powerful and realistic. It was excellent on audio. As always, Erdrich has created fabulous characters that leap off the page (or audio) and an engaging story about ordinary people, each trying to do their best.

My husband, Ken, finished a book I gave him for his birthday, An Honest Man by Michael Koryta. This is his first book by best-selling author Koryta, and this one is described as a "breath-taking thriller." Plus, Stephen King said it was the author's best book, so I figured it was a good place to start. Ken enjoyed it, said it was a good thriller, and he liked the main character. I don't think he's started a new book yet because he's staying up late most nights watching football! He's an Oklahoma State alum and really gets into college football, especially since he retired.

 

Our son, 30, was reading book 16 (!) of the The Spellmonger series, Preceptor, by Terry Mancour over Thanksgiving. Not sure if he's still reading it, but I will get an update this week when he comes home for Christmas!

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What Are You Reading Monday is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date, so head over and check out her blog and join the Monday fun! You can also participate in a kid/teen/YA version hosted by Unleashing Readers.

You can follow me on Twitter at @SueBookByBook or on Facebook on my blog's page.

 

What are you and your family reading this week?