52 in 25: #35 - Spiritual Works

Next I am combining two shorter works for one, part of my recent spiritual reading.

First is On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius.  St. Athanasius is one of the great Eastern Church Fathers who died in 373.  This is, as you might expect, an argument for the reality that God became man in Jesus Christ.  He includes a brief summary of creation and the fall, the need for salvation, and the saving, loving act of God to come and die for us.  He also makes arguments specifically for Jews and Gentiles.  While some of these arguments may be “dated,” as in refuting ancient gods that no longer have any baring, the overall sentiment is timeless.  Christians, in particulars Catholics, need to keep going back to the Church Fathers to bolster our faith.

The second was Matthew Manint’s With Glory and Honor You Crowned Them: The Female Martyrs of the Roman Canon.  As a priest who uses the Roman Canon often, I wanted to read up a little more on those saints who are named, especially those I am less knowledgeable about.  And, quite frankly, sometimes the virgin martyrs run together.  This is much more modern, published in 2019, but I like how the author highlights different aspects of the saints so that they stand out.  It’s concise, but there’s enough there to gain a better devotion to these inspirational women.

Two short works, similar in that they reach back to the early Church, and both can help enliven our faith.  It is important for us to read as much about the saints as possible, for inspiration and for a greater love for God.

52 in 25: #34 - The Coddling of the American Mind

This next book is something that I have read for “research” for a project I am working on.  And, I will say up front, it is excellent.  The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure was a New York Times Bestseller in 2018 by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.  In it, they focus on “Three Bad Ideas” which are plaguing younger generations today.  The first is the Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.  The second is the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.  The third is the Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.

 

I like that they have a methodical way of looking at this problem of how younger generations are “coddled” (over-protected).  They also call this “safetyism.”  They present the three bad ideas, give examples in part 2, explain how we got to this place in part 3, and then present examples of how to fix the problem in part 4.  I also like how they mentioned the criteria for the untruths: they go against ancient wisdom, they contradict modern psychology, and they do harm.

While their focus is on college campuses, the arguments go far beyond that.  I found myself nodding to much of what they wrote, save for the few times their obvious political leanings entered in.  I also noticed that there were multiple mentions of Buddha and other philosophers, but, as I noticed, only one mention of Jesus or Christianity.  On the plus side, that means that Christianity can be better infused in their arguments by someone else.

One thing I didn’t like is that, by the end, they started to advertise for a few things they are part of or they think are alternatives.  While I appreciated their explanation of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, for instance, I could have done with a little less selling of it towards the end.  Regardless, I think this book has a lot of merits, and addresses an important issue that has probably only become worse since the book was published (*COVID*).  Final thought, I especially loved that they strongly warned against social media, the basis for so many societal ills today.

Movies by Decade: 80s

A breath of fresh air with the 80s.  The biggest difference for me with the 80s is fun.  Much of the 70s is “gritty,” or really more dour, but the 80s is fun, and it’s a much better decade for it.  I truly believe that Spielberg/Lucas are the biggest reason for this, and, therefore, are even higher on my list of favorites.  Basically, the 80s are a massive bounce back decade, and sets up (spoilers) the greatest decade in film history.

Science fiction is really big in the 80s, again thanks to the success of Star Wars.  Even fantasy has a significant corner in the decade.  We see an even greater move towards blockbuster movies.  And, with Stallone and Arnold among others, the rise of action movies (culminating in the greatest of them all in ‘88).  Disney has another down decade, though The Little Mermaid kicks off the “Renaissance.”  And, of course, John Hughes is massive, which means Chicago is everywhere.  And he is part of a much larger collection of movies based around children/teens (it’s clearly the best decade of movies to be growing up).

Before my list (remember this is “best,” not necessarily “favorite”), a few notable movies not mentioned, because I have not seen them: The Elephant Man, Raging Bull, Gandhi (seen parts but not all), Terms of Endearment, Amadeus, Platoon, The Last Emperor, Driving Miss Daisy, Born on the Fourth of July. Add to this Ordinary People, which is incredibly depressing, Out of Africa, which is not good, The Color Purple, ditto, Blade Runner, which is overrated, or Full Metal Jacket, which is half a good movie, half tripe.

 

Honorable Mentions: First Blood, The Blues Brothers, Silverado, Rocky IV, Chariots of Fire, The Man from Snowy River, The Terminator, The Breakfast Club, Aliens, Stand by Me, Lethal Weapon, The Untouchables, Predator, The Princess Bride, Empire of the Sun, Willow, Big, Batman, Henry V, Glory, The Little Mermaid

 

Top 10 Countdown:

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)

            Wow wow wow, a really good decade for movies, it’s really difficult to pick just 10.  Ferris in some way represents all of the teen comedies of this decade as the best of them.  It was also perhaps the first movie where you had to stay until the credits ended (got to see it in a theater once in college, and it caught off just as Ferris came back on the screen, people were NOT HAPPY).

 

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987)

            A little more adult John Hughes comedy, and probably the best road trip comedy ever made.  I watch right around Thanksgiving every year, because it is the best (only?) Thanksgiving movie.  If not for one scene, it’s a remarkably clean comedy as well.

 

The Natural (1984)

            So much better than the novel.  I have had a roller coaster of thoughts about the Kim Basinger character.  I hate her, and for a while thought she shouldn’t be in it.  Then I realized that, if this story is a Greek hero’s journey just set in baseball (it is), then she does a great job as the siren you are supposed to hate.  I’m shocked when baseball people don’t like this movie.  “A father makes all the difference” gets me every time.

 

Die Hard (1988)

            Now we are really getting into the best of the best.  It’s not an overstatement to say that this movie set the mold for action movies for over a decade (Die Hard on a plane! Die Hard on a bus! Die Hard on…).  It’s fascinating to think that at the time people laughed at casting Bruce Willis because he was a “comedy actor.”  And Hans Gruber is one of the greatest villains of all time.  Yes, it absolutely is a Christmas movie.

 

Field of Dreams (1989)

            Probably the best baseball movie ever made.  Somehow it lost Best Picture to Driving Miss Daisy (no I haven’t seen it, but does anybody care about that movie any more, or make pilgrimages to see where it was filmed?).  Any red-blooded American man who can make it to the end without getting emotional is a psychopath or sociopath or something for sure.

 

Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

            It’s not my favorite Star Wars movie (Return of the Jedi), but it is clearly the best.  On the one hand, you have a perfect hero’s journey taking place, on the other hand you have non-stop action of The Chase.  They brilliantly expand the universe to make you really feel like it’s a universe.  There’s iconic dialogue.  One of the greatest twists of all time.  And, it has a perfect cliffhanger.  Of course, there’s also John Williams continuing to be a genius by adding the best villain theme of all time.

 

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

            It is so hard to put this so low, because it is basically a perfect movie.  The cast is perfect, introducing the greatest movie hero of all time.  The story is phenomenal.  The score is amazing.  The cinematography, stunts…  Honestly, the sequences from the fight at the airplane through the desert chase may be the greatest action sequence ever.  There’s nothing to criticize.  That means the top three must be pretty special.

 

Back to the Future (1985)

            If anyone were to ask me to pick the “quintessential 80s movie,” I would pick Back to the Future.  It’s got science fiction, comedy, the main character is a teen, it takes place in the 80s and 50s, a great score and songs, pretty much everything you think of when you think “80s.”  It also has one of the greatest scripts of all time.  And while both Robert Zemeckis and Alan Silvestri had some success with Romancing the Stone the year before, this movie essentially made them as one of the great directors and composers (as a set and individually) ever.

 

The Mission (1986)

            Undoubtedly this is the least “popular” of the top 10, but it is a beautifully haunting movie about the Jesuits in South America.  Jeremy Irons and Robert De Niro are fantastic, and they continue to make me think “which one am I more like”?  It’s not an easy watch, but it is truly one of the most important religious movies ever made.  Especially poignant is the scene of De Niro carrying his armor up the waterfall, which is the perfect example of penance and forgiving ourselves.  And while I often struggle with Ennio Morricone, this is his masterpiece.  This is yet another Best Picture nominee that was robbed.

 

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

            It’s debatable whether or not this is Spielberg’s best.  I don’t think it is debatable that it is the best movie of the decade.  Once again, it was nominated but did not win Best Picture, but supposedly even Richard Attenborough, who director the winner Gandhi, said that it should have won.  The genius of Spielberg is filming it from a child’s perspective, which really allows the audience to enter into the story and get swept up by everything that happens.  It’s funny, sad, exciting, and most of all uplifting.  And again, John Williams is there to make it even better.  We just won’t mention the botched 20^th anniversary “update” that was smartly thrown away.

 

Extra fun: the best movie scores of the decade (Once again, John Williams dominates this decade, and James Horner gives him a run for his money, I am going to choose just one to represent them.  The 80s also sees a number of other composers breaking out: Alan Silvestri, Hans Zimmer, Michael Kamen, Danny Elfman, Basil Poledouris, and even Patrick Doyle.  The only big problem with this decade is the overuse of electronics in scores, even when they don’t fit – Chariots of Fire.)

 

Indiana Jones trilogy (John Williams) (also: E.T., Star Wars V and VI, Empire of the Sun)

Field of Dreams (James Horner) (also: Aliens, The Land Before Time, Star Trek II and III, Cocoon, Willow)

Batman (Danny Elfman)

Die Hard (Michael Kamen) (also: Highlander, Lethal Weapon, License to Kill)

Conan the Barbarian (Basil Poledouris) (also: Red Dawn, RoboCop)

The Mission (Ennio Morricone)

Predator (Alan Silvestri) (also: Back to the Future, The Abyss)

Silverado (Bruce Broughton)

 

 

Other music from the decade: I love 80s music, and there’s so much to point to, from hair bands to metal to pop to hip hop.  Like the movies, the music is fun.  Lots of “one hit wonders.”  But also some truly iconic bands come out of this decade like U2 and Metallica and Beastie Boys.  The other thing to point out is that unquestionably the greatest soundtracks of all time come from the 80s: Top Gun, Rocky IV, Back to the Future, Dirty Dancing (though that’s greatly aided by the 50s).

52 in 25: #33 - Congo

No, I have not stopped reading, nor have I forgotten about this.  Basically, I started one book, then decided I really wanted to read something from Michael Crichton, but I’m doing my best to not read Jurassic Park this year, so I picked up Congo for a reread.  So I've been splitting time between two (actually more) books.

Crichton is my favorite author because, for me, he brings the perfect mix of the old-school serial thriller with “techno-thriller” updates.  I love how “real” he makes his novels, by including all kinds of scientific explanations, real and fictional.  You can tell that he has heavily researched whatever topic(s) he is approaching in that particular novel.  He also is not a luddite, but at the same time he warns about the use, or overuse, of technology.

Congo, published in 1980, was his fifth novel.  Or it’s his 15^th if you include his novels published as John Lange or other aliases.  It is heavily influenced by other stories like King Solomon’s Mines of the lost city in the darkest Africa.  In this case, it centers around a technology company out of Houston ERTS searching for blue diamonds at the lost city of Zinj which will change the course of computing for decades to come.  The expedition is led by Charles Munro, the top mercenary in Africa, and Karen Ross, the representative from ERTS.  Along for the ride are Peter Elliot, a scientist from Berkely, and his gorilla Amy.  While the trek through the jungle, and the circuitous route to get there, are exciting, the real fun starts when the get to Zinj and are confronted by a lost species of grey gorillas who had been trained by the inhabitants of Zinj as an army.  Oh, and meanwhile there is a civil war in Zaire, pygmies and cannibals, and a second consortium from Japan and Germany racing to get the diamonds first.

 

Congo is exciting, though not all that original.  In Crichton’s bibliography, I would probably put it in the lower middle, which means it’s better than a lot of other authors, but not one of his best.  That being said, it is significantly better than the dreadful movie adaptation.

52 in 25: #32 - Tyrannosaur Canyon

I was really wanting to read some Tom Clancy, one of my favorite authors, so I started to reread Cardinal in the Kremlin, which I haven’t read in a while, but then I realized it is not summer reading.  I want “summer reading.”  So I put it down and will probably pick it up again in the winter.

 

Instead, I returned to Douglas Preston, whose Extinction is #16.  I turned to another “dinosaur” themed book in Tyrannosaur Canyon.  I’ll cut to the chase, there is a dinosaur in it, but barely.

 

It actually starts with the Apollo 17 lunar landing in 1972.  Ok, I’m listening.  Something mysterious happens.  Jump to present day, where a “treasure hunter” in the badlands of New Mexico is murdered.  Before the bad guy can get to his body (he was shot from the top of the canyon), the hero, Tom Broadbent, heard the shots and finds the body.  Before the man dies, he hands Tom a diary and tells him to give it to his daughter Robbie.  Being a man of honor, he has to honor the man’s last request, and so he does not take it to the authorities.  Thus begins a race to find out what the treasure is and where it’s buried.  Along the way, Tom befriends a former CIA agent-turned-monk Wyman Ford.  I mention that because this is the second Tom Broadbent novel (I haven’t read the first The Codex, but it’s basically spoiled in this book) and the first of the Wyman Ford series of books).

 

Where does the dinosaur come in?  Spoilers.  The “treasure” is a basically fully intact T-Rex, including skin and everything, which turns out to have died during the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs but, twist, it actually died from an alien organism that was attached to the asteroid, was also found on the moon, and could become a dangerous weapon.  Basically, you have a little bit of a treasure hunt, a little bit of a detective story, a little bit of a conspiracy story, and a little bit of Andromeda Strain.

 

Overall, it was enjoyable.  I definitely realized that I really like the “serial” type of novel, from Dumas to Burroughs and Crichton (sort of) to now Preston.  He reminds me quite a bit of Crichton, but with a lot fewer scientific details to lend it more credibility.  In the end, he writes a fun, engaging thriller that keeps you coming back to find out what’s happening to the different convergent story lines.  That being said, I will no longer assume that a book with a dinosaur or other extinct animal on its cover features dinosaurs or other extinct animals.  As a man once said, "fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me...you can't get fooled again."

52 in 25: #31 - The Dialogue of Catherine of Siena

I just finished my spiritual reading, which for some time has been the Dialogue of St. Catherine of Siena.

St. Catherine was born in Siena in 1347, the 25^th child of her mother and a twin (her twin sister and about half of her other siblings did not survive childhood).  From an early age she wanted to devoted herself to God.  To that end, she eventually joined the Dominicans.  At 21, she experienced a “mystical marriage to Christ” and she had many visions in ecstasy.  Some of these were eventually dictated and written down as the Dialogue, which was finished in 1378.  She died just two years later.

Since she is a Doctor of the Church, this, her most famous work, has been on my list to read for awhile.  I also have been trying to make a concerted effort to read more female saints, to try and help that part of my ministry.  It is a dialogue between God and a soul, though God does most of the talking (as He should).  I will admit that it took me a long time to get into it.  Another priest concurred, saying that getting one idea out of a few pages was on the right track.  I persisted, slowly, until the section on obedience which really spoke to me.  I’ve known it before: God expects much more from priests, but it hit me in a special way this time.  I was happy that I could take away some very meaningful insights.

52 in 25: #30 - Riders of the Purple Sage

I love Western movies.  It’s long been one of my favorite genres.  So it’s somewhat unusual that I have only read 2 or 3 Western novels.  I decided to venture into the Western with what is considered one of the best, if not the best, ever written.  That is, Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage.

Written in 1912, it takes place in 1870s Utah.  There are two main interlocking stories.  First is Jane Withersteen, a wealthy single Mormon woman who is battling between her faith and her longing for freedom, and Jim Lassiter, a gunfighter known for killing Mormons looking for the man who killed his sister.  The second main story surrounds Bern Venters, a rider, and Bess, the mysterious Masked Rider he almost killed but nurses back to life.  This second story, which becomes “Adam and Eve in Eden” is far less interesting than the intrigue of Jane, Lassiter, and the Mormon hierarchy trying to wear them down.

 

I really wanted to like it.  I liked parts of it, but there were also parts that got under my skin.  One thing that bothered me to no end was the chapter titles which often spoiled what was going to happen.  At least I could sympathize with the authors clear dislike of Mormonism.  I might someday read the sequel, The Rainbow Trail, but not likely too soon.