Is it worth highlighting when you find yourself highlighting more than 60% of a book? Probably.

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson PsyD really hits on multiple key areas of how one’s upbringing, though appearing to have been “fine,” may have been an experience that informs many of the difficulties one may be experiencing in adulthood.

I did not expect Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower to be quite so prescient or timely as I picked up a hardcover copy from a bookstore shelf. But her story of a young Black woman surviving in a society that is slowly collapsing held more than a few parallels for today, if not tomorrow. Set in the northern part of a decaying Los Angeles, people huddle in walled communities, attempting to avoid the chaos of drug-induced arson and simple survival in the wider world.

Inspired by a post by Adam M., I’m returning to my long-neglected practice of reading. In an effort to keep to this, I’ll be adding a short summary of each book I read in 2025, along with a list of them in this post.

Have you seen the first John Wick movie? For a film that’s the co-directorial debut of a stunt coordinator/stuntman, it’s got what it needs: style, flash, and enough framing from which to hang a story. It’s fun, has relatable key points in the main character’s tragic losses, and mostly exists as an excuse to let Keanu Reeves hit people, to which I do not object.

Robin Buss’ translation of The Count of Monte Cristo opens with this quote:

‘Ah, a children’s novel,’ a Russian film-maker remarked when I told her that I was translating The Count of Monte Cristo. The comment was not intended to be disparaging, merely descriptive; and many people, in different cultures, would tend to agree with the categorization.