2023 Mid-Year Reading Adventures
Hello friends! It’s good to see you again.
We’re a little over halfway into 2023, and I realized that it’s been a hot minute since I talked about books. In an attempt to amend that issue, I shall recap some of my recent reading adventures for the first half of 2023.
“Mood Reading”
For the past few months, I’ve done a lot of “mood reading,” going anywhere from cowboys to theaters to pirate ships.
I critiqued a friend’s Western story, and then desperately needed more Western-ness. So I spent weeks listening to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly soundtrack on loop. I also binge-read the first two books of Emily Hayse’s Knights of Tin and Lead series during this Western obsession.
These War Torn Hands and The Beautiful Ones gave me exactly what I wanted. Desert thunderstorms, horses, cowboys, outlaws… it was perfect.
After that, I stepped into a brief Phantom of the Opera mood with its aesthetic of music, fancy costumes, drama, and old-buildings-filled-with-singing-french-people.
I listened to the 25th anniversary show soundtrack on repeat for weeks. (sidenote: do not, under any circumstances, watch the 2004 movie, and instead watch the 25th anniversary recording. It’s much more worth your time.)
But listening to the soundtrack was not enough, so I spontaneously bought a copy of Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera.
The book didn’t have the exact same tone / aesthetic of the show, but I really enjoyed learning more details about the characters. The book was actually a sort of “mixed media” story with interviews, newspaper articles, and diary entries, and that was really cool! Phantom of the Opera creeped me out at some points and I couldn’t put it down other times. Overall, I will definitely be rereading this!
An Abundance of Classics
Generally, I’ve just been reading a lot more classics.
I used to have to force myself to read a classic book. Yes, they’re very valuable – there’s a reason these books have stuck around for hundreds of years – but they’re also more challenging to read. I would slowly crawl my way through every classic that I read…
… Until I got tired of reading YA books that felt like junk food. I noticed that every YA book was consumed too quickly. My mind wasn’t being nourished. There are definitely YA books that aren’t of the junk food variety, but sadly they are few and far between.
After I read one classic, I found myself picking up another. You already know that I read Phantom of the Opera, which was a fun read. After that, I read
- Rappaccini’s Daughter by Nathaniel Hawthorne – I really enjoyed this and I think it could make a cool movie.
- The Rats in the Walls by H. P. Lovecraft – This gave me bad dreams about rats, but it was still a good read.
- The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy – I honestly feel quite neutral about this. It was entertaining, but not my absolute favorite.
- Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee – You can expect an in-depth post about this book, but all I’ll say is that Go Set a Watchman can’t be considered a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. I did enjoy some parts of this book, but I had to think of it as a separate story.
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson – I read this after listening to the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack. (yes, more mood reading.) It quite satisfied my craving for swashbuckling adventures.
All this to say, I’ve changed my opinion about classics. They can be entertaining, thoughtful, and quite nourishing to the mind.
Movie Adventures
I’ve also changed my thoughts on watching movies. I used to be a very “books are better than movies” kind of person, but recently I’ve learned the special power movies have in connecting people.
Yes, books are great, and there are certain things books can portray that a movie can’t. Movies, however, are great for enjoying a story together with other people, and can have some beautiful cinematography, sets, costumes, etc.
So, here are some of my latest movie watching adventures:
Indiana Jones
My family did a giant rewatch of the Indiana Jones trilogy (that’s right, we ignored the weird Kingdom of the Crystal Skull sequel) And wow… I forgot how iconic and awesome these movies are.
They’re your classic adventure movies. There aren’t any complicated themes or morally gray characters, which puzzled me at first. I thought that a good story had to have characters arcs and complicated themes for the audience to think about.
After I watched these movies, though, I realized that those parts of a good story didn’t make it into Indiana Jones, and yet they were still very enjoyable.
So maybe you don’t have to have complicated themes in every story for it to be valuable. Or maybe you need a mix of both meaningful, thoughtful stories and action-packed-adventure stories?
Obviously, you aren’t going to watch the latter if you want to analyze the meaning of life or the purpose of humanity, but there’s still value to a story if it can entertain someone and transport them to a different world.
That being said, I really enjoyed the Indiana Jones movies.
Raiders of the Lost Ark – The only recollection I had of this movie was sitting in the back of the car during a family road trip and watching people’s faces melt off. But upon re-watching, I loved this. There was drama between Indiana and Marian, adventure in their goal to find the lost ark, and a bit of comedy here and there with the villains. The action and fight scenes were so different from the current CGI-ed fight scenes, and it was just a fun movie.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – When I was younger, this was my favorite of the trilogy, but now that I’m older I think it’s my least favorite. My main thought was What the heck happened to Marian and why was she replaced with a crazy screaming lady?!? But even though it’s not my favorite, it still had some awesome action scenes and felt full of adventure.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – I didn’t remember much of this from when I was little, but wow, it’s really good. Unlike Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, this actually had continuity to the first movie. It also gave Indiana Jones some character that had been lacking in the other movies. I loved the father-son dynamic in this story, and it was just the perfect ending to the trilogy. (Seriously, how can you make more movies after a movie named The Last Crusade?)
Psycho
One day, I found myself home alone for an evening with only my brothers. We were scrolling through Netflix and watched the preview for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. We all looked at each other and said “Let’s watch this.”
Now I’ve seen a few other Alfred Hitchcock movies. The Birds was a bit creepy, and Rear Window was pretty entertaining. But none of these came close to Psycho.
Psycho wasn’t all that scary. There were only one or two jump scares (when they did happen they made all of us scream out loud.) But in the middle of the movie, I was stressed out. I don’t know if it was the soundtrack or something different, but the tone of this movie was full of anxiety.
I really liked Psycho. It had actual characters and didn’t focus solely on freaking out the audience, unlike modern horror movies, but was still creepy and thrilling.
And… those are some of the notable stories I’ve consumed so far this year. What are your favorite recent reads? Any favorite movie watching adventures?
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your day!
-Hannah
Hi! I’m Hannah, a crazy pen-wielding, jack-of-all-trades writer. I write contemporary stories with a magical (or vintage!) twist, usually featuring big families, delicious food, and a few tear jerking scenes. When I’m not writing, you could find me camping, sewing, hiking, cycling, skiing, playing violin or piano, reading, and many other “-ing” words.