May 2026 Happiness
May. 27th, 2026 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingOh man. I can’t believe we’re almost at the end of May. I guess time flies when you’re not dreading each new day in a horrible unending winter. Adding to the absence of snow on the ground, here are two books, a podcast about books, and a movie from the 2000s that made me happy this month.
- A Canticle for Leibowitz (here on Amazon) is a famous sci-fi novel from 1959 that I’d never heard of until I saw someone mention it as a major inspiration for Fallout New Vegas. The story is about a postapocalyptic Catholic order of monks who preserve 20th century texts in an isolated monastery in the desert. The writing is very dense and textured, and it has a nice crunchy literary feel. The way I might describe this book is like Stephen King’s The Gunslinger meets The Name of the Rose, and it’s very good.
- I finally got around to reading Great Expectations (here on IndieBound), and it’s a lot of fun, which feels like a silly thing to write. One of the most famous novels written in the English language is entertaining? You don’t say. Victorian writers always seem like they were having such a good time. Was it the laudanum? I bet it was the laudanum.
- Speaking of classic English-language novels, I’ve been enjoying The Book Club podcast (here on YouTube), which is essentially two British people shooting the shit for an hour. The tone is academic yet casual, and the hosts have good chemistry. They don’t say anything particularly innovative, but that’s okay. I’m not particularly interested in listening to anyone’s hot takes these days.
- After listening to The Book Club’s episode about The Hound of the Baskervilles, I remembered that I have a soft spot for Jude Law in the 2009 movie Sherlock Holmes (on Amazon here). I watched it again on a plane, and it was great. This movie is more or less a series of visually interesting action set pieces, and the Instagram filters that the film editors applied in post-production actually work really well. Almost every single shot feels like a dramatically staged mise-en-scene, and the writing maintains a good balance between clever and charmingly stupid. A real himbo of a movie honestly.
- This is my third year in a row visiting Germany, and this is the first time I didn’t go for work. I guess this makes me basic, but I just really enjoy my time there. The five things I love about Germany are: 1. good food, 2. good drinks, 3. good bookstores, 4. beautiful nature, 5. very inexpensive. I’m not even remotely wealthy, so that last part is important. I live in Philadelphia, which is only about two hours away from New York, but a week in Bavaria costs as much as spending one night in New York, no joke. It’s also infinitely more enjoyable, and you’re infinitely less likely to die in some sort of horrible traffic accident.
I hope everyone who wants to explore castles and disappear into fantasy forests gets a chance to live your dream, by the way, because it’s wonderful. I sure hope the U.S. president starting a vanity war with Iran doesn’t have longterm consequences for international travel. It would be a shame if a certain 79yo man tripped and fell down some stairs, if you catch my drift.
- A Canticle for Leibowitz (here on Amazon) is a famous sci-fi novel from 1959 that I’d never heard of until I saw someone mention it as a major inspiration for Fallout New Vegas. The story is about a postapocalyptic Catholic order of monks who preserve 20th century texts in an isolated monastery in the desert. The writing is very dense and textured, and it has a nice crunchy literary feel. The way I might describe this book is like Stephen King’s The Gunslinger meets The Name of the Rose, and it’s very good.
- I finally got around to reading Great Expectations (here on IndieBound), and it’s a lot of fun, which feels like a silly thing to write. One of the most famous novels written in the English language is entertaining? You don’t say. Victorian writers always seem like they were having such a good time. Was it the laudanum? I bet it was the laudanum.
- Speaking of classic English-language novels, I’ve been enjoying The Book Club podcast (here on YouTube), which is essentially two British people shooting the shit for an hour. The tone is academic yet casual, and the hosts have good chemistry. They don’t say anything particularly innovative, but that’s okay. I’m not particularly interested in listening to anyone’s hot takes these days.
- After listening to The Book Club’s episode about The Hound of the Baskervilles, I remembered that I have a soft spot for Jude Law in the 2009 movie Sherlock Holmes (on Amazon here). I watched it again on a plane, and it was great. This movie is more or less a series of visually interesting action set pieces, and the Instagram filters that the film editors applied in post-production actually work really well. Almost every single shot feels like a dramatically staged mise-en-scene, and the writing maintains a good balance between clever and charmingly stupid. A real himbo of a movie honestly.
- This is my third year in a row visiting Germany, and this is the first time I didn’t go for work. I guess this makes me basic, but I just really enjoy my time there. The five things I love about Germany are: 1. good food, 2. good drinks, 3. good bookstores, 4. beautiful nature, 5. very inexpensive. I’m not even remotely wealthy, so that last part is important. I live in Philadelphia, which is only about two hours away from New York, but a week in Bavaria costs as much as spending one night in New York, no joke. It’s also infinitely more enjoyable, and you’re infinitely less likely to die in some sort of horrible traffic accident.
I hope everyone who wants to explore castles and disappear into fantasy forests gets a chance to live your dream, by the way, because it’s wonderful. I sure hope the U.S. president starting a vanity war with Iran doesn’t have longterm consequences for international travel. It would be a shame if a certain 79yo man tripped and fell down some stairs, if you catch my drift.
