February in Review

Books Acquired:
Jesting Pilate by Aldous Huxley
Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer
The Magic of Reality by Richard Dawkins

Books Read:
The Vintage Caper by Peter Mayle
Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel
Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery
Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman

I hadn’t heard of Jesting Pilate before, but it’s a travelogue from Aldous Huxley that details his trip through multiple countries, from India to America (I believe). Classic travel writing can be a lot of fun (travel before planes or hotel reviews, shock and horror), so I’m looking forward to this. Acceptance I picked up to complete the trilogy, although I still haven’t read the second book yet, so it’s admittedly a bit premature.

And lastly, The Magic of Reality was left in our condo lobby (I’m assuming as a free offer to whomever wanted it), so I snatched it up. I’ve only read Dawkins’ The God Delusion, so this should be a nice introduction to his other work.

The most exciting thing that happened this month is that we bought a new vacuum cleaner. This may seem like no big thing to most people, but after living with terrible vacuums my entire adult life, this has been a revelation. Literally life-changing!

We had two separate snowfalls this month, which is really unusual for this area. The first one unfortunately prevented us from making a trip to see Run the Jewels in Vancouver, due to canceled flights, which was annoying, but I do enjoy it when it’s not ruining my plans. The image above is from yesterday. The snow was falling in giant chunks, but it was almost entirely gone by the evening. Very odd weather this year.

Movies watched:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) – Maggie Smith was fantastic in this, but a lot of the subtlety of the book was lost.

Rogue One (2016) – We finally made it out to see this, two months after release. We were the only two people in the theatre, so it was our own private showing. Very fun and a great cast of characters.

Finding Vivian Maier (2014) – Really loved this. A documentary about a retired nanny who passed away and left behind thousands upon thousands of film negatives. It digs into her hidden life, her photography, and also considers (briefly) the moral ambiguities of doing this after her death.

TV watched:
Avec Eric (2015) – A food travel series hosted by Eric Ripert. Not mind-blowing, but still enjoyable.

Games played:
The Elder Scrolls Online (2014) (PC) – I had that itch for an MMO game for some reason. I can’t explain it. This has been really fun, even playing it solo. Good writing and excellent voice acting.

Oxenfree (2016) (PC) – I loved this. A group of kids stay overnight in an abandoned island town for a graduation party and uncover some strange happenings. A short game with a lot of impact.

For Honor (2017) (PS4) – This is a bit of a bug-ridden mess at the moment, but when it works the gameplay is very exciting.

What have you been reading/watching/playing this month?