World Report: August 2021

My brain is a sponge. Here is what I absorbed this month. 

First, I watched a lot of Olympics and became an expert in sports that I knew nothing about last month.  Second, due to the time shift, I often fell asleep.  The white noise of the wind on the sailing course knocked me right out.

~~~ Books ~~~

Cup of gold : a life of Sir Henry Morgan, buccaneer, with occasional reference to history by John Steinbeck

Later by Stephen King

The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944 by Ian W. Toll

The Pixar Touch: the Making of Company by David A. Price

This passage in particular spoke to me:

"[Brad Bird] still had the stories he had created during his period of knocking on doors in Hollywood. One of these featured a family of superheroes obliged to go into hiding by living as ordinary citizens. he imagined it as an homage to the 1960s comic books and spy films of his boyhood, to be brought to the screen in 2-D cel animation. Personal issues, however, had percolated in the story as they weighed on him in life. At the time he was drafting the story in the mid-1990s, he was in his late thirties. he and his wife had just had their third child, and he was wondering, with a measure of fear, about the conflict between career and family responsibilities. He had very high aspirations for his filmmaking--but were such aspirations attainable only at the price of your family life, a worse-than-Faustian bargain? If you hadn't succeeded in your career, really succeeded, by the time you were middle-aged with commitments at home, did you have to reconcile yourself to scaling down your definition of success, or giving it up altogether? All these ponderings seeped into the superhero story.",
~ page 220, "The Pixar Touch", David A Price.

One that got away: The Beach by Alex Garland. I got half way through this one before I gave up.  I guess I'm not in the correct generation for it to resonate.

~~~ Graphic Novels~~~

Pirate Queen: the Legend of Grace O'Malley by Tony Lee & Sam Hart

Catherine's War by Julia Billet & Clair Fauvel

Explorer: the Lost Islands by Kazu Kibuishi, ed

Shadow by Hiromi Goto and Ann Xu

Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley

Poppy! and the Lost Lagoon by Matt Kindt and Brian Hurtt

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki & Rosemay Valero-O'Connell

~~~ Film ~~~

Luca

~~~ Television ~~~

ST: TNG, ST:DS9 and The Simpsons.

~~~ Audio ~~~

Lots of music, but nothing on a regular repeat

~~~ Gaming ~~~

A new DND campaign with a slightly different cast. More to follow!

That's all for now. Drop me a line and Let me know if there is something that I should know about. There are 24 useable hours in the day.