Worthwhile Movie #24 - Project Hail Mary

What if saving the planet goes beyond recycling, shouting slogans and waving placards? What if saving the planet means dying so that others might live? That is the premise of Project Hail Mary, the best movie I've seen in years. 

Middle school science teacher, Ryland Grace, (played by Ryan Gosling) is asked to participate in a mission to "Tau Ceti," the only star in Earth's solar system that is not being destroyed by a star-eating microbe called astrophage. His team will try to discover how Tau Ceti has created resistence to the microbe and send their findings back to earth via space probes. The star is so far away that their spaceship can only carry enough fuel for a one-way trip meaning that the astronauts will not be able to return to earth after completing their mission. 

This is enough to know going in. DO NOT read a more detailed synopsis of the plot before watching because it might include spoilers about the ending that will reduce its impact.  

When I linked to the DVD at Amazon, I noticed that Project Hail Mary is their #1 bestseller at the moment and it's easy to see why. It's a good story mixed with humor and pathos. Gosling "owns the part" of Dr. Grace by making his predicament one hundred percent believable. Swearing is at a minimum. And the soundtrack is pretty fun too. 

You might get a knot in your brain if you try to understand the "science" behind it all. After a while I just relaxed and enjoyed the excellent filming and storytelling. It has one of the best examples I've ever seen of what Tolkien calls a "eucatastrophe," a seeming disaster that becomes redemptive. 

A great film! Did you watch it? What did you think?

Blessings, 

What I Read and Watched in July 2026

My reading was limited, but rich, this month. I finished Volume 8 of John Wesley's Works (mostly correspondence), which I enjoyed. One of my goals this year is to read the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid. I read the Aeneid last month so this month I listened to Elizabeth Vandiver's lectures on Homer's Odyssey and then listened to the audiobook (narrated by the marvelous Dan Stevens.) I did not know that there was a new Odyssey film coming out till I finished the book, but it definitely made it easier to understand what all the criticisms of the film were about. 

To round out the month, I read two delightful shorter books: My Dear Charlotte by Hazel Holt and Lassie, Come-Home by Eric Knight.

I watched two patriotic movies in July. The Wings of Eagles starred John Wayne playing naval aviator Frank Wead (1895-1947). He and Maureen O'Hara have great rapport, but it was hard to believe her as a hard drinking American wife. The film was directed by film-genius John Ford so I was surprised at how much slapstick was included. And it actually pained my heart to see Wayne, someone who always plays "bigger-than-life" characters, limping along with canes. 

A Bell for Adano (based on John Hersey's Pulitzer Prize winning book) was my second film. It is about a small Italian town ravaged by World War II and the American major who comes to restore order. John Hodiak's wooden acting was grating, but William Bendix shone as his underling. It could have been heartwarming if it hadn't been so depressing. 

The highlight of the month was Project Hail Mary, which I enjoyed so much that I'm going to write a separate blog post about it. 

What about you? Did you read or watch anything related to American Independence Day?

Blessings,

My Dear Charlotte by Hazel Holt

I've been in a reading slump. This is partly due to my heavy schedule that hasn't allowed for the mental leisure to "get lost in a book." But it is also due to the non-fiction books I'm reading for some personal projects. They are feeding my mind, but not necessarily my heart. I've started and abandoned a dozen books in the last month, desperate to find the right one to meet that need.

On a whim I began reading My Dear Charlotte because it was described as 1) a mystery, 2) a "must" for Austen-lovers, and 3) an epistolary novel, which checked off a lot of my "biblio-boxes."

It was balm to my soul. 

For those who are unfamiliar with Austen's books this "novel in letters" might seem rather dull. Not much goes on beyond gossip about neighbors and small talk about the price of fabric. Yes, there is a mysterious death, but it won't have you hanging on the edge of your seat. And if you love a good romance, this one will seem pretty mild. 

So what's so great about My Dear Charlotte? It would have to be its nod to all of Austen's novels. Holt gives names to her characters that fans will readily recognize (Elinor, Frederick, Bates, Ferrell, Willoughby, etc.) There are familiar place names (Lyme, Bath, Church Street) and even phrases (Mary's headaches "being worse than anyone else's") that are taken straight out of Austen's novels. AND there are secret engagements, sudden proposals, and handsome young men who turn out to be dastardly. 

Hazel Holt is the author of cozy mysteries, but in this book she interweaves her story with actual letters written by Jane Austen. Some reviewers say that it is very clear where one author starts and the other ends because of the changes in subject matter. They may have a point, but I found no dissonance between Austen's tone and Holt's. Holt mimics Austen very well and I thoroughly enjoyed Elinor's ladylike snarkiness. 

Her description of Mr Russell: He is as accomplished at dancing as he is at flirting, and makes a very agreeable parnter on both accounts. Later she writes, Our mother said that Mr. Russell looked remarkably well - legacies are a very wholesome diet. 

As I said before, the romance and the mystery are not front and center. The book is about Elinor's witty take on every day life as expressed in her letters to her sister. It is pure literary comfort food.

P.S. As a lover of Methodist history, I loved all the little jabs at the "evangelicalism" of Mr. Wilmot. And I enjoyed the frequent references to books and plays that were popular during Jane Austen's lifetime.  

Blessings,

The Riches of a New Book - Elizabeth Goudge Quote

One especially poignant and influential character in Elizabeth Goudge's novel The White Witch is Parson Hawthyn. He lives in extreme poverty in a drafty hut beside the church. In one scene, he painfully rises after kneeling a long time in prayer and heads back to his house. 

For a moment he was visited by a sense of depression because autumn was here and winter not far behind and it might be a very long time before he felt really warm again. Then he thrust the thought aside with shame. He had a bed to sleep in, even if he was not always very warm in it. Suddenly he remembered how rich he now was. Upstairs he had a tinderbox, a candle, and a new book. Entirely forgetting his need of pity, entirely forgetting the poor, he dropped his wet cloak on the floor and clambered up the crazy little staircase to his attic bedroom with the greed of a miser scurrying to his gold.

(photo by Tanya Prodaan at Unsplash)

Blessings,

The Iliad of Homer - Part Two

In my last post, I shared details of reading The Iliad, and of being pleasantly surprised with its accessibility. In this post I want to add a footnote about an unusually compelling theme that was referenced in the afterword of my Rouse translation. This theme proves that the Iliad is much more than a book about war-hungry men! (If you don't know the story at all, this post contains a major spoiler about the ending. But if you are familiar with the basic details of the story, these details will only enhance your reading of it.)

Adam Nicolson writes, For Homer, suffering is hinged to an unresolvable conflict between two inescapable elements of human nature: the ties that bind (family, friendship, community) and the blades that cut through those bindings (such as war). The war is shown against the backdrop of the people, homes and families of Troy. It is violence against domestic order.

To Homer, the city, the realm of family and connection, makes a stand against the chaos. In Troy, woven cloth becomes the medium for his story. When Helen first appears, she is in the hall of her house, weaving. In Book 3, she is working woven images into a tapestry showing the battles that have been fought over her. Helen, as she remembers the source of grief, becomes like Homer, the weaver of the tale.

[Outside the gates of Troy] where the battlefield is a careless and pitiless place, the allure and goodness of the besieged city become ever more precious. Achilles is determined to destroy the Trojans. They flee from his wrath back into the city – all except Hector, their champion, who must remain out on the plain with his adversary.

This is not just the meeting of Achilles and Hector; it is the deathly confrontation of two ways of understanding the world. The city is goodness and connection; the battlefield is horror and death. With Hector’s death, the city’s fabric is irreparably torn.

I have to confess that I missed that theme entirely! But like any classic, there will always be layers of meaning that surface with each subsequent reading.

I will close with just one quote comparing the two versions that I read. (Pope gets a bad rap for his translation, but I enjoyed his energetic eloquence.)

Few and short had his days been when Ajax laid him low, and he never paid to his parents the debt of a grateful son. (W.H.D. Rouse)

Lamented youth! In life’s first bloom he fell, sent by great Ajax to the shades of hell. (Alexander Pope)

P.S. Regarding translations, the majority of readers on the Lit Life Facebook page recommend Lattimore. Coincidentally, last week's Literary Life Podcast was about how to get started reading the ancient classics.

Blessings,

The Iliad by Homer - Part One

I was challenged by Don Beck in his Substack to tackle some of the classics I’ve been putting off for years. So, I took a deep breath and plunged into the Iliad. Fortunately, I’d listened to Elizabeth Vandivers’ “Great Courses” lectures last year and had a pretty good idea of its major themes. Still, it took perseverance to read the (sometimes) stiff language and to try and remember who was who.

I found it helpful to make a list of the central characters in the book so that I could disregard the dozens of other names mentioned. It was good to be able to recognize the main Trojans (Paris, Hector, Priam) and the main Greeks (Achilles, Meneleus, Agamemnon, and Petroclus). Unfortunately, many of them had more than one name! Even the gods changed names! (I had to abandon the audiobook and read a hard copy to keep everybody straight.) With that confusion cleared up, the story became much more engaging.   

The Iliad describes the final weeks of a ten-year battle between the Greeks and the Trojans over the beautiful Helen who had been taken from Meneleus, the Spartan king, by Paris, a Trojan prince.

I read W.H.D. Rouse’s (1938) prose translation. He created a very readable version, but I sometimes missed more robust language. Occasionally, I would take a peek at Alexender Pope’s more poetic version to meet that need. Rouse, in his attempt to put the poem in plain, modern English, sometimes surprised me with his rough language. Frequently he exchanged the more poetical “alas” for “damn it.” The schoolboys (for whom this translation was intended) must have chortled at the various swear words sprinkled throughout. 

But “plain, modern English” does not mean dumbed down. This was 1938, after all, when many people still had fairy tales and the King James Bible running around in their heads. That would have made this sentence from Book One seem strangely familiar: The king sent a dire pestilence on the camp and the people perished. Some phrases were downright brilliant such as when Agamemnon’s invincible hands were bedabbled in gore.

 A cursory reading of the story leaves you with the impression that this is a tale of men greedy for war and its spoils. But Homer had much more to say than that. The background is war, but the themes are of mortality and what makes life worth living. The ideas of honor and glory are central, but Vandiver makes it very clear that the Greek understanding of glory ("kleos") isn't just accolades for winning a battle.

In the introduction, Rouse writes, [To the Greeks,] life is lived and death is died according to a certain code of values: to be fully human (at least for a man) is to be a hero, to kill or be killed for honor and glory. Various characters grapple with this social code, especially Achilles and Hector.

I have more that I want to say about that, but it will have to wait for another post. This epic poem is definitely worth the effort. 

P.S. Vandiver's enthusiasm for her subject matter is quite contagious. Happily, her lectures are free as digital downloads from most libraries via Hoopla. 

Blessings,

Prophetic Words from John Buchan

John Buchan (1875-1940) was a politician and author who is most widely remembered for his Richard Hannay series of novels. In his autobiography, Memory Hold-the-Door, he takes a dim view of the future.

Writing in 1940, in the midst of WWII, he seems to be looking toward future generations and how they will be affected by modernism. He writes, My fear is not barbarism, which is civilization submerged or not yet born, but de-civilization, which is civilization gone rotten. (p. 146)

The world has become a huge, dapper, smooth-running mechanism. Is that the perfecting of civilization? Does it not rather mean de-civilization, a loss of the supreme value of life? In such a world everyone would have leisure. But everyone would be restless, for there would be no spiritual discipline in life.... Everybody would be comfortable, but since there could be no great demand for intellectual exertion, everybody would be slightly idiotic. Their shallow minds would be easily bored, and therefore unstable. Their life would be largely a quest for amusement. The vulgar existence led today by certain groups would become the normal existence of large sections of society. (p. 147)

Men would go everywhere and live nowhere; know everything and understand nothing. In the perpetual hurry of life there would be no chance of quiet for the soul. In the tumult of a jazz existence, what hope would there be for the still small voices of the prophets and philosophers and poets? (p. 148)

He certainly seems to be describing the 21st century!

Blessings,