What I Read and Watched in October 2025

One of the items on my schedule recently was to fly to Sri Lanka and speak at a few events planned by my sister who is a missionary there.

The 20-hour trip allowed me to watch more than my usual quota of movies so I was able to watch three that have been on my radar for a couple of years. "Sullivan's Travels" (1941) had come highly recommended by Anthony Esolen (in his monthly newsletter "Word and Song"). It managed to be quite funny while still addressing some serious issues. "The Miracle Club" (2023) is a story about four women who leave Dublin to go to Lourdes seeking healing for various maladies. Mostly, they just need healing for their brokenness. Will God grant a miracle? Or is it all false propaganda? The movie shows that there is more than one way to be cured. It was especially poignant for being Maggie Smith's last performance.

The final in-flight movie was "The Great Escaper" with Michael Caine, the true story of an 80-year-old WWII veteran who flees from his nursing home in England to attend D-Day celebrations in Normandy. Caine is brilliant in the role and I loved the conclusions made about the value of a life well-lived. (Please note that airplane movies are often edited to be more family friendly so I do not know if the original movies had bedroom scenes or heavy profanity.)

I was able to do quite a bit of reading during my travels and enjoyed two Ngaio Marsh titles: Surfeit of Lampreys (#10 in the Roderick Alleyn series) and Death and the Dancing Footmen (#11) both of which were excellent mysteries.

When I got back to Brazil, I read two books about WWII in the movies, and watched a film (on YouTube) from 1943 called "First Comes Courage" about a female spy in Norway. It had its cheesy moments, but it was VERY suspenseful.

I also enjoyed an abridged version of Emma, wonderfully narrated by Emma Thompson.

Finally, I had a glorious serendipitous moment this month. I've been reading three fables a week from Ovid's Metamorphoses. On a Monday I read the story of Pomona, a woman gardener who I had never heard of before (Book 14). On Tuesday, I was reading a Richard Crashaw poem about rotten apricots and he blames Pomona (!) 

Don't you just love the literary life?

Blessings,