My 2025 Books and Movies

In 2025, I read 21 books (LibraryThing) and watched 83 movies (Letterboxd) (15 were rewatches).

My favorite book: The Human Stain (Philip Roth). I loved the sinister ending of this book, and the constant deception of the main character hiding his dreaded secret. The book's imagery was potent to me, its characters alluringly abhorrent. I have read Roth's "American Pastoral", so I only need to read "I Marred a Communist" to complete his so-called American Trilogy. I sense a reading goal forming! Other remarkable books I read last year: "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands" (Kate Beaton), "The Stranger in the Woods" (Michael Finkel).

My favorite movie: "Chinatown". This is a no-nonsense noir with a chilling finale. Jack Nicholson was savvy as the hard-boiled detective. This movie was released in 1974 and I wonder how this might work today. I hope some screenwriter is trying hard to adapt it for our modern times. I want to see a modern audience truly sickened! Other incredible movies I watched last year: "Past Lives", and "Phantom Thread".

Books from 2025

My Book's Anniversary

Earlier in the year, I experienced a remarkable moment. I was in the library, browsing computer books when to my great delight I saw the book I wrote on the shelf! It was a momentous occasion for me.

Ten years ago to the month my book was published and sent out into the world. It's okay if you missed it. It is a technical book, and it's for a technical audience. Still, I'm proud of it, and back then I thought the publisher would distribute the book to every bookstore and library.

I spent several months of 2015 and 2016 looking for my book among the new computer books in every random bookstore and library. I never spotted it. I knew people were buying it, because after a few months I began to receive very modest royalty checks. But I longed to see it on the shelves.

Eventually I stopped looking for it. The royalty checks were enough evidence, I suppose. And I am grateful for the money from the book (though it's only a fraction of my current salary). An author I know told me that the secret to making real money with books is to write more than one!

At the library, I pulled down my book and leafed through it. The technology in the book is something I use every day, and I know it much better now than ten years ago. The book is aimed for beginners, and I wonder if I could write for them now like I did back then.

I didn't spend much time with the book. There's only one section I reread, and that's the acknowledgements. I go right to the last paragraph where I thank my wife and daughter for their patience and love during the year I spent working on it. I would certainly write them in now like I did in 2015.

My 2024 Books and Movies

In 2024, I read 24 books (LibraryThing) and watched 48 movies (Letterboxd) (11 were rewatches).

My favorite book: The Age of Innocence. I still have not rewatched the movie, which my memory holds in high esteem, but the book is so evocative of the time (the gilded age of the 1870s) and the feelings. The Countess Elena Olenska and gentleman lawyer Newland Archer are such memorable characters. The book also includes a brief stop in Jersey City, which amazed me to see. Other favorites from last year: The Tetris Effect and American Prometheus.

My favorite movie: Mars Express. Sci-fi animation from France. Robots. Mars. And a hard-nosed detective. It's emotional, complex, and dense. Everything I like in a movie. Highly recommend this beauty. Other notable watches from last year: Flow and All That Jazz.

Some movies I watched from 2024

My 2023 Books and Movies

In 2023, I read 25 books (LibraryThing) and watched 66 movies (Letterboxd) (24 were rewatches).

My favorite book: Solito. I won't ever forget the gentle bravery of the little boy in this immigration story. Another favorite that I read in that same month was Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Its maximalist style jumps off the page and I greatly enjoyed it.

My favorite movie: The Holdovers. I so loved the sweet sadness of this movie. The fact that some of the movie takes in place in Boston only adds to it. Other new movies from last year that I liked: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,  and No Hard Feelings.

Some books I read in 2023

My 2022 Books and Movies

In 2022, I read 28 books (Goodreads) and watched 91 movies (Letterboxd).

My book reading story for 2022 can be summed up in one title: Infinite Jest. It consumed a month and a half of evenings, and even now I'm still thinking about certain scenes and moments. When I look at the other books I read from last year, the two I would highly recommend are The Descendants (Kaui Hart Hemmings) and Life in Code (Ellen Ullman). I also am grateful to discovered The Gray Man thriller series.

For movie watching in 2022, the thing that stands out to me is that I rewatched more movies. In 2022, 29 movies were rewatches. Some I have just recently seen (Margin Call, Green Room), but others were from further back (Marathon Man, The Black Hole). I will try to put together a list of "reliable rewatches" inspired by The Rewatchables podcast. Of the new movies I watched, I most especially recommend "Stillwater" and "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent".

Some 2022 movies (Letterboxd)

Review: Life in Code

I finished Ellen Ullman's book "Life in Code" (2017) last week. It's a marvelous collection of essays primarily concerned with computer programming. Her essays touch on the actual act of programming, but also the impetus of coding: what motivated her to want to learn to program a computer? She also tackles hoary subjects like computer privacy, the gentrification of San Francisco and artificial intellegence. Despite the title, the book is very accessible.

Ms Ullman explains her compulsion for coding by relaying her experiences with the Sony Portapak. As a college student, she reveled in the Portapak's utility as a video recorder. Released in 1967, the Portapak's size and cost instantly made video production easier and more accessible for the masses. She became an expert in how to use this machine to its fullest. She saw it as analogous to the appearance of the personal computer: a revolution in the old world order.

"I learned I had no fear of machines," she declared. Her ability to engage with the Portapak propelled her past videography and directly into a purchase of the TRS-80, an early personal computer. From this, she leapt into a computer career that spanned twenty years. She speaks fondly of her computers as "fine machines." She reminisces about talking her way into computer jobs, but she proved a durable ability to work on and solve computer problems.

She comments on the taciturn qualities exhibited by most programmers. "People imagine that programmers don't like to talk because they prefer machines to people. This is not completely true. Programmers don't talk because they must not be interrupted." She accurately distinguishes between low-level programmers versus high-level programmers. ("High is bad. If you want any money and prestige, you need to write code that only machines or other programmers understand.")

She knocks down the common analogy that computer algorithms are like cookbook recipes. Nothing could be further from the truth and she makes compelling cases for her argument. "For example, try to think of everything you know about something as simple as an invoice. Now try to tell an alien how to prepare one. That is programming." She imagines a hypothetical robot being asked to follow a recipe, and she wondered how we humans would translate for its computer mind the instructions "[sauté] quickly to a nice brown outside and a rosy center."

I read this book as an audio book while driving to and from New Jersey (from Boston). Ms Ullman was the narrator. Her voice over my car speakers made the book more personal. As she read her passages about the challenges of a varied programming career, she wove in stories of love, loneliness, her old cat and (yes) making dinner. I marveled at how seamlessly she brought in these subjects. Her writing is exquisite: refined, direct, yet evocative. I highly recommend "Life in Code" and I look forward to reading it again!

 

My 2021 Books and Movies

In 2021, I watched 60 movies (Letterboxd) and 43 books (Goodreads).

My favorite book from last year was The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, by Ken Liu. This book is a collection of short stories, including "The Paper Menagerie" which won both the Hugo Award (2012), and the Nebula Award (2011) for best short story. The stories featured mind bending ideas and intense flights of fantasy that were dazzling to hold in my imagination. Honorary mentions: "Sapiens" (Yuval Noah Harari), "Klara and the Sun" (Kazuo Ishiguro), "(Re)born in the USA" (Roger Bennett).

When I look at all the movies I rated as perfect last year, six were movies I had seen before. Of the remaining five, I most enjoyed Netflix's "Don't Look Up". I liked subdued and meek Leo DiCaprio, and over-the-top Jonah Hill.

(detail of Paper Menagerie book cover; design by Michael McCartney)

 

Some Quotes I Liked

I sometimes write down quotes from books that I read. I type these into a computer file, then forget about this file, then find it again, surprising myself. Of late I will take pictures from a page or two of a physical book, so I can capture something I liked.

Here's a few:

The Three Body Problem, Liu Cixin. "The long years has ground away all the hardness and fierceness in their personalities, until all that was left was a gentleness like that of water."

Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison. "What and how much had I lost by trying to do only what was expected of me instead of what I myself had wished to do?"

Killing Commendatore, Haruki Murakami. "No matter how vivid a memory, the power of time is stronger."

When We Were Orphans, Kazuo Ishiguro. "It is hellish enough moving about the warren in daylight. At night, it will be like drifting through one's worst nightmares."

Wall of Books, by Mr T in DC

 

My 2020 Books and Movies

In 2020, I watched 48 movies (Letterboxd) and 18 books (Goodreads).

My favorite book last year was Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel (2014). It's about the world after a deadly virus wipes out nearly all of the population. How does a society survive? How does a society rebuild? A fitting fiction for 2020. Also check out: The Three-Body Problem.

My favorite movie last year was American Sniper, starring Bradley Cooper and directed by Clint Eastwood (2014). This is a modern war movie with high patriotism on display, but Cooper's powerful and poignant depiction of Chris Kyle sends it to the top for me. Also check out: Safety Not Guaranteed.

My 2019 Books and Movies

In 2019, I finished 17 books and 70 movies.

My favorite fiction from the past year: The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen) and The Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead). Both were vivid and dramatic, and I loved them, and I highly recommend them both.

My favorite non-fiction: Guns, Germs and Steel. I'm coming late to this book by Jared Diamond. I remember a co-worker reading this in the mid 1990s, and I had put it on my radar back then. I managed to finish it last year as an audio book, but the material was so compelling I bought a used copy. This is a sweeping book about the key drivers behind the formation of modern societies.

For the movies, my favorite by far was Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Humor, emotion, music, and amazing action. But a close second was Incendies, a story that rocked me just like it did the children depicted in this brooding movie about family and history.

Review: The Sympathizer

Viet Thanh Nguyen's 2015 novel The Sympathizer won The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2016. It is a remarkable mix of historical fiction and thriller, with elements of "fish out of water" comedy and romantic comedy thrown in. It's the story of a Vietnamese double-agent, his voyage out of Saigon to America, and his dangerous spy work embedded in a sleeper cell. The novel explores the consequences of his choices as he tries to maintain his identity, in more ways than one.

The book examines many aspects of the immigrant experience as the protagonist settles into his enforced American life. He's been to America before. "If an American closed his eyes to hear me speak, he would think I was one of his kind," he says. But as the novel progresses, he's tormented by his outsider identity, both as a spy and as a refugee living in a culture that he admires and despises.

There are parts of the novel that smartly satirizes America's own tendency for scrubbing away the cultural influences for entertainment purposes. "You didn't even get the screams right," our hero complains to an American movie director. There are also moments of sheer terror, especially in the later chapters, when you fear not only for our hero's life, but your own sanity as Mr. Nguyen vividly renders pain and suffering with frightening precision ("Interrogation is about the mind first, the body second," a character explains).

I came to his novel by way of his New York Times op-ed piece titled "Why We Struggle to Say I Love You". In that op-ed piece, he analyzes the difficulty most Asian-American children have in saying "I Love You" to their parents. His piece greatly touched me, and I sought out more of his writing. I was not disappointed.

My 2018 Books and Movies

In 2018, I finished 31 books and watched 79 movies.

My favorite fiction book from last year was Fatherland, by Robert Harris. It's crime-fiction set in a Germany that won World War II. I enjoyed the pace and the voice of the detective protagonist, Xavier March. Other favorites deserving mention: Bruno, Chief of Police, by Martin Walker and Signs Preceding the End of the World, by Yuri Herrera.

For non-fiction, I very much liked Skyfaring, by Mark Vanhoenacker, and Dreamland, by Sam Quinones. Skyfaring is a soaring, evocative meditation about air travel by a commercial pilot. Dreamland is a deep look at the heroin crisis in the United States.

79 movies is a lot for me. For whatever reason I dug deep into Netflix and Amazon Prime Movies from November onwards. From the movies I rated a 10 the standouts I recommend: Get Out (2017), Her (2013), and What Happened to Monday (2017).

Ulysses Reading Diary

Over the long weekend I put together a small web page of diary entries I made while reading Ulysses, by James Joyce. It took me almost three years to finish this masterwork of literature (2009-2012). From my records on LibraryThing, I learned that I also finished reading 100 other books while I made my way slowly through Ulysses.

I look back with satisfaction. Reading Ulysses was one of my bucket list books. I wish I had made more diary entries, because as I think back on the book now, each chapter was a unique challenge, and it would have been good to record how I tackled them. (My main advice: buy a study guide!)

For the literary inclined, visit my Ulysses reading diary at:

http://www.rickumali.com/reads/ulysses/

A Book Update

My short e-book, I Couldn't Keep It To a Tweet, has been purchased exactly seven times since its publication in September 2017.

I remember an interview I heard with the singer/songwriter John Oates (of Hall and Oates fame). He was promoting a solo album (1000 Miles of Life, 2008). He said he'd be happy to sell 10,000 copies of this album. Only 10,000? This is one half of Hall and Oates! You'd think 10,000 is what he could sell in its first week!

His perhaps realistic expectations help me with mine. I certainly didn't expect to sell 10,000 copies of my little book. But since my computer book has sold over 2,500 paid units since 2015 (both physical and ebooks), I figured 100 would be a reasonable sales number for my little memoir. Given that 7 is a long way from a 100, I think I'll just lower my expectations. Or maybe I should start advertising.

My 2017 Books and Movies

In 2017, I finished 26 books (see my profile on Goodreads).

I finished some terrific books, including Chaos Monkeys (Antonio García Martínez), The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead) and What Happened (Hillary Clinton).

My favorite non-fiction book read in 2017 was Héctor Tobar's Deep Down Dark, the accounting of the 33 Chilean miners who got trapped in a deep mine. Tobar moves easily between the work underground and the work above-ground to get everyone out safely. He heightens what is a simple rescue mission story into a moving meditation on work, love, faith, and hope.

My favorite fiction book read in 2017 was 4 3 2 1, by Paul Auster. Like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, it's a coming of age book, but in Auster's hands it's a literary magic trick. The novel watches the growth of a boy into a young man, but Auster examines this life four ways, each life affected by different events and choices. Superb!

I watched 39 movies (see the list on my IMDb). My favorite from last year was Blade Runner 2049, a sequel that perfectly complements the first Blade Runner (released in 1982). The ideas, the cinematography, and the story are just perfect. I also liked and highly recommend Baby Driver (2017) and True Grit (2010).

Review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

I opined to my wife that it would be impossible to pick a favorite fiction book, because there are so many genres and so many great works. She disagreed. "I have an all-time favorite novel: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn". I was surprised at her certainty and set out to read the book.

Francie Nolan is the main character of this novel that takes place in the years before the US entered  World War I. Francie is 11 years old when the book opens, and her precocious observations and sharp insights about Brooklyn and its people propel the book. She is both nostalgic and unsympathetic. As she grows older and sees more how the world works, she matures before your eyes. She is 16 at the end of the book, and you realize you've grown up with her.

The book is populated with her first-generation American family: a hard working mother, a lovable lout of a father, and a rambunctious younger brother. She has two aunts that add a lot of zest in her life. Everyone is poor in her part of Brooklyn, yet she has rich experiences because of her keen eye and imagination. So many vivid scenes from this book: her grandmother getting swindled out of her savings, her father's constant singing, getting vaccinated for school, the time she and her brother caught a large Christmas tree for the holidays.

The book brims with universal emotion and experiences. She feels loneliness as she longs for someone to understand her. She rebels against her mother as she starts to spread her wings. She takes bold steps to further herself and her family and you cheer. There is deceit and heartbreak, humor and truth, life and death.

"I'm in awe of this book," I told my wife, when I finished. It's a book about "what it means to be human", writes Anna Quindlen in the introduction of my edition. By the end, I could only wipe away my tears and agree.

I Couldn't Keep It To A Tweet

I'm planning to self-publish a small collection of my best BLOG posts. The title of this will be "I Couldn't Keep It To A Tweet".

I've been writing in my BLOG since 2001. There are almost 800 published posts, though the bulk of the entries were written before 2012. (Also, over a 100 were just the length of a tweet.) Since 2012, I've committed to writing once a month. At some point I went through all of my posts and identified about 40 memorable entries.

The posts in this book are the ones I like reread every now and again. They're about people or moments or aspects about myself I like to share. There's stuff about work, music, movies and sports as well. Each post will also contain a short note, an afterword if you will. (You can read these posts, by accessing the "My Best" tag, but the notes are exclusive to the book.)

This is most certainly a vanity project, the kind that today's electronic publishing world allows you to do. If you haven't bought my computer book, then I hope you'll consider buying this one! Look for it on Labor Day weekend.

Review: Evicted

"Evicted" (Matthew Desmond) is one of those books that I will be thinking about for a long time. The book documents the numerous evictions that eight families endured in the poorer sections of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The book describes the landlords who hold the fate of these families in their hands. The book details the toll of these evictions. The narrative was dizzying, sympathetic and exasperating but ultimately illuminating.  Matt's dispassionate third-person prose renders difficult scenes for what they are: someone's reality.

The book is liberally sprinkled with footnotes, some quite lengthy. Mr. Desmond reveals further details in these footnotes. These end pages document the meticulous research he conducted in order to cite terrible statistics. For example: 1 in 5 of all renting families in the country spends half of its income on housing. Also: Between 2009 and 2011, more than 1 in 8 Milwaukee renters experienced a forced move. The idea of a rational choices goes out the door when your rent only leaves you with $80 the rest of the month.

The book moved me by reminding me of something that I know I took for granted: a person can go far in life if their home is secure and stable. If the home is not secure or not stable, a tremendous amount of energy is wasted getting into a new home, or suffering without. Some of the people in the book find themselves moving every few months, because landlords have a low tolerance for missed rent or police activity at their properties. In between each move, renters have to find their next place, store their belongings, and maintain their jobs. Things can get desperate quickly.

Many will decry some of the renters' behavior: spending your monthly food stamp allowance on a single meal of lobster tails, falling off a hard-fought sobriety because of boredom, willfully neglecting repairs to "get back" at a landlord, stealing electricity, etc. But "humans act brutally under brutal conditions." And the conditions are brutal. "The first rule of evictions," says a sheriff charged with policing evictions: "Never open the fridge." One family managed a malfunctioning toilet by placing soiled tissues in a plastic bag to be tossed with the trash.

The book prescribes a way out: allow the housing voucher program to expand. "What we need most is a housing program for the unlucky majority-the millions of poor families struggling unassisted in the private market-that promotes the values most of us support; security, fairness, and equal opportunity." Expanding the voucher program seems straightforward, despite its cost. His case is very persuasive however, and the evidence seems to back him up.

Mr. Desmond doesn't reveal himself until the very end, in a short chapter describing his project. He describes his work as an ethnography. It's "what you do when you try to understand people by allowing their lives to mold your own as fully and genuinely as possible." His detachment allows us to see for ourselves what a sorry state the whole private housing market can get to. This is one of the great problems in the United States, and Mr. Desmond's book is a highly accessible study that will help all of us understand it better.

My 2016 Books and Movies

In 2016, I finished reading 26 books. The list is on Goodreads.

I didn't finish a book in December, which surprises me, and as I write this, I'm probably not going to finish reading a book by the end of January either (I'm currently reading Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco). I'll make it up in the Summer.

My favorite books from last year include The Big Short (Michael Lewis), The Orphan Master's Son (Adam Johnson) and The Call of the Wild (Jack London).

Of all the ones I read, I most recommend The Boys on the Boat (Daniel James Brown). The story behind the University of Washington's crew team in 1936 explored depression-era poverty, and the power of eight men pulling a boat in perfect harmony.

I watched 15 movies in 2016. The list is on IMDb. I recommend Spotlight and Arrival. I was enthralled with Rogue One. I shouldn't have been surprised by the emotion I felt in the closing minutes of that movie, but I was.

Review: A Rock Star's Autobiography

Over vacation, I finished Joe Perry's autobiography Rocks: My Life In and Out of Aerosmith. I remember seeing Joe Perry on a news clip a few years ago. This aging guitar god was talking about living in Vermont, and I remember being surprised at the time: he lives in Vermont?

Then a few months ago there was a lengthy and detailed article about the Run-DMC song "Walk This Way" (by Geoff Edgers for the Washington Post, May 18). In addition to the oral history recollections from people involved in that classic song, there was also video of Joe Perry playing that signature riff in a crowded studio.

In Joe Perry's book, I learned all this and more about this rock group's humble beginnings, their long road to success, their swift fall from the top, and their rebirth after getting clean. There's lots of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll in the pages of this enjoyable book (co-written with David Ritz), but there's also a lot of love, heartache and redemption as well.

Joe grew up in Massachusetts and spent summer vacations in Vermont. He was not a good student, which left him and his parents disappointed. He originally wanted to be a marine biologist, but the thought of going to college was painful to him. His remaining ambition was to learn to play the electric guitar, and in this endeavor he completely succeeded.

I enjoyed reading was how hard working Aerosmith was at the very start of their career. In the early 1970s, they played in high school and college parties, before they began playing at clubs, theaters and eventually arenas. Joe's difficult relationship with front-man Steve Tyler is captured throughout the book as well. The band's difficulty with managers is also described. Being a world-renowned rock band is not all glitz and glamor. Success is hard-won and easily lost.

I really liked this book. It would probably help to listen to some of their music before reading this book, but chances are you've heard their signature riffs (Walk This Way, Sweet Emotion, Same Old Song and Dance, Dude Looks Like a Lady). That lead guitar talking to you is Joe Perry's, and his biography is a study in being steadfast, persistent, and passionate.