J.L. Neyhart: What I'm Into (September 2017 Edition)

Read and Reading

I've been in a massive reading slump for the past few months... I don't like it. But I am getting back into the swing of things now with reading for classes. So here are the last two books I finished:

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, Science Fiction
5 of 5 stars

I love this book so much! It is especially fun to listen to Wil Wheaton read the audiobook. Is it fine literature? Of course not. But it is so much fun! This was my second time to read it and I'm fairly certain it won't be my last!

I'm also excited about the movie coming out next March!
Watch the movie trailer here.

The Circle by Dave Eggers
4 of 5 stars

This was an interesting experience for me because I watched the movie first and then I read the book. I was not expecting the ending of the book to be so different from the way the movie ended. I still enjoyed both the book and the movie. But I'm not sure if I enjoyed the book enough to want to read it again in the future.

What Is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything by Rob Bell

I am currently listening to Rob Bell read this audiobook which is a much more enjoyable experience for me than trying to read his books.

I do not like his
actual writing style.

Where there are breaks
all over the place.

Dramatic pauses.

And such.

But it works when he's the one reading it to me. Because it is a conversational style.

I am also reading the following books for my two seminary classes this semester:

Providence and the Problem of Evil by Richard Swinburne
The Problem of Evil: Selected Readings edited by Michael L. Peterson
The Problem of Evil edited by Marilyn McCord Adams and Robert Merrihew Adams
God's Universe by Owen Gingerich
Religion and Science by Ian G. Barbour
The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S. Collins
Science, Evolution, and Religion: A Debate about Atheism and Theism by Michael L Peterson

TV

With the revival of Will and Grace, I got curious and started watching from the beginning on Hulu, and I'm hooked! It's so funny! I made it through the first 16 episodes two weekends ago! And I finished season 1 and made it through the first 7 episodes of season 2 this past weekend. Of course I also had to watch some Boy Meets World, now that it is available on Hulu! I'm super pumped about that!!!

I'm also happy to have new episodes of This is Us and The Big Bang Theory. And I can already tell that I'm going to love Young Sheldon.

Movies

I've started using letterboxd.com to keep track of the movies I have watched. It's kind of like goodreads but for movies. Feel free to add me on there if you start using it. Here is a snapshot of what I watched in September:

I actually had the chance to see Beauty and the Beast (1991) in the theater with my friends Amber and Steve! That was really fun!

You can see all of the 2017 movies I've seen here.

Podcasts

I am terribly behind on my podcast listening, but I did recently listen to Michael Rosenbaum interview Tom Welling on his podcast: Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum. For those who don't know, Tom Welling played Clark Kent on one of my favorite TV shows of all time: Smallville. And Michael Rosenbaum played Lex Luthor.

"At last, Clark Kent and Lex Luthor are reunited – Tom and I spent ten years working together on Smallville – he’s like family. We reminisce about old days on the set together…how the cast all came together to get him a driver so he didn’t kill himself driving to set at 4:30am for an 18-hour day, the time I yelled at him when I was directing an episode, and how much we both enjoyed making out with Kristin Kreuk.

We also talk about his high school years, working construction, getting into modeling, and his career before Smallville, plus what it was like to marry and divorce at such a young age."

On the blog

On July 21 I published my first post in a series of posts ranking my favorite movies from each year. I started with the current year and worked my way backward to the 1950s. I landed on four basic categories for how I rank them:

Favorite Movies (definitely re-watchable)
Good-Decent Movies (might re-watch)
Meh (Probably wouldn't choose to re-watch)
Not worth the money/time (definitely don't want to re-watch)

I also put together a list of my top 100 favorite movies: My Favorite Movies. As of right now, this list is comprised of my favorite movies that have been released from 1970 to the present day. It is not a hard and fast numbering system as I love many of these movies almost equally. I plan to keep updating this list on an ongoing basis as I continue to look back at the movies released prior to 1970 and as I continue to watch movies I have not seen before.

2017 movie rankings
2016 movie rankings