[Poetry] We Must Fight To Run Away by Chester Hopewell

I like this book quite a bit.  I picked it up at the Decatur Book Festival emerging authors tent, and it is basically a chap book of poetry filled with several of the author's photographs.  Both are well done.  I read it twice over three weeks just so that I could feel I could do the poems justice and greatly absorb their meaning.

The primary theme of the poems is about life, love, existential existence and finding a sense of purpose in spite of ourselves.  At least, that's what I got out of it.  There are a great many balloons and other curious pictures that go well thematically with the rest of the chapbook.   I had a positive feeling when I read it the first time, and a feeling of greater introspective focus when I read it the second, and I'm glad I read it the second time, because I got more out of it. 

I would highly recommend this book.  It seems like an excellent thing to leave on a coffee table for your guest to read to entertain themselves while you are otherwise occupied around the house.  They are universal enough in their appeal that I think they could do well with most anyone.

[Movie] John Wick (Spoiler)

This movie was awesome but it is not for people who need the site "Does the Dog Die?" 

On the other hand, this movie is absolutely for people who do love movies about people who beat people who hurt animals to death.  John is a former mafia assassin (freelance) who has left the life behind for five years due to the love of a beautiful woman.
She ends up dying of cancer, which devastates John. But she knows John well enough to know he needs "something to love" or he will revert to his darker ways so she leaves him a puppy, which he embraces as her memory.  Unfortunately,  for many, a group of Russian thugs see his nice car, follow him home and steal the car, but they don't stop there and kill the puppy with a baseball bat, basically because they can.

When the thugs try to fence the car, the fence refuses to take it when he learns who owned it.   But the head of the thugs turns out to be the son of a powerful Russian Mafia figure. This leads to a conflict of two powerful forces, one deadly man with an indomitable will, and the other a vast criminal empire determined to keep the dog killing thug alive.

The moral clarity adds a bloody bright red light to what would otherwise be a nourish world of ten million shades of gray.  It is a fascinating world where a hotel provides neutral ground for professional assassins, with dire consequences for those who violate its sanctity.  It is a good action flick with good acting, a fabulous cast, and great visuals.  It ends well too.  I  highly recommend it.