Looking back at the third quarter of 2025

And so we bring a close to the third quarter of 2025 by taking a brief look back. In the grand scheme of things it was a fairly quiet quarter. Nothing stood out quite like the trip my father and I took to New Hampshire at the end of the previous quarter, though it often felt like we went there this quarter because I kept sorting through and processing photographs from the trip. My brother did take a long vacation to Prague this quarter, so I got to vicariously enjoy many aspects of that. What beautifully old architecture.

But enough talk. Continue scrolling below to look back at the third quarter of 2025.

Photography

The majority of the photography I’ve shared in blog posts this quarter has been from the trip my father and I made to New Hampshire in late June. Going through all those photographs and writing all the posts has been a great way to relive moments from those days. I hope you’ve enjoyed some of it, as well, especially because I still have more yet to share.

Below are the posts I published this quarter. Please take a look back at any you missed or would like to see again.

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Reading

Last quarter I mentioned my attempt to keep my reading a mix of classics and more recent works, as well as mixing in rereads from my youth. This quarter the oldest books I read were Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile from 1937, P.G. Wodehouse’s Quick Service from 1940 and I also finally read George Orwell’s 1984, from 1949, which certainly provides lots of food for thought. The most recent books I read were Alka Joshi’s Six Days in Bombay from this year (2025) and Michael Idov’s The Collaborators from 2024. I didn’t have any rereads this quarter.

I’m increasingly finding myself pulled back to classic fantasy series that came out in my youth, during the 70s and 80s. I suppose they could be considered comfort reads for me. This quarter I finally began Raymond Feist’s Riftwar Saga and regret having put it off so long. And I’ve been visiting used book stores lately trying to fill out a number of series I either began when younger or just never got around to. But I’ve also read more recent works, such as S.B. Divya’s Machinehood and P.W. Singer & August Cole’s Burn-In, both dealing with near future events related to artificial intelligence, robotics, and other technology-related topics. And though I didn’t finish any this quarter, I have been reading several non-fiction books on various topics.

Books read in the 3rd quarter of 2025 — The books I consumed this quarter (paper, ebook, and audio).

Here’s the full list of books read in the 2nd quarter of 2025: Thunderball by Ian Fleming (1961), 1984 by George Orwell (1949), Firefly: Big Damn Hero by James Lovegrove (2018), Six Days in Bombay by Alka Joshi (2025), Magician: Apprentice by Raymond Feist (1982), Magician: Master by Raymond Feist (1982), Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (1937), Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution by P.W. Singer & August Cole (2020), Machinehood by S.B. Divya (2021), Silverthorn by Raymond Feist (1985), The Collaborators by Michael Idov (2024), Quick Service by P.G. Wodehouse (1940).

And of those, my favorites were:

Magician: Apprentice by Raymond Feist

Magician: Master by Raymond Feist

Silverthorn by Raymond Feist

I’m grouping these three books together as they’re part of a series, and that series is part of a much larger series called The Riftwar Saga. I’ve been aware of Raymond Feist for a very long time, and my brother highly recommended his work, but until recently I’d just never gotten to them, perhaps because they’d grown into such a long series. But I’m so happy to finally have dived in. These are classic epic fantasy stories, the sort that I enjoy and that the 70s and 80s authors seemed to do so well. This series, at least so far, focuses on a rift between places and perhaps times that can interconnect different worlds. The first two books focus to a great degree on the development of Pug, who becomes a young apprentice and over the years grows into a master magician. The third book, Silverthorn, spends more time with other characters from the previous books on a personal quest by one of the princes to save his princess. I can’t wait to see where the series goes from here.

Quick Service by P.G. Wodehouse

This is my second time reading a P.G. Wodehouse comedy and I hope to read many more. Such a fantastically funny story full of interesting and lively characters and a plot that keeps weaving back and forth. Taking place in the English countryside not far from London there’s an interesting mix of aristocracy of various levels, staff of all sorts, business dealings, artwork and artistic appreciation/obsession, thievery, conniving, romance, the list goes on and on. I think I can consider Wodehouse a go-to author when I need something lighter and more comedic to brighten my mood. And Simon Vance is a go-to narrator for entertaining audiobooks.

Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution by P.W. Singer & August Cole

Burn-In is a science fiction story that takes place in the very near future, so to some extent perhaps it’s more thriller than science fiction. The authors chose to footnote their sources throughout the book, so though it’s fiction it almost has the feel of non-fiction because of the massive number of footnotes. They did their best to portray real technologies, in some cases extrapolating just a bit to where the technology may soon lead. None of it felt that far fetched, which I suppose is a scary thought. It felt like a book to get people thinking, to make them aware of what some potential futures might hold, perhaps to better help us try to find a decent path forward instead of one leading to more conflict and problems. But I also felt the story was well written enough that it kept me fully engaged from beginning to end.

1984 by George Orwell

This is one of those classics just about everyone has heard of and that many read in school. None of my classes ever included it, though, so it took me until now to give it a read, and I’m glad I finally did. Now I have a better context when folks reference it. It’s fascinating to look back at the state of the world when it was written in 1949 and ponder how that influenced Orwell in writing the story. And it’s equally interesting, and scary, to look at the state of the world today and ponder our potential futures. I feel similarly about this book as I did about some others I’ve read, such as Night by Elie Wiesel, The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, in that I can’t help but think it would be a better world if more people spent some time with these books.

Movies, Shows & Anime

Movies watched in the 3rd quarter of 2025 — Favorite, or notable, films I watched this quarter.

I watched a few more movies than I did last quarter. And though none of them really stood out as outstanding movies, I did enjoy them all and really enjoyed most of them.

I don’t think I can pick a favorite, but as a group I probably enjoyed the following the most:

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015): This was a great continuation of the series, and a great rejuvenation to it. Incredibly violent and full of action and destruction, but also enough storyline to weave it all together.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008): What can I say? I enjoy Indiana Jones stories, and I’d yet to see this one.
Love and Monsters (2020): A surprisingly entertaining, humorous, and quirky movie labelled as An Apocalyptic Love Story. I was pleasantly surprised by this one.
65 (2023): Another pleasant surprise with a very small cast, mostly just two people, about a pilot who leaves his wife and ill daughter to transport sleeping passengers across space but crash lands on a planet and must fight to survive. I think it’s better to go into this one blind, so I won’t say anything more, other than I ended up really enjoying it.

And the rest include:

Under the Mountain (2009) was an Australian film and a remake of a TV series from 1981 about a couple of twins who travel to Aukland to stay with relatives and end up meeting an interesting character played by Sam Neill and running afoul of an entire group of strangers. Probably geared more towards a younger crowd. I recall watching similar shows from Australia or New Zealand when a kid and really enjoying them.
Dawn of the Dragonslayer (2011) seemed to be a fairly low budget and very stereotypical fantasy movie about a kid whose father is killed by a dragon, setting him on a quest for revenge, who stumbled into love along the way. It felt like it was targeting young adults, perhaps in their early teens.
The Beekeeper (2024) is a stereotypical Jason Statham action film that weaves in the world of online scammers. It’s the sort of movie that plays on the desire to seek out and payback nefarious folks who so often seem beyond the law. But as we know if we’ve seen any Jason Statham films, no one is beyond him. I did enjoy elements of this one, though some parts required far more suspension of disbelief than usual.
Death on the Nile (2022) is Kenneth Branagh’s take of Agatha Christie’s classic novel. I had just read the book and so was very much looking forward to the movie, and perhaps that allowed me to set too high expectations that the movie just couldn’t deliver on. It was ok. But I wasn’t a fan of some of the directions they took the character(s), which just didn’t fit my view of them having read several of Christie’s Poirot books so far. Perhaps they’re drawing on elements from books I’ve yet to read, or perhaps they were just giving it the typical Hollywood veneer.

Music

I can’t think of much in the way of an introduction to the music I’ve been listening to this quarter, so I’ll just let the songs speak for themselves. I hope you find something below you might enjoy.

NANO / ナノ - Lost in Gray

My favorite song of the quarter is from a new artist to me that I stumbled upon at some point and haven’t been able to put aside since. NANO in English, ナノ in Japanese, she’s an artist from Japan who appears to have been creating and performing music for many years, though I know next to nothing about her.

Dream Theater - Bend The Clock

Dream Theater has been one of my favorite bands since I first began listening to them with the release of their album, Images and Words in 1992. They’re known for their progressive metal and this particular song does showcase some of that though it’s on the softer side of their work. It’s from their latest album, Parasomnia, released earlier this year.

Lord of the Lost x Within Temptation - Light Can Only Shine in the Darkness

I’ve been listening to Within Temptation for a few years now and have been meaning to feature them here for some time. They recently collaborated with Lord of the Lost, a group I’m much less familiar with, but I thoroughly enjoy what they’ve created.

Feuerschwanz - Sam the Brave

Being a big fan of The Lord Of the Rings (books and movies) I have to highlight this tribute to Sam, a key character in the story, though one sometimes overlooked. I love how the vocals rotate between German and English.

Life

Well, it’s been another quarter. I’ve spent some of it looking back and appreciating the vacation my father and I had late last quarter. I’ve enjoyed hearing about and seeing photos from my brother’s vacation this quarter. Mid-quarter was two years since my mother died and I think my rhythm is still a little unsettled. I’ve done such a poor job responding to blog comments since that time period.

My father and I made a couple runs to a local farm and filled several five-dozen bags with freshly harvested ears of corn. Fresh corn can taste so good, and I learned how to cook it in my air fryer instead of boiling. I also realized we’re back into apple season, so we’ll have to start keeping our eyes open for interesting less-common apple species at the various farm markets and stores we frequent.

I’ve continued enjoying my explorations into the wide world of home brewed coffee. At one point I really wanted my own espresso maker, and though I may still one day get one I’m less drawn by it now. Instead, I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my very simple Hario V60 pour over brewers and beans from local roasters that are more in the light to medium roast range than the darker beans I’d once been more drawn to. I tried a very nice light roast Brazil Cerrado Natural from Battlefield Coffee in Fredericksburg, Virginia, that said it had notes of almond, dark chocolate, walnut and hints of cocoa. I’ve only begun to actually detect these sorts of notes in coffee, perhaps because I’m slowly developing my taste buds or perhaps only for specific beans. I definitely tasted the notes of dark chocolate and cocoa.

This quarter my brother brought back some beans from Alo Village in Ethiopia using the natural process and roasted by mazelab coffee in Prague, Czechia. They were the lightest roasted beans I’ve tried, and the hardest to grind, and created the most interesting tea-like coffee I’ve ever tasted with some very distinct berry and floral flavors. The packaging says they have notes of black berry, red berry, peach and purple flower, and I very distinctly tasted berries and flowers. And I quite enjoyed it.

I also purchased some beans from Aperture Coffee Roasters in Woodstock, Virginia, that they sourced from Columbia and that used an anaerobic process that are described as having notes of milkshake, banana, guava and wine. I received them two days after they were roasted and decided to try them right away instead of waiting for them to rest a while. The aroma was very strongly fruity, quite fascinating for someone more used to the earthier aromas of other beans. And one of the benefits (though sometimes a curse) of having a long beard is that these types of aromas tend to absorb into the beard so I can continue smelling them for some time. I could taste the notes of guava. I’m curious to see how or if the flavor shifts over the coming days. I love trying these very different beans.

So you can see it’s mostly smaller, simpler things that have brought me enjoyment this and most quarters. Making photographs. Reading. Listening to music. Spending time with family. Brewing and tasting interesting coffee sourced from all over the world. And those things may shift this way or that way over time but they eventually tend to return to center.

What about you? What do you find brings most of your enjoyment throughout each quarter? Does it vary quite a bit? Or is it a pretty small range of things?

Thanks much for reading. I hope your quarter has gone well, and I hope you have a great final quarter of the year.

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