January Recap

[sleepypapercrowns]

January has been three years long and yet nothing happened! Let’s do a recap.

Shows

Destined With You (2023, romance/kdrama)
On the surface this is about a guy who accidentally drinks a love potion and becomes more than pathetic for our main girl and I absolutely loved that. Of course there needs to be some kind of absolutely whack storyline with a land ownership dispute, an annoying ex and a crazy shaman! Also murder. It was kind of a lot, but I still had a good time. Also watch this if you want Rowoon’s beautiful face on your screen. (If you want to be warned about the point where it suddenly got scary as shit: text me, lol)

Percy Jackson & the Olympians (2024, fantasy)
All in all this was a very charming adaptation of the first Percy Jackson book. I had some issues with things that were changed, especially because I read the book right before, but I was still able to enjoy it!

White Collar (2009, crime/drama)
This got recommended to me by my coworker K and even though I didn’t really get it in the first couple of episodes, I am now all in! I’m already onto season 2 and often watch it at the same time as K so we can text about it. This has genuinely been a highlight after work these past few weeks. Also: you cannot tell me there is no romantic tension between Peter and Neal. Thank god for fanfic.

Movies

The Boy and the Heron (2023, fantasy/adventure)
To watch a Ghibli movie in the cinema was such a special feeling!! I could simply watch this movie for the lovely animation style again and again (and I have already done so with a friend). This was weird! And cute! And heartfelt! I just love Ghibli movies.

Perfect Days (2023, drama/narrative)
I usually just google the movies I watch and use the category it tells me but narrative? Aren’t all movies narrative in some way? Fascinating. Anyways, this was another lovely slow movie that looks at the day to day life of a Japanese man who is cleaning toilets. The first thirty minutes felt like a documentary on the architecture of said toilets, but it also goes into a couple different relationships in his life. I liked it!

Turning Red (2022, comedy/fantasy)
A classic coming of age movie about breaking away from the expectations of your parents but this one includes red panda shape shifters. Again, this one had a lovely animation style and it was a charming watch.

I have noticed that I don’t have a good way to talk about movies because I don’t have strong opinions on most of them? I don’t know if that’s a bad thing or if it’s even necessary to have a solid opinion on books all of the time? Alas, I want to keep this part of my recap simply for the data collection, but I might switch the order of these things to put books in the front since they are my main focus.

Books

First, let’s do an update on my unhinged tbr since the last time we spoke! I have:
- read five books
- unhauled three
- bought two new ones
- got one for christmas
Anyways the current state of the tbr is 28 books which I am already much happier with!

Lights by Brenna Thummler (2023, graphic novel)
This is the final graphic novel in a trilogy which is about a young girl who lost her mom and took over most of the work in the family owned laundromat and her ghost friend. This one shows the backstory of said ghost friend and was a good ending to the series but it didn’t stay with me as much as I wanted it to.

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske (2022, fantasy/historical/queer romance/mystery)
The last binding trilogy!!! It has my whole heart right now (I just read the last one too). Do you want sapphic love, magic, ghosts, mystery, found family, a horde of animals and all that on a cruise ship? Yes, the answer is yes. I loved this little heist crew SO much. Although if you want to read this trilogy, you should probably start with A Marvellous Light for the general world building and storyline. It’s worth it, trust me. Trust me!!!

Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (2005, middle grade/fantasy)
I am not going to lie to you, I brought these books again because they came out with banger new covers with neon coloured spines. I did not read these as a child but listened to the audiobooks when I moved out for university and totally remember nothing at all. I am not much of a re-reader but this was like reading it again for the first time and I had a good one! I didn’t know this dealt so heavily with ADHD and I loved seeing that representation turned into something empowering!

100 Queer Poems edited by Andrew McMillan & Mary Jean Chan (2022, poetry)
I…did not vibe with this collection and I don’t even know why! There was not even one poem that completely floored me and that’s what I want from my poetry. I just felt lost because even though the poems are separated into categories, I didn’t get the connection at all. This was a huge disappointment, sadly.

Fic

- World Tour by cherryfeather (White Collar, Peter/Elizabeth/Neal)
- today seems to be the last day by monster_bookworm (bts/svt, jungkook/minghao )
- soaked in your love by zyr (zb1/onepact, jiwoong/jongwoo)
- Another door slightly ajar by spacewitchbot (le sserafim, yunjin/chaewon)

Comments

[littlerhymes]

You did such good work on your TBR list! That is a pity about the poetry collection though...

I don't think it is 'necessary' to have strong opinions - maybe it's just nice to keep a running list of what you have watched/read and a general vibe about how you liked it! Memory is so fallible so having a list is good, I love being able to look back and see if I read something and when.

If you did want to keep more detailed notes I think it's helpful to read professional reviews and listen to good podcasts - not to necessarily have your opinions shaped by theirs, but I like seeing what aspects of movies/tvs they draw out and what vocabulary they use to describe what exactly made me think a thing was good or bad.

[poppyseedheart]

I loved White Collar when I watched it! Years ago now, but this is making me want to revisit it (or maybe just visit some fic about it...) because I remember how much fun I had with the dynamics and the heisting and the characters themselves.

I've loved how much the FC server has been loving the Freya Marske books! I bounced off of A Marvellous Light a bit (I enjoyed it but didn't feel compelled to keep going in the series) but the general excitement and enthusiasm has made me really smile. It's so fun to have that in community with people. I've been reading a lot of litfic and nonfiction lately which I've really liked but I do want to jump back into a beloved series or standalone fantasy soon too so I can rejoin wider conversations about books with fannish people, who I find as a whole tend to be more fannish about SFF properties (which makes total sense).

[sleepypapercrowns]

You're totally right! I really haven't been engaging with any media about movies/tv shows really, because I wasn't interested in it at all. I have started to listen to a German podcast which has been really interesting. They notice and speak about things that I have never thought about before. If you have any recommendations I'd love to hear about that too!

[sleepypapercrowns]

I am soooo feral about White Collar at the moment!! I am holding out on much of the fic because I am scared to be spoiled, but the one I linked in my post I enjoyed immensively.

I totally admire how widely you read but have noticed for myself that I am just happiest with SFF and while it does make sense to branch out once in a while I just want to keep reading rad sci-fi at the moment!! (I am still thinking about A Memory Called Empire!)

[littlerhymes]

As I was starting to think "what can I rec" I realised I'm like - so out of touch with movie blogging lol I used to follow lots of movie bloggers really closely but a lot of my old faves are gone now. There was also a really fun active twitter scene but well you know what happened next.

I do still listen to The Filmcast every week for movie news and reviews, they're a bit bro-y and action-focused more than my taste but they do watch a lot of smaller movies too. Other podcasts I hear people rec a lot include How Did This Get Made, Blank Check,
and Filmspotting.

A couple of my old favourite blogs were The Film Experience and My New Plaid Pants which cover movies old and new with a lot of humour and a lot of insight into awards, they also have a more acting focused and actor focused POV.

I also like critics like Justin Chang, Angie Han, Stephanie Zacharek. Recently this piece by Walter Chaw on Everything Everywhere All At Once was so powerful. Roxana Hadidi on Romo + Juliet was so good. Both of those are great writers too.

[sleepypapercrowns]

Wow thank you for all these recs!! I’ll be sure to check them out. It’s sometimes hard to judge whether you like a podcast or not if you (= I) have not seen any of the movies but now I am glad that I just watched Dune because they all have episodes about it. 😂

[poppyseedheart]

A Memory Called Empire really is The book ever. I was thinking about rereading those recently actually! Oh to feel what I felt the first time I read them... Arkady Martine the author that you are...