Media Round Up: Finishing Things!
Dec. 22nd, 2020 09:50 amI finished a whole novel for the first time in months, and then I read another one! And two different TV series, one with R and one by myself! Plus many shorter things! So this media roundup is devoted to celebrating finishing.
Measuring Up written by Lily LaMotte, art by Ann Xu— What a great graphic novel! I read this in one sitting. It's about a girl who has just moved to Seattle from Taiwan and really misses her grandmother, so she enters a kids cooking contest to buy airline tickets so her grandma can visit. It’s just so warm and nice. The grandmother is adorable. There is lots of cooking and drawings of food.
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo— I loved this novella featuring tigers that can turn into women, riding mammoths, and people arguing about the correct way to tell a story. This the second book in a series but it would stand alone fine.
Phoenix Extravagantt by Yoon Ha Lee— This the first actual novel I’ve read in awhile. I liked it a lot! It’s got a nonbinary main character, who is and artist, and I liked how they where always thinking in terms of painting. It’s darker than almost everything I read this year with lots of war, imperialism, and some gore.
The Art of Saving the World by Corinne Duyvis— This was a fun YA novel featuring alternate reality versions of the main character and a dragon! Look, I read two entire novels!
Sleuth of Ming Dynasty, episodes 46-48 We finished! I still have qualms about the amount of torture and police brutality in this, as well as the portrayal of ethic minorities and disabled people, but I really loved the main characters, and all the food porn!
Division Bells by Iona Datt Sharma— a lovely m/m novella full of politics and people trying to make the world a better place. This technically counts as near future science fiction I guess, it's set in 2021, but that feels incidental. This is very much about the nitty gritty of British parliament about which I know very little, but it was explained in such a way that I could follow the plot regardless.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power Season 5 episodes 3-13 This was fun. I feel like I wasn’t as critically engaged as I wanted to be, but I enjoyed watching it. My favorite bits were Perfuma and Scropia. Perfuma is the princess I most identify with, and she was so badass, I loved it! I wished there was more of her. The ending was fine, I felt like it didn’t quite wrap things up thematically for me, and I'm a genre savvy viewer so I didn’t find it very suspenseful. Now I can stop trying (with mixed success) to dodge spoilers and talk to people about it.
Castle Charming and Castle Ever After by Tansy Rayner Roberts— This a fun collection of fairy tale inspired novellas, plus one standalone sequel. While each novella has its own story, the novellas are about the same characters and form one story. There are a couple of characters for a vaguely-Asian inspired kingdom, and that felt kind of surfacy. This has several queer romances, and lots of family drama which where both things I enjoyed about it. (content note: suicidal ideation, homophobia)
Measuring Up written by Lily LaMotte, art by Ann Xu— What a great graphic novel! I read this in one sitting. It's about a girl who has just moved to Seattle from Taiwan and really misses her grandmother, so she enters a kids cooking contest to buy airline tickets so her grandma can visit. It’s just so warm and nice. The grandmother is adorable. There is lots of cooking and drawings of food.
When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo— I loved this novella featuring tigers that can turn into women, riding mammoths, and people arguing about the correct way to tell a story. This the second book in a series but it would stand alone fine.
Phoenix Extravagantt by Yoon Ha Lee— This the first actual novel I’ve read in awhile. I liked it a lot! It’s got a nonbinary main character, who is and artist, and I liked how they where always thinking in terms of painting. It’s darker than almost everything I read this year with lots of war, imperialism, and some gore.
The Art of Saving the World by Corinne Duyvis— This was a fun YA novel featuring alternate reality versions of the main character and a dragon! Look, I read two entire novels!
Sleuth of Ming Dynasty, episodes 46-48 We finished! I still have qualms about the amount of torture and police brutality in this, as well as the portrayal of ethic minorities and disabled people, but I really loved the main characters, and all the food porn!
Division Bells by Iona Datt Sharma— a lovely m/m novella full of politics and people trying to make the world a better place. This technically counts as near future science fiction I guess, it's set in 2021, but that feels incidental. This is very much about the nitty gritty of British parliament about which I know very little, but it was explained in such a way that I could follow the plot regardless.
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power Season 5 episodes 3-13 This was fun. I feel like I wasn’t as critically engaged as I wanted to be, but I enjoyed watching it. My favorite bits were Perfuma and Scropia. Perfuma is the princess I most identify with, and she was so badass, I loved it! I wished there was more of her. The ending was fine, I felt like it didn’t quite wrap things up thematically for me, and I'm a genre savvy viewer so I didn’t find it very suspenseful. Now I can stop trying (with mixed success) to dodge spoilers and talk to people about it.
Castle Charming and Castle Ever After by Tansy Rayner Roberts— This a fun collection of fairy tale inspired novellas, plus one standalone sequel. While each novella has its own story, the novellas are about the same characters and form one story. There are a couple of characters for a vaguely-Asian inspired kingdom, and that felt kind of surfacy. This has several queer romances, and lots of family drama which where both things I enjoyed about it. (content note: suicidal ideation, homophobia)
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