Media Round Up: Last Reads of 2023

Somehow it's almost the end of January and I never posted these thoughts about things I read at the end of 2023. So I thought I should post them now, before it gets even more embarrassing. (I have finished exact one book so far this year, but I’m saving it for the next media round up)

Hockey Girl Loves Drama Boy by Faith Erin Hicks— What it say on the tin, a cute YA graphic novel

Squire & Knight by Scott Chantler— Another graphic novel – this one middle grade, about a clever squire and his brash Knight

Catch These Hands!, Vol. 1-4 by Murata— A fun f/f romance about two young women who used to be high school delinquents. The library ended up giving the last volume several weeks after the 1st three volumes which didn’t lead to the ideal reading experience.

Shifting Stories: History, Gossip, and Lore in Narratives from Tang Dynasty China by Sarah M. Allen— This is a really cool look at the social context of Tang tales. Allen uses tales for which multiple versions survive to talk about how these stories circulated and changed. Allen discusses how writers and readers of Tang tales were super informal about authorship. Basically they treat a story as information not as Crafted work (aka authored text) so they were always reworking things and not necessarily attributing them
Which is super interesting and fun to compare and contrast with modern fanfic culture!

Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam by Thien Pham— This was very good! It’s mostly a memoir of Pham’s family leaving Vietnam and getting settled in the US, but there's one chapter set when he’s in high school and one chapter when he’s an adult. The part where they are leaving Vietnam on a small boat is harrowing! But the whole thing is very good at packing a lot of emotion into relatively small