forestofglory

Here's what I've been reading an watch recently:

Lunar New Year Love Story written by Gene Luen Yang drawn by LeUyen Pham— This YA graphic novel about a Vietnamese young woman living in the East Bay. As the title suggests its romance focused. As a person who has spent most of my life in the East Bay I loved seeing familiar landscapes in this. I also loved the lion dancing! I also liked how the characters in this had community: friends, grandparents, uncles ect.

Marvelous City eps 1-4 — This is a Chinese show about cities. Each episode follows an actor/singer around their hometown as well as two ordinary residents. I found it a little hard to follow at first because it jumps between people frequently but I like cities and most of the actors. It got easier once I understood the format better, and started watching in slightly longer chunks. There’s an episode in Xi’an (aka Chang’an)! Otherwise I was not familiar with the cities featured. The Chongqing episode featured some really cool underground tunnels and also a cat falling asleep on Xiao Zhan! The whole thing made me want to eat noodles.

Ancient Detective eps 1-14 — I’d heard of this show but was under the impression that there were no women in it. But

satsuma mentioned that there are some awesome women, so I decided to check it out! It’s a very fun and tropey show, with a lot of wuxia and mystery tropes. There are several excellent women but I wish they had more screen time. The romances are very “we just met and now we are deeply in love” which is not my favorite, but overall this is a fun show. (content note: offscreen child death)

Eva Evergreen, Semi-Magical Witch by Julie Abe— I read this out loud to the kid at bedtime, which means it was more drawn out than my usual reading. A fun middle grade book inspired by Kiki’s Delivery Service, about a young witch on a quest to become an official novice witch by living away from home and helping the town she’s been assigned. I thought it was charming. It ends on a cliffhanger though, so it’s a good thing I already had the second book on hand!

Once Upon a Unicorn by Lou Anders— The kid picked this out at the library and I read it out loud to her, but not at bedtime. It was fun! The narrator interjects a lot here, and occasionally that didn’t work well with the present tense story. I did enjoy the way this played with fairy tale tropes though.

Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China by Robert Ford Campany— This book was a challenging read for me. It’s very theoretical and coming from a religious studies tradition rather than history meant I was lacking some background that would have been helpful. Nonetheless I found it fascinating! It's about the socail roles that Xian (sometimes translated and immortals or transcendents) played

Our Song Season 1, episodes 9-14— A friend was able to help me get the missing episodes! I’m very glad I was able to watch all of these, because this show was an utter delight!