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forestofgloryJust some thoughts about media I've been reading and watching recently
A Dream of Splendor, eps 1-13—I picked up this Chinese drama because it focuses on a group of three women who are friends – however so far their friendship hasn’t really grabbed me, which is a bit disappointing. But the tea making game is on point, and I am enjoying the plot and many of the other relationships. This show is bit morally ambivalent about torture – the ML uses torture, but feels bad about it (Of course the show also depicts torture as source of reliable information, which *sigh*) Overall I’m enjoying it just not for the reasons I thought I would. (content note: domestic abuse, coerced suicide )
Hedgewitch by Skye McKenna—I read this out loud to the kid at bedtime. It’s about a girl who discovers her missing mother was a witch and is sent off to live with her aunt and learn magic. It’s very much in the tradition of classic British children's books, with lots of elements that felt familiar in a nice way.
Legend of Yunze (2021)—I’ve been interested in a couple of mini dramas, but I’ve always found them hard to follow, and only managed an episode or two of any of them before this. So I decided to try again. I picked this because it's f/f xianxia, which sounded fun. There’s 10 2-5min long episodes so the whole thing was quick. I successfully watched the whole thing and didn’t find it hard to follow even!
Legend of Fei, eps 1-10—The new show my group watch picked! This is very fun so far – I do enjoy an angry girl with a sword.
Melody Journey—I was a bit lukewarm the last time I talked about this show but I’ve really gotten into it! It doesn’t hurt that Liu Yuning, whom I'm very fond of, joined the cast. But really the whole thing just seems to have gelled after a while. I found myself having a lot of feelings while watching the final episode
To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong's Traditions of Divine Transcendents by Ge Hong with translation and commentary by Robert Ford Campany—I started reading another story from the TPGJ that I’d like to translate, so I did some background research on the story and found out that there’s a translation of it in this book. I respect Campany – all of his other scholarship that I’ve read have been good, if a bit heavy on the jargon, so I thought this would be helpful. There’s a lot of introductory material which is helpful for understanding more about the kind of stories I’ve been reading. And then each story has plenty of footnotes and some comments afterwards.I’m still only part way through as this is pretty dense but I’m learning a lot!
High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing by Ben Austen—For my urban planning book club. I didn't expect how upsetting I would find this book! Like I expected to find it upsetting because the history of public housing in the US is upsetting, but I didn’t expect how visceral all the gun violence and child death in this book would feel! I ended up not finishing it because I didn’t want to read it at bed time. Other people in my book club said that this was good but Evicted was even better (and more upsetting)
This is a good portrait of a specific place and its issues, but I think the “Fate of American Public Housing” bit in the title is over selling it. While the book situates Cabrini-Green in the larger history of US public housing it didn’t really say much about public housing in the US as a phenomenon.
A Dream of Splendor, eps 1-13—I picked up this Chinese drama because it focuses on a group of three women who are friends – however so far their friendship hasn’t really grabbed me, which is a bit disappointing. But the tea making game is on point, and I am enjoying the plot and many of the other relationships. This show is bit morally ambivalent about torture – the ML uses torture, but feels bad about it (Of course the show also depicts torture as source of reliable information, which *sigh*) Overall I’m enjoying it just not for the reasons I thought I would. (content note: domestic abuse, coerced suicide )
Hedgewitch by Skye McKenna—I read this out loud to the kid at bedtime. It’s about a girl who discovers her missing mother was a witch and is sent off to live with her aunt and learn magic. It’s very much in the tradition of classic British children's books, with lots of elements that felt familiar in a nice way.
Legend of Yunze (2021)—I’ve been interested in a couple of mini dramas, but I’ve always found them hard to follow, and only managed an episode or two of any of them before this. So I decided to try again. I picked this because it's f/f xianxia, which sounded fun. There’s 10 2-5min long episodes so the whole thing was quick. I successfully watched the whole thing and didn’t find it hard to follow even!
Legend of Fei, eps 1-10—The new show my group watch picked! This is very fun so far – I do enjoy an angry girl with a sword.
Melody Journey—I was a bit lukewarm the last time I talked about this show but I’ve really gotten into it! It doesn’t hurt that Liu Yuning, whom I'm very fond of, joined the cast. But really the whole thing just seems to have gelled after a while. I found myself having a lot of feelings while watching the final episode
To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong's Traditions of Divine Transcendents by Ge Hong with translation and commentary by Robert Ford Campany—I started reading another story from the TPGJ that I’d like to translate, so I did some background research on the story and found out that there’s a translation of it in this book. I respect Campany – all of his other scholarship that I’ve read have been good, if a bit heavy on the jargon, so I thought this would be helpful. There’s a lot of introductory material which is helpful for understanding more about the kind of stories I’ve been reading. And then each story has plenty of footnotes and some comments afterwards.I’m still only part way through as this is pretty dense but I’m learning a lot!
High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing by Ben Austen—For my urban planning book club. I didn't expect how upsetting I would find this book! Like I expected to find it upsetting because the history of public housing in the US is upsetting, but I didn’t expect how visceral all the gun violence and child death in this book would feel! I ended up not finishing it because I didn’t want to read it at bed time. Other people in my book club said that this was good but Evicted was even better (and more upsetting)
This is a good portrait of a specific place and its issues, but I think the “Fate of American Public Housing” bit in the title is over selling it. While the book situates Cabrini-Green in the larger history of US public housing it didn’t really say much about public housing in the US as a phenomenon.
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