forestofglory

I’m once again sharing my thoughts on my recent media consumption. But first some thoughts about my joyful reading project.

I spent several days making a deliberate effort to not read if I didn’t feel like reading or wasn’t excited by anything I had to read. I don’t think it really helped? I was kind of miserable but in a different way than when I read things because I don’t have anything better to do. (I need no screen low hand impact things to do right before bed) But I guess after I did that I did end up reading some things. So maybe it worked? But I would rather not do it again.

I went back to reading not because I was suddenly super excited but because I had a day where I was too sick to do much at all and ended up reading a long fic all day.Which was nice, maybe not joyful, but nice.

( All Systems Red, Commodity and Exchange in the Mongol Empire, The Crescent Moon Tearoom, and The Flash Band )

17)Today I’m reccing one of my favorite cdramas ever: The Long Ballad

It has so many of my favorite things: A super smart chaos muppet who is also an extraordinary young woman succeeding at typically masculine pursuits, an girl who is not like other girls and her best friend who is, badass older women, and also really excellent character arcs

I could go on about this forever but instead I’ll just link you to the primer and rec list I wrote last year https://ladybusiness.dreamwidth.org/361221.html

18)For #DecRecs today I bring you an academic paper: “‘What Do Barbarians Know of Gratitude?’ - The Stereotype of Barbarian Perfidy and Its Uses in Tang Foreign Policy Rhetoric” by Shao-yun Yang

Now many of you know that I dislike Tang Taizong rather a lot so I appreciate this paper for calling him out on his BS. But It's just really interesting paper especially if you are interested in ethic identity in Chinese history
https://www.academia.edu/5290394/_What_Do_Barbarians_Know_of_Gratitude_The_Stereotype_of_Barbarian_Perfidy_and_Its_Uses_in_Tang_Foreign_Policy_Rhetoric?sm=b

19)Today for #DecRecs I'm reccing Laid Back Camp!

I have recently started rereading the first several volumes of this charming maga (with the intention of then reading the volumes that I haven't read yet) There is also an anime which is great too!

It's a slice of life story about high school girls going camping, with lots of food, friendship, and pretty scenery. Very lovely and warm and also likely to make you hungry!

20) Reccing fic for #DecRecs today!

"Spring Splendor" by ayeshah

This is a fic based on Song of the Long March, the manhua which is the inspiration of The Long Ballad, but basically reads as historical RPF about Princess Yicheng of Sui, who is the loose inspiration for a character in both the manhua and the drama.

She seems really interesting and badass and I'm sad that men didn't write down more about her life
So I really love that this fic digs into what we know about Princess Yicheng and tried to image what her life would be like!
https://archiveofourown.org/works/15235845

(This set accidentally ended up Long Ballad themed)

For the last several years it's been my tradition to rec a thing every day of December and to encourage other people join me in reccing things using the the hashtag #DecRecs

Here are the first 5 things I've recced this year:

1) I want to start of this years #DecRecs with a recipe. Here in the US it was just Thanksgiving. For the last couple of year's I've been making these Sweet and Sour Brussels Sprouts with Plum Sauce as part of my Thanksgiving and they've been a hit every year

https://omnivorescookbook.com/roasted-brussels-sprouts-with-plum-sauce

2)For #DecRecs day two I bring you Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. A lovely middle grade Chinese inspired fantasy book. Featuring dragons, stories within stories, and colorful illustrations drawn by the author. There's two squeals that are also great!

3) I've been jokingly saying that the Taiping Guangji (太平廣記), a collection of minor stories and unofficial histories, is my main fandom for a bit now.

So today for #DecRecs I'm reccing Tales from Tang Dynasty China: Selections from the Taiping Guangji ed Alexei Ditter, Jessey Choo, and Sarah Allen as good introduction to the Taiping Guangji! It's short, its got a good variety of translated stories, and lots of helpful context

4)I'm having a frustrating day today so for #DecRecs today I want to rec something cute and charming:

"Fandom for Robots" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad

https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/fandom-for-robots/

I adore this story about a robot making friends through fandom!

5) Today for #DecRecs I want to talk about one of my favorite programs Zotero!( Read more... )

Love Me, Love My Voice, eps 1-10—I started watching this because libitina recced it as totally unstressful. So far it's very charming! I don’t watch many modern dramas, but I’m enjoying a lot of the built environments. The streetscapes are very cute! Also there is so much food!

Melody Journey—This is a currently airing singing reality show where singers pair up with songwriters to perform a new song. There’s going to be different pairs and different song writers each episode. It’s got Zhou Shen and a couple of people I know from season 3 of Our Song. The first episode was a lot of fun!

When We Write a Love Story—Another Chinese reality show – this one pairs up three men with three women and has each pair write and star in a romance mini drama. It’s mostly very cute, though I don’t love the way the show is trying to blur personal and professional boundaries. The mimi drama episodes have all been really good so far! I’ve tried watching a couple of mini dramas and always found the pacing confusing – but these didn’t have that problem. Maybe just having the extra context helps?

The Writing of Official History under the T'ang by Denis C. Twitchett—This book has too many names and dates and not enough gossip! It doesn’t help that the names are all transliterated using Wade-Giles which makes it harder for me to recognize them. And I know why establishing a chronology of these various documents is important but still I want the juicy bits! I read this partially to find out about Li Shimin messing with the historical record to make himself more important to the founding of the Tang, and there’s not very much on that. There were some good bits, especially the parts talking about what Tang historians saw as the point of writing history, but I also ended up skimming quite a bit.

Defenders of the Hidden—This is a documentary about pangolin conservation, featuring Wang Yibo. There’s two parts, each a little longer than 20 min. I have learned that pangolin’s are extremely cute animals! They have fuzzy bellies! They curl up in balls! I'm sad that they are endangered. Yibo gets to hold a baby pangolin at one point. (Content note: injured pangolin, which gets medical treatment)

Unspoken Magic by Emily Lloyd-Jones—Sequel to Unseen Magic, also very charming

The Witch of Woodland by Laurel Snyder—I read this to the kid. It is a MG contemporary Jewish fantasy novel, about a girl reluctantly preparing for her bat mitzvah. I liked how it dealt with questioning in a very Jewish way, and how the adults in the book are all trying their best. I think it was a bit heavy for the kid though.

The Northeast Corridor: The Trains, the People, the History, the Region by David Alff—For Urban planning book club. I wanted to like this book, but it's just a collection of incidents that are loosely connected. I keep waiting for the author to explain why these things matter to the people of the Northeast or even to the railroad in general. Also I feel that a book that covers the 1800’s should at least mention the term “railroad baron” maybe that was less of a thing on the east coast, but then I would have liked to hear about why! The one thing I give this book credit for is calling Tomas Jefferson an enslaver

I thought it would be fun and possibly helpful to talk about the various Classical Chinese textbooks that I have some experience with. These are all books for English speakers that don't assume any familiarity with any Chinese languages. I know there are also textbooks for Mandarin speakers but because I don't speak Mandarin, I'm not familiar with them. All of these textbooks use traditional character and pinyin transliterations.

( Read more... )

Here are the last five days of my DecRecs:

( Read more... )

For the last day of DecRecs I'm taking requests. Reply to this and I will rec you a thing! You can request something if you want or I can do my best to pick something I think you will like!

Been a while since I did one of these, I've been in a bit of reading and watching slump, but I've just checked out a pile of MG graphic novels form the library and I think that will help. Anyways here's some thoughts on things I've read and watched since last time

The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future by Gretchen Bakke— For urban planning book club. This is a topic that I really don’t know much about so it was interesting to learn more. I do think the book spent a bit too much time repeating the same big picture summary stuff, and not enough time on the nitty gritty details.

Grace Needs Space! By Benjamin A. Wilgus and Rii Abrego— A very cute slice of life middle grade science fiction graphic novel about Grace, a 12 year old girl traveling with one of her moms for her space station home to Titan. The trip turns out not to go quite as she expected.

The Infinity Particle by Wendy Xu—This YA graphic novel didn’t quite work for me. I liked the futuristic setting and the robot pals, but the romance didn’t have enough development, and the limited color plate was sometimes distracting.

A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard—Another book in the Xuya verse! I liked how this book dealt with the themes of revenge and community, but the romance felt rushed to me. I also enjoyed how most of the bit players in this are women. There are lots of parties and people getting dressed up which was lot of fun

( Cetaganda, Sui-Tang Chang’an, Capital Cities and Urban Form in Pre-modern China, Wrong Carriage, Right Groom )

I haven't done one of these in a bit. Have some thoughts on media that I've read or watched since last time:

Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold—I’ve been very inconsistent about actually rereading stuff for the Vorkosigan reread along I’m doing with some friends. But I read this one and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. The bad things about it loomed much larger than the good in my memory of the book. And the bad things are still there! The homophobia Ethan deals with is even worse than I remembered! But I still love the station worldbuilding(newts!) and I forgot how much fun Bujold’s adventures can be.

Transgressive Typologies: Constructions of Gender and Power in Early Tang China by Rebecca Doran—The title of this book is a bit misleading. It’s focus on five historical women power holders (Wu Zhao, the Taiping and Anle princesses, Empress Wei, and Shangguan Wan’er) and how they have been prorated over time, with a focus on how history has worked to make their power seem particularly against the order of things. I was a expecting something a bit more broadly focused on women’s roles in the early Tang, but I still found this really interesting

( Chang Ge Xing, Mysterious Lotus Casebook, Witch King, Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt )

Here's some thoughts on media I've read or watched recently:

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer—I loved Braiding Sweetgrass so I was excited to learn that the author had an earlier book about moss. This was really lovely! Kimmerer’s prose is gorgeous. I enjoyed learning a bit about moss life cycles and I really liked the descriptions doing "muddy boots biology"

The Long Ballad (长歌行) episodes 17-35 — I got really into this and started watching ahead of my group watch. The show is very loosely based on early Tang dynasty history, and many of the characters are inspired by read historical figures. But they main character is not based on anyone. There are adventures and found family and mentorship, and the main romance is very cute. I love basically all the characters! There's lots of schemes and tactics and I'm finding it very fun. The show is also really nationalist and racist in its portrayal of central Asians. There's a lot of downplaying the harshness of the Tang imperialism while playing up the violent stereotypes about central Asian nomads. Despite this I've gotten very sucked in and have been watching multiple episodes a day

( Early Tang China and the World, 618–750 CE; A Spoonful of Time; The Girl and the Ghost; The Mountains of Mourning; and 铜钱龛世 Copper Coins )

I'm still working thought the list of books to read before WisCon, the last several have been very good! Which is nice but also I keep feeling that my luck can't hold up.

When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb— I had liked this author's short fiction so was curious to check out their new novel. This has been described as "A classic Yiddish Novel but queer" and I think that's a good description. It's the story of an Angel and a demon who are study partners, who leave their tiny shtetl to go help a young woman who has moved to America. An also of a young woman who leaves her slightly bigger town and falls in with them. I liked this a lot! It's extremely Jewish and I liked how nothing was explained (there's a glossary but I didn't realize). I also really liked all the characters! The story is a bit too violent for me to call it cozy but it's a small scale story about community and identity.

The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard—I love de Bodard’s Xuya universe so I was excited for another novel set there. This one is an f/f romance featuring a marriage of convenience where one of the characters is a sentient spaceship! I loved this, both characters where great, and both of them are moms! There where a few places where I was going “I’m not sure about the morality here’ but it ending up going in a good and satisfying direction. Also almost all the characters, not just the main two are women and that was a refreshing change.

The Keeper's Six by Kate Elliott—This novella was everything I hoped it would be! The premise sounded great: a woman has to rescue her adult son from a dragon. Esther, the main character is great, in her 60's pragmatic and determined. I loved that she carries around labor organizing literature to hand out to those in need. I liked her son a lot too, he feeds people. Also there is an impressive amount of worldbuilding in this short book! I hope there's a sequel some day.

Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold —Some of my online friends and I are doing a read along of the Vorkosigan Saga! I imprinted on these books hard as a teen and young adult, and while I still love them I have more of an awareness of the flaws. Anyways Bujold is excellent at dialogue and I still love these characters, but I’m uncomfortable with the imperialism here.

Artisans in Early Imperial China by Anthony J. Barbieri-Low— This was a really interesting book attempting to reconstruct the lives of artisans in Qin and Han China. It's full of interesting details about how people lived and how things were made. There were lots of pictures of surviving objects from that time included. I found the last chapter about slavery and conscripts heavy going (The Han justice system was terrible). Overall I found it very informative.