february scrapbook

[latespring]

Read more than I thought I would… Quick wrap up for this month.

Movies

Time Trap (2017) ★★☆☆☆
WHAT WAS THIS…. Time travel except it's also the worst thriller I've ever watched. The only good thing about this was the kind of horrific concept of time passing without you (the moment when one of them steps out of the cave and sees the world has moved one without them? wow). I watched it on 1.5x and it was still too slow sometimes, and not in a well paced way, just in a "I was bored" way. Uncomfortable depictions of "native cave people," characters I didn't care about, and clumsy writing. Unlike the caves they were in, this had no depth.


If Anything Happens I Love You (2020) ★★★★☆
Short animated film that addresses gun violence in schools. I watched this directly after Time Trap and it made me cry?? (cw for gun violence, death, grief)


Encanto (2021) ★★★☆☆ (3.5)
What can I say, I like lmm's music! Luisa!!! I watched it twice, and the second time made more sense than the first. Already talked about my other thoughts about it on twitter.

Books

Small Beauty by jia qing wilson-yang ★★★★☆

• why I read it: I picked this up at a bookstore because the themes (gender and grief and friendship) caught my eye.


• summary: (from the publisher) Small Beauty tells the story of Mei, a mixed race trans woman managing the death of her cousin, the ways she contorts to navigate racism and transphobia, and her desire for community as she takes an opportunity to leave the city and revisit a town from her family’s past, where she discovers queer family history while parsing through her own anger and trauma.


• thoughts: I really like the ending a lot. This is a quiet book, and one that sits with itself, but never in a way that's unbearable.
  
  (cw for transphobia (slurs, offpage attack), racism, and the death of a family member)

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard ★★★☆☆

• why I read it: the author of this ballroom dancing mdzs fic recommended this book on tumblr. I read it all in one long go of a week (notable because it's ~960 pages)


• summary: Cliopher Mdang is the right hand of the emperor. He's not His Radiancy's friend. But what if he was? He invites His Radiancy on vacation, and everything changes.


• thoughts: So I want to say first of all that this book does so many lovely things. I really love His Radiancy (more of him!!!!). Cliopher's backstory is delightful, I wanted another 200 pages about his time as a young man in the lowest ranks of government, rebuilding after the end of the world. Overall, it's a lovely book, and I've seen lots of glowing reviews of it.
  
  The side characters are really wonderful! I particularly liked Cliopher's nephew.
  
  I'm making a note here about something that didn't work for me. It's not a mark against the book, but it did cut some of my enjoyment of it.
  
  Spoilers for THotE if you plan to read it!
  
  
  this is unnecessarily petty

  
  One of the main plot points of THotE is that Cliopher isn't recognized by his family for the work he's doing to reform the government. It's later revealed that this is in part because of miscommunication within his hometown (the proclamations of his achievements weren't being read aloud, and he didn't mention them in his letters, not wanting to seem like he was bragging) as well as cultural differences.
  
  What rubbed me the wrong way was how the author treats his family about this! 90% of Cliopher's problems in the last third of the book are solved by him going around and monologuing at people. We don't get any real political tension, or any personal drama I was super invested in.
  
  The author has all this beautiful tension about Cliopher not being understood, the divide between what your family thinks is a worthwhile achievement and what dreams you want to chase, and she basically squashes it. He solves the problems by walking around and giving speeches until his family understands him. There's only so many times you can have a character "go off" in a book. Cliopher gives so many speeches I lost count.
  
  To be clear, I think the conflict she sets up is pretty well done. I don't think the initial miscommunication is bad. It's the way it's solved that itches.
  
  (There was a very good moment where his friend shows him some letters that he kept, and shows him all the correspondence that he and his friends put together which added some complexity to the story, and Cliopher has an "oh" moment, but it didn't last. There are several moments like this actually! One is where Cliopher and His Radiancy talk and Cliopher realizes he never forgave himself for leaving. But a lot of the complexity of the issue is flattened in the last third of the book.)
  
  Where's the respect for his mother and uncles? Where's the exploration of Cliopher's PTSD after coming home from the fall of the empire? Where's the genuine pushback from his community about leaving them--not just this wishy washy "we're sad to see you go" teasing? Where's his struggle to claim his culture after being away for so long? Why can he just go home and be recognized in all the ways that matter and have his family recognize him if only he just gives enough speeches?
  
  Maybe I just wanted this book to be a book that it isn't.
  
  Also, on a different note. There's a lot of gorgeous worldbuilding in here, but the author definitely expects you to have read, or at least be passingly familiar with some of the concepts in the books she's written in the same universe.
  
  The most interesting story here (the story of Cliopher in the days after the empire fell, where they put the empire back together) is relegated to recollections by the other characters. Not that I didn't appreciate the plot that I got (it's very… cozy? in a very nice way. I think is the best word for it) but it felt like all the interesting character development took place 30 years beforehand, and now we're just here??
  
  The best parts of the book were when Cliopher was on his back foot, struggling to understand his emperor after so many years of putting him on a pedestal. But again, back to the character development thing. We look at their relationship and the author tells us "they're already close". I wanted to see that development!!!! I wanted to follow that thread longer, instead of the "Cliopher gives speeches" plot thread.
  
  (Also like, where were the women in this book?)
  
  Ok ok, enough. This cut might not give the impression, but I think this is a lovely novel and I enjoyed reading it.

TV

The Great British Bake-off (2021 season) ★★★★☆
It was cute!!! Mindless drama to have on while doing chores. I liked the contestants a lot.

MISC

THE MASSAGE LADY AT MUNJEONG ROAD BATHHOUSE
I've really enjoyed all of Isabel J. Kim's short fiction! This was no exception.

I Stepped Too Far Back
Social media as a motivator, and how to move past that. Cute little advice column!

IT’S YOUR FRIENDS WHO BREAK YOUR HEART
Essay about friendship! I've been thinking about friendship lately, and about community.

I want to be with friends through the mundanities of their lives as well as the highs--the grocery shopping moving into an apartment filing taxes cooking dinner recovering from illness as well as the promotions at work, or graduating school. It's just been something on my mind.

In Progress

Currently:
- Yearly rewatch of Nirvana in Fire! 14/54
- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Halfway Home by Reuben Jonathan Miller
- World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- Oceanic by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
- All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung
- The Silent Sea (ep 1)
- Beyond Evil (ep 1)
- Vincenzo (2021), up to ep 10
- She Who Became the Sun by Shelley P Chan, 1/4 through
- H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, 1/2 through


Paused:
- The Devourers by Indra Das

Poetry

Not Once by Sharon Olds

Nailing Things Down by Linda Susan Jackson
Today she looks at her body
with some hesitation. It’s late
in the morning & the gravy’s
gonna run thin tonight.

Will she miss the wanting, the having or the gone?

Joy by Clarissa Scott Delaney
I abandon myself to joy—
I laugh—I sing.
Too long have I walked a desolate way,
Too long stumbled down a maze
Bewildered.

Crossing the Line by E. Ethelbert Miller

Late Afternoon Stroll on the Cliffs by Laure-Anne Bosselaar

Why So This Quiet by Carl Phillips

No Images by Waring Cuney

Midnight Air in Louisville by Afaa Michael Weaver

God Could Not Make Her a Poet by Cornelius Eady

The Sun, Mad Envious, Just Wants the Moon by Patricia Smith
So I remind her that everything dies. All the
brilliant bitch can do for me then is spit light
on the path while I search for a place to sleep.

Exodus by Effie Lee Newsome

It Bruises, Too by Kwame Dawes
I promise that these
words I am speaking are the breaking
of a long fast, and my voice
sounds alien even to me.
You ask why I wince like that.
“The silence,” I say. “It bruises, as well.”

Music

SCROBBLES: 2,824 ▼

SCROBBLES PER DAY: 100 ▲
Artists:

1. Stray Kids - 235
2. THE BOYZ - 197
3. Mitski - 152
4. TAEMIN - 149
5. Vienna Teng - 132
6. Sammy Rae & The Friends - 125
7. IVE - 101
8. Rina Sawayama - 87
9. 雅-MIYAVI- - 73
10. Young K - 72

Albums:

1. Laurel Hell by Mitski - 142
2. NOEASY by Stray Kids - 105
3. ELEVEN by IVE - 100
4. The Good Life by Sammy Rae & The Friends - 97
5. SAWAYAMA by Rina Sawayama - 77
6. ACE - The 1st Mini Album by TAEMIN - 72
7. Eternal by Young K - 72
8. Aims by Vienna Teng - 63
9. Waking Hour by Vienna Teng - 61
10. Holy Nights by MIYAVI - 59

Songs:

1. ELEVEN by IVE - 98
2. Snakeskin by Rina Sawayama - 76
3. Good Life by Sammy Rae & The Friends - 75
4. Experience by TAEMIN - 69
5. Goodnight New York by Vienna Teng - 62
6. Sleepy Hollow by Su Lee - 57
7. Spring Snow by PENTAGON - 55
8. Should've Been Me by Mitski - 54
9. Winter Falls by Stray Kids - 51
10. It Will Come Back by Hozier - 48