end of year (well, lunar year)
Started watching Reset 开端 (trailer and 1st episode (of 15) here). Groundhog-ish set-up, thrilling and I love how the main characters slowly unravel the mystery behind their exploding bus. Highly recced.
Reading adventures of 2021: Two main ones stand out: The first being Scum Villain Self-Saving System, which I'm finding to be most darlingest of MXTX's works. I mean, MDZS is really fine, and I love what I've read of TGCF so far (slowly reading it) but there's something about SVSSS that tugs at - nay, plays with my heartstrings. Although I have to say, looking at fanfic: do people actually like to pair Liu Qingge with Shen Qingqiu? >_> Inexplicable.
The second one being Thousand Autumns, which I started out with the donghua and naturally, couldn't wait to find out what happened next. Yan Wushi is immensely... bigger than life, heh, yet you can't help sympathising with him, and also still finding him really sexy. Shen Qiao: I really like his character trajectory in the way it shows growth yet also shows that some ways, a person's essential personality never really changes.
Others:
Black Water Sister by Zen Cho: which I love for the setting, the Manglish, the gothic feel and Black Water Sister herself. Main character narrator is... good? I guess I have no choice but to like her given that the entire story unfolds through her eyes, but Cho's other characters are simply so alive. The energy from their anger, resentment and fear powers the story. And wow, I must go to Penang again once pandemic allows.
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao: My sole big quibble (if that isn't an oxymoron) is I cannot imagine a pair of conservative parents choosing to name their daughter Wu Zetian, but otherwise it is a thrill-ride of a book (with mecha! I repeat, mecha!), a deliciously delightful threesome and a furious, magnificent Wu Zetian.
TGCF: The Taiwanese edition is only up to book 4 so I've been (sort of) pacing myself while checking every other week to see if books 5 and 6 are here yet. I guess there are... unauthorised versions online somewhere but I didn't really want to check them out... yet. I'll see how desperate I get. Also, whoa, really deft mythmaking and backstory creating; it's rather awesome how the novel-verse gets bigger and bigger. I can see that there's a lot of foreshadowing, so I'm anticipating a lot of meaningful plot resolutions as I get further and further inwards - onwards?
A few others (not many, really) and I had ordered Louise Erdrich's The Sentence except Book Depository sent another book by mistake so that was a bummer. I got a book on (of all things) "explores the life philosophies of some of the world's best investors" which was interesting for the first three chapters on how some well known investors like Buffett, etc, and after that simply felt rather narcissistic? Um, yeah, there's this thing about going against the flow, seeing potential in companies, etc, etc, etc... but also there's this other thing about living in a time of rapid industralisation and explosive economic growth in the last century. I dunno, it'd make a good Christmas present for someone who isn't me.
I did pick up a book on knitting tea cosies at Kinokuniya's bargain shelf so... bargain.
Reading adventures of 2021: Two main ones stand out: The first being Scum Villain Self-Saving System, which I'm finding to be most darlingest of MXTX's works. I mean, MDZS is really fine, and I love what I've read of TGCF so far (slowly reading it) but there's something about SVSSS that tugs at - nay, plays with my heartstrings. Although I have to say, looking at fanfic: do people actually like to pair Liu Qingge with Shen Qingqiu? >_> Inexplicable.
The second one being Thousand Autumns, which I started out with the donghua and naturally, couldn't wait to find out what happened next. Yan Wushi is immensely... bigger than life, heh, yet you can't help sympathising with him, and also still finding him really sexy. Shen Qiao: I really like his character trajectory in the way it shows growth yet also shows that some ways, a person's essential personality never really changes.
Others:
Black Water Sister by Zen Cho: which I love for the setting, the Manglish, the gothic feel and Black Water Sister herself. Main character narrator is... good? I guess I have no choice but to like her given that the entire story unfolds through her eyes, but Cho's other characters are simply so alive. The energy from their anger, resentment and fear powers the story. And wow, I must go to Penang again once pandemic allows.
Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao: My sole big quibble (if that isn't an oxymoron) is I cannot imagine a pair of conservative parents choosing to name their daughter Wu Zetian, but otherwise it is a thrill-ride of a book (with mecha! I repeat, mecha!), a deliciously delightful threesome and a furious, magnificent Wu Zetian.
TGCF: The Taiwanese edition is only up to book 4 so I've been (sort of) pacing myself while checking every other week to see if books 5 and 6 are here yet. I guess there are... unauthorised versions online somewhere but I didn't really want to check them out... yet. I'll see how desperate I get. Also, whoa, really deft mythmaking and backstory creating; it's rather awesome how the novel-verse gets bigger and bigger. I can see that there's a lot of foreshadowing, so I'm anticipating a lot of meaningful plot resolutions as I get further and further inwards - onwards?
A few others (not many, really) and I had ordered Louise Erdrich's The Sentence except Book Depository sent another book by mistake so that was a bummer. I got a book on (of all things) "explores the life philosophies of some of the world's best investors" which was interesting for the first three chapters on how some well known investors like Buffett, etc, and after that simply felt rather narcissistic? Um, yeah, there's this thing about going against the flow, seeing potential in companies, etc, etc, etc... but also there's this other thing about living in a time of rapid industralisation and explosive economic growth in the last century. I dunno, it'd make a good Christmas present for someone who isn't me.
I did pick up a book on knitting tea cosies at Kinokuniya's bargain shelf so... bargain.