I was finally able to rejoin group watch for a glorious few weeks, but daycare then majorly felled our whole household with illness, so that stopped again. Maybe one day...
Luminous, by Silvia Park: Told from three perspectives in a reunified Korea where robots are common companions: the young disabled girl who finds a mysterious advanced robot in a junkyard and two siblings, children of a famous roboticist, who grew up with a robot older brother. Some really strange errors (Schwarzschild has nothing to do with quantum?). The abuse part was hard to read, but didn't feel gratuitous. It was trying to Say Things, but it didn't 100% come together for me. I think I'm just more interested in how the robots would develop and because it's near future, my assumptions about what is possible don't quite align and that's jarring. The book was more interested in the people question -- messy people, what drives them, complicated interpersonal relationships -- than the artificial intelligences' experience of the world, even though it felt like an omission to not explore it.
Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age, by Vauhini Vara (DNF): A memoir about how technology shapes identity, but I wasn't really feeling it midway through.
Her Story (2024): Modern slice of life centering around two women who become neighbors and friends. One of them is a practical, professional single mom who takes no shit. The other is a singer / sound engineer? who is outwardly more chill, with a trash boyfriend and maybe a drinking problem. The kid actress is pretty good; she's clearly pressured by the stress of the divorcing parents and how protective her mom is, but is a good kid without being cloying. Feels very of the line of "feminist cdramas", e.g. the requisite period discussion, that touch of perhaps too didactic conversation. Enjoyable and pretty cute, with fun character interactions.
Long Live Evil, by Sarah Rees Brennan: Dying of cancer, the protag transmigrates into the villainess of a trashy series in order to find a cure. This really needs a copy editor. Definitely a slow start, but I totally got caught up in it once it got going. Neglected to realize that it ends on a cliffhanger!! Exactly what it says on the tin, very quippy and proud of it.
Left-Handed Girl (2025): A mom and her two daughters move to Taipei; the mom starts a noodle stand, the older daughter works as a betel nut beauty, and the 5 year old goes to school and is a cute good kid. Drama happens: financial stress, the lack of supervision of the younger child, and the romantic entanglements of the older daughter. None of the men seem to really have personalities lol. IDK it was fine as a drama, but I feel like you'd know if you'd enjoy this kind of movie.
18x2 Beyond Youthful Days (2024): Recently fired Taiwanese video game developer goes on a journey to Japan to follow the footsteps of a girl he met and fell in love with in the summer before university. Very well paced and engaging without much outright drama. I enjoyed the Easter eggs moments like high school him reading hanakimi to learn romance.
A movie with a Message, but relatively subtly done and a good, nuanced one! Would recommend.
Love Letter (1995): Referenced in 18x2, the protag loses her fiancé in an accident and writes a letter to his old address, only to receive a letter back! (It turns out there was a girl in his class who had the exact same name.)
A quiet movie about interpersonal relationships and recovering from grief. Enjoyed it more than I expected!
KPop Demon Hunters (2025): Girl band who will stop demons with the power of song! I am a bit bored of some of the tropes (as
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halfcactus said, the girls eating trope is just overdone) and the evil demons, but this IS for kids, so. The real problem is that the Saja boys (antagonists) just have better songs IMO. And it's really just a story about the protag's journey, so everything else doesn't have time to breathe on screen. But it does what it says on the tin and delivers some bangers.
Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: A young Nigerian woman immigrates to the US, leaving behind her true love, and their stories as they age from teenagers to adults. This is very of its time -- the optimism around Obama's election did make me cry a bit -- and many of the discussions around race feel distinctly early 2010s. At its core, a love story about two people who really understand each other. (I don't really understand how she can be an anonymous blogger if she is doing all those talks in person though.)
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