#reading one piece made me unlearn how to watch movies bc first i spent evenings reading when i would normally put a movie on

[gellavonhamster]

monthly media recap: february 2024

(better late than never)

read:

A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman - very sweet and moving, I cried a little in the end, also very different from what I usually read, so that was a nice change of scenery. Once again thanks to the friend who gave it to me, wouldn't have picked it up otherwise.

The Master of Ballantrae + short stories by Robert Louis Stevenson - good ol' family tragedy. I was a bit underwhelmed by the ending, but overall enjoyed the story. Didn't enjoy the short stories in this collection as much, but I liked how the three of them (The Pavilion on the Links, Thrawn Janet, and Markheim) were so different - a good way to represent the author's range.

King Artus - a 13th century Hebrew version of Arthuriana (Arthur's conception + beginning of the Lancelot episode involving Astolat). Very interesting for the way it swaps the Christian context for the Jewish one (e.g., the Grail becomes a charity bowl for distributing food).

The Black Vampyre; A Legend of St. Domingo by "Uriah Derick D'Arcy" - considered, among other things, the first Black vampire story and the first vampire story by an American author. I kind of struggled through it due to style but the context and references (long live footnotes) made it worth the trouble. Can't say I enjoyed it much as a story, but it broadened my horizon.

+ currently reading The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Volume 2 of W.I.T.C.H. comics (what? I never learned how it ended as a kid)

watched:

Poor Things (2023) - weird (compliment), beautiful, disgusting, absurd, and funny. Honestly don't know if I liked it, but it was though-provoking, that's for sure.

Šķelšanās (The Split, 2023) - a four-episode Latvian documentary, mostly on the divide between ethnically Latvian and Russian people in Latvia (and among ethnically Russian people in Latvia) in the context of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but also about other things. I. Don't know if it makes sense to describe it broadly here, I barely have any followers familiar with the context. But I'd say that, despite a lot of moments that made me physically cringe (god, that last episode about social media campaigns against adopting the Istanbul Convention and spreading misinformation about sex education at schools made my skin crawl. Btw, the Convention was adopted, these assholes can choke), it made me weirdly hopeful. Dialogue is possible, united society is possible. This has been my opinion too, and the older I get, the more I realize that people on all sides who try to tell you it's not are just after their own profit and success.