I actually DID STUFF this month. I know, I’m surprised too. I watched shows and movies! I read books! I made some art! I went to a lovely and adorable Rainbow Rowell author talk!
Here are some of my November favorites…
MOVIES & TV
Parasite
Parasite (directed by Bong Joon Ho, who also made The Host and Snowpiercer) tells the story of a poor family in Korea insinuating themselves into the lives of a rich family. It’s full of incredible cinematography and visual storytelling, strong acting, unpredictable twists, tension, heartbreaking drama, and way more dark humor than I expected. I really loved it. There is one particular sequence of shots - which follow our protagonists from the house on the hill where the rich people live, down down down through the different levels of the city in the pouring rain - that just took my breath away.
JoJo Rabbit
I adore Taika Waititi so I knew the odds were pretty good that I would enjoy JoJo Rabbit. I expected this World War II satire to be bitingly funny (Waititi plays a young boy’s buffoonish imaginary friend: Adolf Hitler) but I was not prepared for quite how devastating and moving the film would be as well. Like Parasite, Jojo Rabbit skillfully combines satire, humor, and pathos and will definitely stick with me.
Pain and Glory
Seeing a Pedro Almodóvar movie always makes me want to go home and immediately make art; he does incredible things with color and composition, especially his use of red. Pain and Glory is the story of an aging filmmaker, plagued by physical ailments and depression, who is unable to find the will to create new work. The film combines scenes from his current life with a collection of memories and fantasies as he tries to find his way forward. Antonio Banderas (who plays the filmmaker) does a lot of subtle acting to great effect: telling so much with his face, eyes, and the way he holds his body.
Knives Out
After celebrating his birthday surrounded by his comically awful family, a successful mystery writer is murdered (dun dun duuuuuun) and it’s up to detective Benoit Blanc to put all the pieces together and solve this here mystery. This movie is FUN and I thoroughly enjoyed it. A loving celebration of who-dunnit murder mysteries, Knives Out has a great cast, a clever twist to the formula, and a classic “here’s how it all happened” monologue at the end.
My Hero Academia
Ok, I confess, I mostly started watching this after seeing cute fan art on the internet. Turns out, it was a good decision. This series takes place in a world where 80% of the population has some sort of super power (called “quirks”) and being a professional hero is a legitimate career path. MHA follows Izuku Midoriya, a teenage boy who dreams of becoming a hero even though he doesn’t have any quirks. But he’s a hero at heart and after a chance meeting with his idol, All Might, Midoriya finally gains amazing powers of his own. And then he goes to hero high school because of course he does this is an anime.
The Mandelorian
I’m only a few episodes into this new Star Wars series but I’m really liking what I have seen so far. The western flavor and the production/creature design really stand out. Plus, I won’t spoil it here but The Mandelorian contains one of the cutest things I have ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot of cute things). I will definitely keep watching.
GAMES
Jedi: Fallen Order
I should preface this review by letting you know that I am not a “technical” gamer. I’m not good at combat systems that require a lot of finesse, patience, and perfect timing. So I wasn’t super thrilled to discover that Jedi: Fallen Order takes a lot of game-play notes from Dark Souls, a series that is notorious for all those things. I really wanted to experience the story of Fallen Order but re-doing a boss fight a bunch of times to learn patterns and precisely when to strike is super tedious for me. Luckily, the game offers a story-mode which turns the combat difficulty waaaay down. I tried to soldier on with regular difficulty but after a while, and with some bruising to my gamer ego, I decided to switch to story-mode and IT HELPED SO MUCH YOU GUYS. Once I wasn’t non-stop grouchy about dying all the time, I actually enjoyed Jedi: Fallen Order quite a bit.
The game takes place in the years following Order 66, which declared the Jedi enemies of the republic and lead to most of them being killed. You play as Cal Kestis, who was a padawan when this happened and has been in hiding ever since. But, as you might expect, the empire ends up finding him, as does an ex-Jedi who convinces Cal to aid her mission to rebuild the order. I’ve heard some understandable complaints about Cal being a boring protagonist but I have a soft spot for dumb ginger boys so I didn’t mind him all that much. The other characters surrounding him are a lot of fun (especially Cal’s tiny droid companion BD and force-witch Merrin) and the force powers + lightsaber combat was very satisfying (once the difficulty was more to my level). Plus, I think the game handles the Star Wars mythos/lore elements (particularly the immediate aftermath of Order 66) really well - in some places better than in the movies *gasp*.
BOOKS
Gilded Cage (K.J. Charles)
Gilded Cage finishes up K.J. Charles’ Lilywhite Boys series and also includes callbacks to a bunch of characters from her Sins of the Cities books. As a huge fan of her work, I loved hearing what everyone was up to many years later. The story follows Templeton Lane, one half of a notorious pair of jewel thieves, who finds himself very successfully framed for murder. The only person he can turn to for help is Susan Lazarus, a skilled detective and Templeton’s former flame who really hates his guts now. So it’s a friends-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers sort of situation. There is intrigue, redemption, second chances, and bad guys getting their comeuppance. K.J. Charles books always make me happy.
Red, White, and Royal Blue (Casey McQuiston)
Red, White, and Royal Blue might take the prize as the 2019 book I re-read parts of the most. There are so many good angsty confrontations, swoony kisses, and really sweet lovey-dovey bits that I wanted to experience over and over again. Seriously, I am a sucker for angsty, passionate confrontation scenes, especially ones that end in furious kissing. The premise of this book sounds a lot like alternate universe fan fiction (and it kind of felt that way in the beginning): the son of the first female president and his nemesis, the prince of England, are forced to feign a friendship for the press and end up falling in love. R, W, & RB was a little hard for me to get into at first: the writing is a smidge uneven, there is a lot of name dropping about all the famous people and politicians surrounding the main characters that I found exhausting, and the constant references to how attractive everyone is kept making me roll my eyes. But once the story gets going and the relationship takes priority, I was totally on board. In her acknowledgments section, McQuiston summed up her intentions with the book so nicely that I wanted to include the entire quote here:
“I came up with the idea for this book on an I-10 off-ramp in early 2016, and I never imagined what it would turn out to be. I mean, at that point I couldn’t imagine what 2016 itself would turn out to be. Yikes. For months after November, I gave up on writing this book, Suddenly what was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek parallel universe needed to be escapist, trauma-soothing, alternate-but-realistic reality. Not a perfect world—one still believably fucked up, just a little better, a little more optimistic. I wasn’t sure I was up to the task. I hoped I was. What I hoped to do, and what I hope I have done with this book by the time you’ve finished it, my dear reader, is to be a spark of joy and hope you needed.”
Clockwork Boys / The Wonder Engine (T. Kingfisher)
This two-book series adds to T. Kingfisher’s delightful collection of entertaining fantasy road-trip adventures (see also Minor Mage and Swordheart). Definitely my favorite new author discovery of the year (new to me, not actually new - she has won, like, a lot of awards). The Clocktuar War books (as this series is called) follow a forger with bad allergies, a disgraced paladin, a very sheltered scholar, and an assassin, who are forced into a suicide mission to investigate the source of some super devastating war machines. Like Kingfisher’s other books, the characters and world building really shine; I particularly loved Caliban, the paladin who is heroic to a fault and always ready to sacrifice himself for the greater good, to the great annoyance of his companions. I was also totally surprised (in a good way) with the occasional darker tone, especially in the finale. If you are interested in this series, you may want buy or borrow both at the same time - I had to start book two right after finishing book one.
Bryony and Roses (T. Kingfisher)
I wasn’t kidding when I said T. Kingfisher was my favorite author discovery this year. IMMEDIATELY after I finished Clockwork Boys/Wonder Engine I went searching for yet more of the author’s work. Bryony and Roses is Kingfisher’s take on Beauty and The Beast. In this version, the heroine is a gardener whose skills and passion for making things grow ultimately help break the beast’s curse. There are some really creepy moments involving the magical mansion, plus a lovely clockwork bee, and a strong, believable friendship and love between Bryony and her beast.
Cosmoknights (Hannah Templer)
The tagline for this graphic novel is “For this ragtag band of space gays, liberation means beating the patriarchy at its own game” which I think sums things up pretty well. Cosmoknights takes place in a futuristic space society that adheres to some suuuper patriarchal traditions, including giant arena battles where knights fight to win marriage to a princess (either for themselves or their sponsors). The princess has no say in any of this. When the story begins we are introduced to Tara, a princess longing to escape the forced marriage looming in her future, and her best friend Pan, who helps Tara escape off-world to avoid this fate. Five years later, Pan meets a pair of cosmoknights who are not what they seem and begins her own journey with the resistance. This story is so much fun and Templer’s art is gorgeous, in particular her wonderful colors.
Wyborne & Griffin #1-3: Widdershins / Threshold / Stormhaven (Jordan L. Hawk)
When I started Widdershins, I did not realize that it was part of an ELEVEN BOOK SERIES. 😩 I have no idea if I will read them all but so far it’s been fun.
When ex-Pinkerton, now independent detective Griffin Flaherty needs a mysterious book deciphered, he seeks the aid of Percival Endicott Whyborne, a bookish, awkward language scholar and the estranged son of a railroad baron. The two end up entangled in all sorts of dark goings-on, which involve monstrous creatures, evil cults, and daaaaark maaaaaagic. The paranormal aspect of this series is very Lovecraftian, with direct references to things like Miskatonic University and Yog-Sothoth, and more general ideas of cosmic old-ones and unknowable horrors. You don’t see this flavor of horror in paranormal romances quite as often and it definitely helps the series stand out. Plus Griffin, Whyborne, and their archeologist friend Christine are charming characters that you want to spend time with. Book one involves a cult messing with dark powers that they really shouldn’t be messing with (like you do), book two has our trio of heroes investigating a very bad coal mine (where they happen to meet up with Griffin’s dashing ex-boyfriend), and book three involves a sea god and a grim asylum.
I do have a few complaints, starting with how the books tend to rush the endings once the main antagonist is defeated, wrapping up unfinished story-lines with a meager sentence or two (this was particularly egregious in Stormhaven). There are also some narrative and language choices that didn’t sit well with me. Not book-breaking stuff, just bits where I went “well that could have been handled better” or “did the author really need to use that phrasing?” But those critiques aside, I think the quality improves with each book and overall this is a fun series if you are in the mood for Lovecraft-inspired gay historical romance.
ART
I finally finished the Pokemon drawing challenge I started in October! Plus, this crocodile skink collage that had been sitting in pieces on my desk for months.
