Well, it's that new year's tradition, time to go over last year's consumption! Why isn't this spreadsheet more filled out and organized? Why isn't there an app for this?! I'm gonna go with final numbers of 57 movies and 20 books, give or take. That's um, not great. That's even down from last year's pathetic totals. Should there be a penalty for not hitting the goals? There should be right?
BOOKS: Well, this is just embarrassing. Despite being home most of the year, I only read very few books. After last year’s debacle of twenty-two books read, I think it’s safe to say that I am no longer a reader. The sum total of books read for 2019 was only twenty, plus six graphic novels. I think cutting out graphic novels in the count is probably the way to moving forward, because yes, I'm using them to pump up my weak numbers.
There were probably some other books I read for research but that’s just a pile of stuff sitting on my desk. Lots of how-to and craft books, along with many others that are related to the book I'm writing. So yeah, in my defense, I was working on a book most of the year and so had no time to read. Ahem. Okay that’s not true but let’s pretend it is. Twenty twenty, the year I'm ready to read again!
The good news is that our San Diego book club is starting up again -- the famed Celebrity Book Club -- because L has returned and that will spring us forward into the year new. Could our book club from a decade ago, Literary Urbanites also make a return? 🤞
I found out there was a Speaker for the Dead graphic novel and read it asap, dying to know what Lusitania’s pequeninos look like. After I read it online — all five issues can be found here — I bought the paper version just to have it. The other book I want to recommend is Six of Crows — and its sequel, Crooked Kingdom — by Leigh Bardugo, which just blew me away. Away! It was so good. (And here is Kevin Wada's character art, and again.)
And I kept seeing Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties on my feed forever and finally got around to reading it. It’s fabulous and you can read the first story here: “The Husband Stitch” (2014). So yeah, books read this year, an embarrassing fail!
MOVIES: The biggest event of the year was Frozen II, which was about as expected. Better maybe? I dunno, I need to watch it again. The past month has just been me pushing Parasite onto anyone who would listen — strangers and friends alike, and also Knives Out if I think they’d be remotely into a whodunit. (If you watch it multiple times like I did, here’s the Rian Johnson audio commentary.)
But in my late year enthusiasm, I cannot forget that April brought me double bill of Go Back to China and then Swing Kids / Seuwingkizeu. I had a whole post in draft about Go Back to China but I guess I’ll wait on it since it was just bought of distribution and will be out in March 2020. The Emily Ting directed, Anna Kana starring, vehicle hit so close to home. I’ve moved to China before to work at the family factory and this film brought up so many personal touch points.
And then there was Seuwingkizeu, which was undoubtably my favorite film of the year. I mean, I gushed hard already. The sad news is that the official version lacks captions for the English lines, which makes it a tough watch — especially if I was trying to share it with non-native English speakers. Who does this? Offers subtitles but not through all the dialogue regardless of language?!
Overall it was a light year for movies, with fifty-six consumed. The Marvel auto-tens were Avengers: Endgame and Spiderman: Far From Home, with the other ones being Seuwingkizeu, Go Back to China, Parasite, Knives Out, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
2019 was also the year the Deadwood movie finally came out, which was mostly fan service-y but led me down a rewatch path. Still a top five show ever! And shout out for two Penélope Cruz films, Almodovar’s Pain and Glory and Farhadi’s Everybody Knows. It’s a tough call who I liked better as her co-star, Bardem or Banderas, so we’ll call it a tie. Actually on, it has to be Bardem, it’s always Bardem!
Underwhelming: Uncut Gems, Hustlers, The Farewell, Beverly Hills Cop 1/2/3 (I’ve been listening to a lot of Rewatchables so we’ve been watching a lot of old stuff), and the truly awful The Dead Don’t Die, which pretty much almost killed a new friendship before it had a chance to fly, because I recommended it and we had to suffer through it together.
TELEVISION: The hits were Sex Education, True Detection S3, Russian Doll, Mindhunter S2, and Watchmen. I’m not even done with the latter as it just needs to be slow dripped. Also I quite liked The Boys and The Society (also unfinished). I guess I didn’t watch that much TV this year actually! I really wanted to like Umbrella Academy but ultimately lost interest, and with Netflix throwing out some Taiwanese movies and series, I was sure A Thousand Goodnights would be a hit with my mom but it wasn’t good, like at all.
And even though this is a yearly staple, I need to mention the most recent season of MTV’s The Challenge. It was called War of the Worlds 2 and featured a US team versus a UK team. We bought the entire season on Amazon to go ad-free and it was a great decision. Even better, we suckered AMR into watching it with us and he led us to an Alliance Reality Bites victory. It was thrilling. Also I got my friend a Cameo from Johnny Bananas himself, which was truly a highlight. Bananas!
GAMES: I played many a game this year, the product of being homebound and also having a Switch. Lichtspeer is a fun two-player game that can be challenging but also meditative. I loved the art and action of Guacamelee 2 but have yet to finish it. Actually I’ve yet to finish any of the games I’m about to talk about because, well, I guess that’s just what I do?
Most of my Switch buys are for local co-op and of there were two throwbacks that were wonderful: New Super Mario Bros. U is a Wii rerelease but it features simultaneous four player action. Yes, that means classic Super Mario action with four players at once!
And then there’s River City Girls, which is a semi-follow up to one of my favorite games of all time, River City Ransom. Playing as Kyoko and Misako, the girlfriends of Kunio and Riki, makes River City Girls even better than the original. I mean, teen girls punching and kicking their way through malls and squads for cheerleaders? Bring it on!
Oh, also Marvel Alliance 3, which is kind of a throwback. I’ve already spent many hours on this game and will continue to play it over and over, leveling up Spider-Gwen and her friends. All of the old X-Men Legends and Alliance series were great and this one is more of the same. Am I lacking three friends to come over and play with me all the time? Yes, I am, but I push on. Other good co-ops: Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker and Yoshi's Crafted World.
To start 2020, I will be continuing on my quest to catch them all. After some debate between Sobble and Scorbunny, I chose Scorbunny to start, a decision I haven’t regretted. Oh and I got Shield because well, I need Galarian Ponyta. Need! I’ve spent more hours organizing my various Pokemon boxes than actually catching Pokemon, but that’s just setting the foundation for a beautiful Pokedex.
For iOS, I kept buying games but not playing them, but of the few that I did, Meteorfall sucked me in the hardest. I spent a week trying to perfect a particular strategy — at one point even throwing my phone down on the couch with some force, which for me is a huge display of disrespect to my phone. When I finally beat the Lich King on hardest difficulty with Queen of Shadow Rose, I felt like I had conquered Everest. It’s the small victories my friends…
Two wonderfully meditative and beautiful games: Alto’s Odyssey and Sky: Children of Light, Apple’s game of the year. We were taken with Alto’s Adventure when it came out and then AMR started playing the follow up, Odyssey, which is basically the same thing but still splendid. And Sky, from the makers of Journey, was just magical. You meet friends and wordlessly join them in traversing the world, flying and twirling around. The only communicate is by emotes and hand holding and I think I made many deep connections to people who helped me along the way. You’ll be forever in my heart, random helpers of the internet!
Also, this was a big moment for me in my LOL career. H-U-G-E. Taliyah forever...
I apparently only saw one musical this year, The Book of Mormon in Mexico City, which was super fun mainly due to sitting right in the first row -- with nobody else around us. Being close to things is the way to go. We were a few rows back for Carly and that was life changing. The lesson to be learned is to be very close to things...and to Carly. Fave song off Dedicated: "Too Much."
PODCASTS: I was on the community panel for Self Evident, a new Asian American podcast that debuted this year. Episode one came out in May and the season ended a few months later. Hosted by Cathy Erway and featuring an experienced and ultra-competent team behind her, Self Evident should have another season coming soon!
I swore my cousin introduced me to The Empty Bowl, “a meditative podcast about cereal.” Alas, it was not her I should thank for this gift. The deep dives into cereal life are indeed meditative, if you can believe it.
For months, writer and all everything Mary HK Choi was making daily minipods with "a focus on mental health and creativity," as part of her Hey, Cool... banner. As a fan of Mary HK, it was like getting her piped directly into my life. The mini format was interesting and I was sad when the episodes got less daily. I would love to see more people do this sort of thiung.
And then there’s Deadline City, which is Dhonielle Clayton and Zoraida Cordova’s new bookish podcast. I listen to quite a few YA podcasts and this one has a friend and is just super fun!
Michael Lewis’ Against the Rules was great. And while this isn’t exactly a podcast, Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers audiobook is pretty much exactly that and I heard that his audiobook was outselling his physical and ebook, and it’s probably because the audiobook is just a podcast. If that makes sense.
BOOKS: Well, this is just embarrassing. Despite being home most of the year, I only read very few books. After last year’s debacle of twenty-two books read, I think it’s safe to say that I am no longer a reader. The sum total of books read for 2019 was only twenty, plus six graphic novels. I think cutting out graphic novels in the count is probably the way to moving forward, because yes, I'm using them to pump up my weak numbers.
There were probably some other books I read for research but that’s just a pile of stuff sitting on my desk. Lots of how-to and craft books, along with many others that are related to the book I'm writing. So yeah, in my defense, I was working on a book most of the year and so had no time to read. Ahem. Okay that’s not true but let’s pretend it is. Twenty twenty, the year I'm ready to read again!
The good news is that our San Diego book club is starting up again -- the famed Celebrity Book Club -- because L has returned and that will spring us forward into the year new. Could our book club from a decade ago, Literary Urbanites also make a return? 🤞I found out there was a Speaker for the Dead graphic novel and read it asap, dying to know what Lusitania’s pequeninos look like. After I read it online — all five issues can be found here — I bought the paper version just to have it. The other book I want to recommend is Six of Crows — and its sequel, Crooked Kingdom — by Leigh Bardugo, which just blew me away. Away! It was so good. (And here is Kevin Wada's character art, and again.)
And I kept seeing Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties on my feed forever and finally got around to reading it. It’s fabulous and you can read the first story here: “The Husband Stitch” (2014). So yeah, books read this year, an embarrassing fail!
But in my late year enthusiasm, I cannot forget that April brought me double bill of Go Back to China and then Swing Kids / Seuwingkizeu. I had a whole post in draft about Go Back to China but I guess I’ll wait on it since it was just bought of distribution and will be out in March 2020. The Emily Ting directed, Anna Kana starring, vehicle hit so close to home. I’ve moved to China before to work at the family factory and this film brought up so many personal touch points.
And then there was Seuwingkizeu, which was undoubtably my favorite film of the year. I mean, I gushed hard already. The sad news is that the official version lacks captions for the English lines, which makes it a tough watch — especially if I was trying to share it with non-native English speakers. Who does this? Offers subtitles but not through all the dialogue regardless of language?!
Overall it was a light year for movies, with fifty-six consumed. The Marvel auto-tens were Avengers: Endgame and Spiderman: Far From Home, with the other ones being Seuwingkizeu, Go Back to China, Parasite, Knives Out, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
2019 was also the year the Deadwood movie finally came out, which was mostly fan service-y but led me down a rewatch path. Still a top five show ever! And shout out for two Penélope Cruz films, Almodovar’s Pain and Glory and Farhadi’s Everybody Knows. It’s a tough call who I liked better as her co-star, Bardem or Banderas, so we’ll call it a tie. Actually on, it has to be Bardem, it’s always Bardem!
Underwhelming: Uncut Gems, Hustlers, The Farewell, Beverly Hills Cop 1/2/3 (I’ve been listening to a lot of Rewatchables so we’ve been watching a lot of old stuff), and the truly awful The Dead Don’t Die, which pretty much almost killed a new friendship before it had a chance to fly, because I recommended it and we had to suffer through it together.
TELEVISION: The hits were Sex Education, True Detection S3, Russian Doll, Mindhunter S2, and Watchmen. I’m not even done with the latter as it just needs to be slow dripped. Also I quite liked The Boys and The Society (also unfinished). I guess I didn’t watch that much TV this year actually! I really wanted to like Umbrella Academy but ultimately lost interest, and with Netflix throwing out some Taiwanese movies and series, I was sure A Thousand Goodnights would be a hit with my mom but it wasn’t good, like at all.
And even though this is a yearly staple, I need to mention the most recent season of MTV’s The Challenge. It was called War of the Worlds 2 and featured a US team versus a UK team. We bought the entire season on Amazon to go ad-free and it was a great decision. Even better, we suckered AMR into watching it with us and he led us to an Alliance Reality Bites victory. It was thrilling. Also I got my friend a Cameo from Johnny Bananas himself, which was truly a highlight. Bananas!
GAMES: I played many a game this year, the product of being homebound and also having a Switch. Lichtspeer is a fun two-player game that can be challenging but also meditative. I loved the art and action of Guacamelee 2 but have yet to finish it. Actually I’ve yet to finish any of the games I’m about to talk about because, well, I guess that’s just what I do?
Most of my Switch buys are for local co-op and of there were two throwbacks that were wonderful: New Super Mario Bros. U is a Wii rerelease but it features simultaneous four player action. Yes, that means classic Super Mario action with four players at once!
And then there’s River City Girls, which is a semi-follow up to one of my favorite games of all time, River City Ransom. Playing as Kyoko and Misako, the girlfriends of Kunio and Riki, makes River City Girls even better than the original. I mean, teen girls punching and kicking their way through malls and squads for cheerleaders? Bring it on!
Oh, also Marvel Alliance 3, which is kind of a throwback. I’ve already spent many hours on this game and will continue to play it over and over, leveling up Spider-Gwen and her friends. All of the old X-Men Legends and Alliance series were great and this one is more of the same. Am I lacking three friends to come over and play with me all the time? Yes, I am, but I push on. Other good co-ops: Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker and Yoshi's Crafted World.
To start 2020, I will be continuing on my quest to catch them all. After some debate between Sobble and Scorbunny, I chose Scorbunny to start, a decision I haven’t regretted. Oh and I got Shield because well, I need Galarian Ponyta. Need! I’ve spent more hours organizing my various Pokemon boxes than actually catching Pokemon, but that’s just setting the foundation for a beautiful Pokedex.
For iOS, I kept buying games but not playing them, but of the few that I did, Meteorfall sucked me in the hardest. I spent a week trying to perfect a particular strategy — at one point even throwing my phone down on the couch with some force, which for me is a huge display of disrespect to my phone. When I finally beat the Lich King on hardest difficulty with Queen of Shadow Rose, I felt like I had conquered Everest. It’s the small victories my friends…Two wonderfully meditative and beautiful games: Alto’s Odyssey and Sky: Children of Light, Apple’s game of the year. We were taken with Alto’s Adventure when it came out and then AMR started playing the follow up, Odyssey, which is basically the same thing but still splendid. And Sky, from the makers of Journey, was just magical. You meet friends and wordlessly join them in traversing the world, flying and twirling around. The only communicate is by emotes and hand holding and I think I made many deep connections to people who helped me along the way. You’ll be forever in my heart, random helpers of the internet!
Also, this was a big moment for me in my LOL career. H-U-G-E. Taliyah forever...
- Destructoid: River City Girls
- Sky: Children Of The Light Review - Flying Free
- 13 Minutes of Sky: Children of Light Gameplay
I apparently only saw one musical this year, The Book of Mormon in Mexico City, which was super fun mainly due to sitting right in the first row -- with nobody else around us. Being close to things is the way to go. We were a few rows back for Carly and that was life changing. The lesson to be learned is to be very close to things...and to Carly. Fave song off Dedicated: "Too Much."
PODCASTS: I was on the community panel for Self Evident, a new Asian American podcast that debuted this year. Episode one came out in May and the season ended a few months later. Hosted by Cathy Erway and featuring an experienced and ultra-competent team behind her, Self Evident should have another season coming soon!
I swore my cousin introduced me to The Empty Bowl, “a meditative podcast about cereal.” Alas, it was not her I should thank for this gift. The deep dives into cereal life are indeed meditative, if you can believe it.
For months, writer and all everything Mary HK Choi was making daily minipods with "a focus on mental health and creativity," as part of her Hey, Cool... banner. As a fan of Mary HK, it was like getting her piped directly into my life. The mini format was interesting and I was sad when the episodes got less daily. I would love to see more people do this sort of thiung.And then there’s Deadline City, which is Dhonielle Clayton and Zoraida Cordova’s new bookish podcast. I listen to quite a few YA podcasts and this one has a friend and is just super fun!
Michael Lewis’ Against the Rules was great. And while this isn’t exactly a podcast, Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers audiobook is pretty much exactly that and I heard that his audiobook was outselling his physical and ebook, and it’s probably because the audiobook is just a podcast. If that makes sense.
- Self Evident: Asian America's Stories
- Deadline City | Stitcher
- Hey, Cool Life Is The Perfect Podcast For An Anxiety-Driven Age Life | Hey, Cool Life
- The Empty Bowl
