Wrap Up: November 2020

• The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson (★★★★☆)
• Flaneuse by Lauren Elkin (★★☆☆☆)
• The Sin in the Steel by Ryan Van Loan (★★★☆☆)
• Don’t Tell a Soul by Kirsten Miller (★★★★★)
• Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid (★★★★★)
• The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart (★★★☆☆)
• Witches of Ash & Ruin by E. Latimer (★★★★☆)
• Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots (★★★★★)
• Savage Legion by Matt Wallace (★★★☆☆)
• The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi (★★★★★)

MONTHLY TOTAL: 10
YEARLY SO FAR: 117

I had a very good reading month! Enjoyed nearly everything I read and had some standouts that might even become favorites of the year. I also read a lot of books I have been meaning to get to for months, so I felt very productive.

I am currently reading:

Aside from the above, my TBR for December is tentatively: Ruth Ware’s One by One, S.A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy, and Tessa Gratton’s The Queens of Innis Lear. These are all very chonky books and December is normally a low-reading month for me but we shall see!

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Television Update

Paranormal

I love how Netflix really said their total wig budget for this show was like $20.

But anyway. This marks the first Netflix-produced Egyptian series, and you could definitely tell from the production value (aside from the wigs, as I said). I loved parts of this and was kind of meh about other parts. Some aspects of it felt kind of like a low-production B-movie horror, but other bits were excellent. I particularly enjoyed the last episode, which bound up Egyptian cultural norms with the story of a ghost haunting.

My other problem was that I really disliked the main character, who is just…too gruff and unlikable and the sort of person always getting in his own way. I understand why he’s like that, but he can be so cruel sometimes, that it was hard to sympathize with him.

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Kheet Hareer (Silk Thread)

I very, very rarely watch Egyptian series, and when I do, it’s even more unlikely that I become emotionally invested in them, but for some reason, I really like Kheet Hareer. Told in a dual timeline ten years apart, it’s about a young woman named Misk who has just purchased majority shareholder shares of the company where she once worked as a junior employee. It is also where she suffered a major heartbreak and betrayal at the hands of the former owner’s son, and Misk has returned determined to get justice. It’s basically a revenge story, but it’s done really, really well, imo? There are also some fascinating and unusual narrative decisions taken, and I’m intrigued to see where the storylines will all end up. This is airing now, and I’m on the 20th episode; I have no idea how long it’s going to be.

I actually started watching this at like, the 10th episode, and before that I’d caught random scenes here and there because my mom was watching it. Every time I’d walk by I’d linger longer and finally I was like, fuck it, I gotta commit to this show. So now I’ve gone back and I’m watching the first ten episodes I missed as I watch the episodes that are airing daily. It’s actually fantastic to watch those episodes knowing all the backstory; I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much if I had gone in unspoiled. And that’s how you know it’s well-written! It’s not all about the mystery and the twists, but about the delicious character interactions. Also the main guy character (played by Nicolas Mouawad) is SO freaking handsome; I really just enjoy looking at his face. And of course Mai Ezz Eldin is an icon.

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Film Update

Christmas Catch: ….listen. My mom loves watching these silly holiday movies and I was walking by and then I just couldn’t stop watching. This was funny and charming and uplifting and I loved it.

Run: This was definitely very good and very compelling and I love that the actress playing a disabled character is actually disabled, but I wanted a bit more from the ending. I didn’t get the sort of closure I wanted; instead we got a really weird over-the-top revenge type of ending.

Enola Holmes: This was…fine? I thought the narrative was very scattered and I still legitimately do not understand why the mom disappeared and this was very White Feminism and lacked any sort of depth, but it was very bright and pretty. Millie Bobbie Brown is very charming and Henry Cavill is great to look at.

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Miscellaneous

NaNoWriMo 2020: I…managed to write 15K words lmaooooo. This was my first time attempting NaNoWriMo since like…2015, I think? I’ve learned that it just doesn’t work well for me; I’m not the sort of person who writes every single day. I can go two weeks without writing a word and then write 10K in a single week, depending on my mood. It just be like that sometimes, and I can’t keep trying to turn myself into something I’m not. I have, however, gotten better at fast drafting, and churning out words without stressing too much about what they sound like. This has always been an issue for me, and it stalls my progress quite often, but I think I did a good job with these 15K words of just…writing.

Destiel and Supernatural: Remember, remember, the 5th of November! So Destiel kind of sort of became a thing and Tumblr exploded and it happened in the midst of the election and in the midst of a rumor about Putin resigning and it was absolutely glorious. What a night. Truly, the best night of the year. The memes, folks. The memes belong in the history books. (This was also happening in the midst of me receiving awesome personal news, so it was a wild week.)

And then the finale happened, and it was predictably terrible. AND THEN, the Spanish dub dropped, which showed Dean seemingly reciprocating Cas’s confession of love (unlike in the English original), and so Supernatural fans were up in arms, thinking that there was some sort of conspiracy. It was like JohnLock 2.0. It was wild.

I’ve been a Supernatural fan for a long time, and…well, I’m planning on writing a post about it soon, so I won’t say much here, except to say that these shenanigans made my entire November.