To catch upcoming January weekly digests as I churn them out, please check out my Ko-fi page!

W E E K   0 4 8  &  0 4 9

☞ Continued Courtney Milan’s The Brothers Sinister series with The Countess Conspiracy. While The Duchess War remains my favorite, my last foray into the series, The Countess Conspiracy, is the one that made me the most emotional. Never before had an author’s note made me cry this much. The book is a firm celebration of scientific achievements, and of the many missing names from history that go towards these achievements. 

☞ Savored each of the six episodes of BBC and HBO Max’s Starstruck. I don’t see that many people talking about this show, and I only learned of it myself by word-of-mouth, but it’s hilarious! Rose Matafeo and Nikesh Patel individually can charm the pants off anyone, methinks, but together, their chemistry flies off the screen and makes the show a true rom-com gem.

☞ Cried to another author’s note with Gail D. Villanueva’s Sugar and Spite, brought to life under the skillful narration of Joy Regullano. Reviewers have it spot-on with the phrase most often used to describe this book: “unapologetically Filipino.” This middle-grade story follows an albularyo’s (faith healer) apprentice, who tries to put an end to another girl’s bullying through gayuma (love potion). And along the way, the author takes us through a dazzling, wholesome display of Filipino culture. 

N.B. To anyone interested in picking this book up, I highly suggest going through the content warnings first. Content warnings can be found over at StoryGraph.

☞ After searching high and low in online shops for a secondhand copy, finally procured and read Margaret Rogerson’s An Enchantment of Ravens — which I’ve now permanently filed under “Literary Equivalents of Cotton Candy.” The story was so flat, but so fluffy! I was grateful for how easy on the intellect this faerie fantasy was. And for the best part: it’s a standalone.

☞ Fast-forwarded my way through Hush, a Filipino erotic-drama anthology show originally from iWant TV, then released on Netflix. The first half of the first season might seem utterly pointless, titillating merely for the sake of raising eyebrows, but I thought the show grew significantly more substantial and well-shot after that. Some standout episodes for me: “Amanda,” “Engkanto,” and “Cutting Ties.”

☞ Ultimately set myself up for disappointment with the new Film adaptation of The Hating Game (starring Lucy Hale and Austin Stowell), which is based on the novel of the same name. You know those day-old balloons that are still pretty round but you can tell have already lost a little air? That’s how I felt while wincing my way through this. I wasn’t completely deflated: the screenplay was about 71% true to the source material, which I think is what every reader wants as the bare minimum when a book they like enough to have reread at least twice is picked out to be adapted. But the way the film stayed true to the book was ultimately unremarkable, as was the way it did stray, like that damn Stripping Time book.

 ☞ Reread the actual The Hating Game novel by Sally Thorne, if only to remind myself of what I loved about the story. The adaptation really could have used more of Josh’s straight face and Lucy’s delightful, mildly unhinged inner voice. — 13 December 2021

W E E K   0 5 0

☞ Consciously pressed play on Just My Luck (starring Lindsay Lohan and Chris Pine) on Netflix. I think we used to own a set of CDs of Lindsay Lohan’s films from the early 2000s, but clearly I was too obsessed with her Herbie film at the time to notice that this is the finest that young Chris Pine has ever looked.

☞ Read Tessa Bailey’s It Happened One Summer, which was okay, until it wasn’t. I thought the fishermen’s relationship with the sea was thoughtfully explored, but there was little else to like aside from that and the smut. I like books with entrepreneurial protagonists, so it would’ve been nice to read more about Piper and Hannah’s daily operations at their father’s bar. They supposedly had a debit account with a limited fund, but it never sounded like money was a concrete problem for them when they reached Westport.

☞ Also read Cindy Pon’s environmentalist dystopia Want, which a lot of friends have liked. I could definitely see what was attractive about Jason Zh— I mean, the worldbuilding, though the writing left a lot to be desired.

☞ Was invited to an advance screening and live Q&A for the first episode of the new The Witcher — Henry Cavill answered my question during the Q&A! I’ve yet to get over this! — then binged the rest of the second season over the weekend. Though the previous season had impeccable storytelling and cinematography, this new one had a little more of everything, for better or for worse: more witchers, more intersecting storylines, more aggressive bardcore, more clothes, and more eyebrows. — 20 December 2021

W E E K   0 5 1

☞ Read Tessa Bailey’s Window Shopping, which I think will put me off this author and the insta-love trope forever. I’ve never had an opinion on insta-love before, but I actively hate it now.

☞ Lacked the hand-eye coordination to play myself, but watched my partner in his first 2 days into the rogue-like RPG Hades. Both of us had been intrigued with the news that it was the first video game to win a Hugo Award, and had wanted to see for ourselves what made it worth making a one-off Best Video Game special category for.

☞ Spent Christmas Eve and all of Christmas Day watching the first two films of the Lord of the Rings trilogy with my younger brother. He’s 8 and has a bit of an attention span problem, so imagine my surprise when he sat through the extended versions. I was the one who had to convince him to take a break halfway through each film. It’ll be so wonderful when he gets older and the more talky parts of the trilogy start making sense to him.

☞ Was introduced to Susanna Craig’s writing through the Love and Let Spy historical romance series. The spying element is the weakest part of this series, as evidenced by the pilot Who’s That Earl, though the loving element in the sequel One Thing Leads to A Lover was easily my favorite. My full review for the latest installment, Better Off Wed, is up on Goodreads, and I’m grateful to NetGalley and Kensington Books for the eARC! — 27 December 2021

W E E K   0 5 2

☞ Tried to get into the second season of Emily in Paris, which is as kitschy as ever. Would that Netflix just produced a show about Sylvie Grateau and Camille (who apparently has lasted two seasons without a last name) in Paris. Then perhaps the phrase “costume design” might finally mean less costume and more design.

☞ Rewatched The Witcher with my sister and cousin on New Year’s Eve. It was fun watching their reactions to that thing that comes out in the first episode of the second season. — 31 December 2021

I N   O T H E R   N E W S . . .

At last, at long last, I finally returned to the world of speculative fiction! Work continues to require nearly every waking hour from me and exact a toll on my physical and mental health, but I’m grateful for the fantasy standalones that allowed me to escape to different worlds throughout the month.

In the real world, December has been practically laced with worry over the ceaseless mutation of the COVID-19 virus, worry over what developments the coming year may bring. Still, we continue to trust in science. Scientific invention has grown by leaps and bounds since the Great Influenza pandemic of 1918 — and we have even reached the point where our scientists were able to work at the speed that they did and come up with vaccines that work.

Earlier this month, TIME Magazine lauded this achievement by naming vaccine scientists as the 2021 Heroes of the Year. Their work has felt nothing short of miraculous, to be sure, but I like to think it was centuries of human innovation and problem-solving that led us here.

On a lighter note, the work of Filipino artist Manix Abrera has finally made it onto the mainstream comic book scene! His first published DC Comics cover is a variant cover for Chip Zdarsky’s Batman: The Knight #1, with artistic elements that will be all too familiar to fans of Abrera’s work.

And on a final note to my Filipino readers: with the New Year around the corner, election season draws ever closer. For those who are still undecided over whom to vote into national government, now is not the time to say “Bahala na si Batman.” While there may be no end of the pandemic in sight yet for us in the Global South, we still deserve leaders who will work hard to minimize the pandemic’s impact. So let’s vote wisely, and with the interests of our families and fellow Filipinos at heart!

My WordPress plan renews in January, and it would really mean a lot if you help me stay connected to the Internet awhile longer and help keep the ads away for one more year!

☞ Have you tried any of the books, films, shows, and games mentioned in my weekly digests? How did December go in your corner of the world? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!