Hello from January

Everything I watched and read last month

Hello! My January has been off to a busy start. I’m experiencing the strange beginning-of-the-year motivation that I can only assume mentally well people experience annually around this time. The canyon-sized distance between thinking of doing things and actually doing them has snapped shut and I’m enjoying acting on my every impulse. You will see evidence of this in the whopping 8 movies I watched this month (I think I watched 6 movies all of 2024) Trying something new and telling you a little about all the non-work related things I’ve been enjoying? A drawing-filled edition of this newsletter will be sent to you shortly, don’t worry!

This month I read:

• The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu: Truly mindblowing. This is sci-fi with the pacing of a murder mystery, set against the backdrop of 40-50 years of recent Chinese history and with the most brilliant worldbuilding I’ve read recently. I loved it.

• The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu Normally I’m a sophomore slump denier (my favourite Lord of the Rings book is The Two Towers) because I love it when the characters are all situated and we have a slower book of them just getting ready for the action of Book 3. The Dark Forest though, dragged. The first 2/3rds of the book has so much cullable fat that it was a bit of a chore to slog through. Just when I’d decided to finish this one up and shelve reading the 3rd for a bit, the plot picked up so much that I’m dying to pick up Death’s End immediately.

• The Vegetarian by Han Kang: I had to take a break from Three-Body Problem to speed through this for my book club. I can’t decide if I liked this weird little book or not. The last section definitely brought things together nicely, but I felt a bit lost for most of the book. I’m hoping that discussing it will help me better interpret what I read. 

• Intermezzo by Sally Rooney: I’m cheating a little by including this because I’m not done yet but I’m loving it at the halfway point. I’m always a little surprised by how much I like Sally Rooney, I’m so swayed by the nonsense discourse about her literary it girl status but I always find her books so well observed and so insightful.

This month I watched: (so rare to watch enough to share!)

• Bad Sisters S2 - I had my doubts about whether this perfect little gift of a show needed a season 2 and I’m still not sure the answer to that question is a yes but I know that I wanted a season 2. They did a fantastic job not making this feel tacked on/ drawn out. It felt like a separate show about the same characters which is an interesting format.

• Amaltash (Marathi) - A very sweet, slow, slice-of-life Marathi movie. Its largely a romcom about music. The main actress has the most mediocre voice so you’ll have to suspend your disbelief when the rest of the characters react to her singing with wild amazement. Other than that, its charming and sweet. My mum and I had decided to watch more Marathi movies together and I must say I find the pace of the handful I’ve seen refreshingly measured.

• Anora - My boyfriend has been saying he wants to watch this together since it came out because he thinks it is hilarious and high-energy. This is not my opinion. I thought it was charming, and as I gain more distance from it, I feel more generous toward it. In the moment though, it left me a little unsatisfied

• Picasso (Marathi) - I liked this movie a lot but the dialogue was stunted and contrived which was a shame because it is a nicely contained story about art (I’m so partial to these) and visually quite interesting.

• Lawrence of Arabia - Watched this with my dad (who can recite several bits of the movie - weird). Enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Am trying not to think too hard about the politics of it. The visuals are so beautiful, I screenshotted several frames to paint.

• Laapataa Ladies - Another group/family watch. I thought this was a neat premise very well executed. I’ll always appreciate choosing to approach a subject with humor, even in the case of darker/ more serious things.

• Gulabjaam (Marathi) - This was sold to me as Marathi Julie and Julia. I have never watched that movie but I think I loved this one. It will make you hungry but it will also make you want to cook so maybe that’s okay. Be warned, we could not find it online with subtitles.

• Fly Me To the Moon - This was what I watched to get myself through the last 2 hours of my grueling 14 hour flight home to NYC. I enjoyed it a lot but I generally I am kind towards movies I watch on planes. I’ll admit it was a little silly and formulaic but I felt like all the formulae worked? It made me feel temporarily like I cared deeply about the moon landing.

• Wicked: My family was starkly divided on this one. I’ll spare them and not tell you how everyone felt. I’ll just say that I found the first two-thirds a little soulless but that the ending brought things together really nicely. Ariana Grande was surprisingly charming in this role. I think what I had an issue with was the worldbuilding. It was so spectacle-heavy rather than the kind of careful, detail-oriented worldbuilding I tend to enjoy. 

• About Time - This is a charming movie but a bad one. I love a scifi/fantasy thought experiment and I love time travel media but I found everything else about it contrived.

Other Highlights:

• I finally went to Murud Janjira Fort which I’ve been mildly obsessed with for a few years now. My family is in Murud frequently because my parents have a house nearby and everyone but me has visited the fort. For those not in the know, Murud Janjira is a famously unconquered fort that’s just off the coast in Murud, Maharashtra. You can only get there in small boat and the fort’s ruin has many elements that are surprisingly well preserved. It is gorgeous and fascinating and I’m afraid that I’ll end up trying to write a middle-grade fantasy book set in it. The history of the fort and the man that built it (Malik Ambar, who is conspiciously absent from all the info on the boards in the fort. I wonder why that might be!!) is fascinating, I highly recommend looking it up.

I will have a few illustrations to share with you soon! Leaving you with this picture of a sword hilt that I was delighted to find on my most recent visit to CSMVS museum in Bombay.