Joanie > Recent Status Updates

a week later and i'm still here. a bit bittersweet starting this after that incredible run but i need this and learning more baseball stats/the game (i.e. different pitches!) to tide me over until spring training 2026. let's run it back, boys. we were so close. let's go, blue jays!

my favourite wuxia story/pairing. my Chinese isn't nearly solid enough to read wuxia novels but paired with a dictionary and my immense familiarity of this story (I have watched the '95 version countless times growing up), hopefully that will be enough to allow me to tackle this. i've owned this series for years now. maybe 2025 will be the year - it's going to take a lot of work.

this is all going to break my heart in the end, i fear. i don't read a lot of fiction with a young narrator but when it's a family drama with tragic consequences and regret and that narrator looking back on things during certain moments, etc., the buildup is going to be a lot. it's been a while for me.

such a fascinating look into the times (30s and 40s Shanghai and HK and some other places too) from someone of Eileen Chang's social standing. I think I should've read her work first before plunging into this collection but I couldn't resist finally starting on it after sitting on this copy I got for myself for months. I don't love all the essays but they keep surprising. she's got so much to write about.

moving along to the area of the book and Mats' life where I got into the Leafs and hockey in general and it's going to be so painful to read about. I really got in at an awful time, missing so many playoff games. also, Mats' ascendancy to the captaincy due to Börje managing to convince him is so moving.

so so special to read about mats' childhood/upbringing back home and how he found his way to the NHL. wasn't expecting the opening chapter to hit me like a ton of bricks :(( it's also so thrilling to see all these iconic names come up that i'll always be in awe of - salming, mogilny (this HHoF omission is a travesty), quinn, etc. perfect book for a leafs fan, sad i couldn't make it out to one of his signings!

I think how much of this book was about his time with the Leafs surprised me. it felt like a lifetime ago! and yet, Naz's career in Toronto was the absolute closest i'd follow the team. reading all those chapters brought back a flood of memories. it's something special to see how much he did love playing here and wanted to stay, and how he's close with a whole bunch of the guys still. but painful.

oh no, didn't realize i might be getting attached to a friends group in academia, i dove (pun intended) into this without knowing much about it at all, but i get so attached so those relationships, my absolute weakness

noooot sure where things are going and that i'm liking the direction but i haven't been this hungry reading a book in a while

got loaned this! can't say i'd be reading a lot of these on my own, but i'm appreciating the new experience all the same. ms. daylily by xujun eberlein and bidders of the din by eric borsuk are the pieces that have stuck with me the most. & celeste marcus' a thousand gentle smotherings and sam meekings' a fist of muscle (perhaps biased bc of me working in cardiology).

already so not prepared for what this sequel will bring. i got dune from the library again just in case i needed a refresher/with my awful memory. messiah's pretty short in comparison but i'm keeping this one as my commute read so it'll take a little while longer.

physically, this book is on the shorter side, but it really feels so expansive. I don't know if I would've picked this up if it wasn't for me being a fan of Anton Hur (did not even remember the synopsis) bc I don't have a desire to read about AI, but it explores it so beautifully. there's such a humanity to this world despite the bleakness thus far. reminding me of Ted Chiang.

that flashback whirlwind of moments of Prasert as a trigger was so stunning. a life of love. a beautifully intriguing read so far as i'm trying to figure this world out. might not have picked the best conditions to read it bc it's light enough to carry along for the commute so i'm reading it back from work every day in little increments.

such a wonderful surprise to have these stories bc i was not ready to have the 2nd book end! beautiful illustrations. really savouring these. leaving the last one to linger on this universe a little bit more before i say goodbye.

getting way too excited seeing these characters really come alive. so so many perspectives, wow. absolutely loving it. heart is sad for the fall of the house atreides, somehow we get more of the duke and the dynamics and regrets and betrayals and it is SO good. my god. book 1 ended perfectly. grateful for the films bringing me to this world.

never ever thought i'd be reading dune but denis villeneuve got me. dune part 2. absolutely all in. hoping to read at least this and messiah before the third film. already enjoying prose, the pacing of this and the various chapters of 'history' we're getting from the future!

a bit tempted to go back to the first book and flip through to see Xingyin's journey bc I'd forgotten so much of it beyond the broad strokes. like the first, some of this book does struggle with pacing for me, but that may also be the amount of description / style of the writing that is my major obstacle in finishing this series. the premise alone with nostalgia would usually be enough.

now admittedly i did a thing i hadn't done in a while and spoiled myself on the ending for a bit bc like chinese dramas these days, i really need to know if i can be invested and reader, it's a go! still struggling a bit with how descriptive everything is but my cdrama loving self/the nostalgia is pulling through. i'm such a wenzhi girlie.

simply transcendent. i'm a very casual basketball viewer myself though i do watch other sports, and have had my heart broken many times over, enough for a lifetime, due to hockey, so the sports aspect of this hits home. beyond that, there is so much more. last time i felt like this was reading eduardo galeano's soccer in sun and shadow, but this is even more personal.

'a song for sleep' is easily my favourite of the stories so far and i'm doubtful another one will top it. these stories are as unsettling in their own ways, as expected. idk if i'm quite in the mood for the collection but i appreciate the creativity in finding how alien our modern lives can be, and on the flip side, finding the humanity in the alien.

such a moving story. the protagonist being someone you would pass by in Chinatown (not just in Toronto's but any city with one) without much of a second glance - the older lady pushing a cart or selling her vegetables on the corner - is so needed. I have never read so much dialogue in the Toisan dialect before. I don't know it myself but as a Cantonese speaker, the similarities makes it very comforting to read.

this is going to be an emotional one for sure bc i'm so ready for an ode to chinatown and surrounding area through the gentrification. showed my dad the art decades apart and he was in awe of seeing the history being depicted bc he was there and remembered.

it's like i haven't updated at all but life has been so busy and moby-dick has been the only book i've been reading on my spare time. i've been consumed with this for weeks now. this re-read's been great even if i haven't been at a pace i want. the prose!!! oh, melville's just showing off. i'm slowly getting more people on board to commit to this.

so apparently i read this way back in 2016!!! even longer than i thought! doing a buddy read and ofc i had this gorgeously illustrated copy by rockwell kent with me on the move. i absolutely adored this when i picked it up on a whim back then, i don't expect to love it any less. i'm telling everybody in my life i'm re-reading moby-dick. trying to dive a little deeper (ha!) this time. melville, i gotchu.

I think I was expecting devastation but I wasn't expecting it to be this brutal. wow. Sinegar? Lifetimes ago. I can't believe it was this same book. how is this going to keep escalating for a trilogy, I don't know where this will go for Rin and Altan. this universe keeps expanding and I'm in awe and a bit of fear over it.

rin's underdog status/drive/desperation/bloodlust is just ticking all my boxes for a solid main character to root for. i'm sure i'll regret her reckless decisions in the future but as for now, you do whatever you want, make them regret it!! in all seriousness, i'm getting attached to kitay, jiang, and the potential of altan. already worried about their fates.

i placed a library hold on this SO long ago after seeing this title in a bookshop and thinking it sounded nice, but had forgotten the premise, so by the time i'm reading this months later, it's completely new and surprising. loving the idea of a book recommendation, a small nudge, changing the course of the lives of these characters.

reading viet thanh nguyen for the first time in a while and i'm reminded again of why i love his writing so much and why he's one of the authors that i've read nearly everything that they've written.

started this last fall but didn't finish it before my library copy was due back (we unfortunately don't have hard copies of it), and it's taken weeks and weeks for me to get it again, so here we are! reading about his tenure in williams was a rough one. never felt like he would've gone to ferrari. i didn't watch f1 before newey at RB so i'll always see him as RB, so this has been eye-opening.

couldn't find my edition to match - oh well! trying to do a few more re-reads this year (of classics, mostly!) to keep my reading interest going. another one of my favourites that I read after watching the miniseries. :)