明けましておめでとうございます！ 新年快乐！

As always, I would like to write more in the future. 2023 and 2024 ended up with me not really writing public blog posts or doing talks due to work, and I hope to change that. (That includes here, the company blog, and the Arrow blog.)

I spruced up the theme here. The background color may be a bit too aggressive; maybe I’ll continue tuning it. (Can you guess the theme?)

In lieu of a reflection post I’ll offer some things I liked reading in 2024, in no particular order. (I read a lot due to multiple struggles with sleeplessness in 2023 and 2024.)

• Farseer and Liveship Traders trilogies (Robin Hobb): fantasy books with rich worldbuilding. Farseer stands out to me personally because the main character is gifted, but not unreasonably powerful; he stands at the center of some sort of destiny, but isn’t handed his fate; he makes some good choices, many bad choices, wins some victories, and suffers many defeats. In short, it feels like FitzChivalry actually has to struggle towards his goal, and his foes aren’t incompetent as they so often are.
• The Water Outlaws (SL Huang): I’ve not read much xianxia (not much of it is translated and my Chinese is too poor to read the sources directly), so this was my introduction to the genre, via a sort of historical-fiction Robin Hood-esque tale.
• 「恋した私は」 (“Koi shita watashi wa”, TAKEDA Ayano): a yuri short story of forbidden love for someone who believed themselves incapable of love.
• 「亡き少女の為のパヴァーヌ」 (“Naki shoujo no tame no pavane”, Koge Donbo): aka “Pavane for a Dead Girl”, unfortunately this is permanently on hiatus so the story stops right when things are getting good. A rather messy (in a way I like) drama about a violinist who makes a deal with an angel: in return for beauty and talent, he must deliver the souls of seven girls. If that interests you (and you can’t read Japanese/don’t want to read an unfinished series), read Ryka Aoki’s Light from Uncommon Stars for a much different take on a similar premise.
• 「カノン」 (“Canon”, Harumi Chihiro): a short story about a boy who wakes up in the hospital with memory loss. Harumi-sensei is one of my favorite mangaka, and unfortunately the editor at her magazine didn’t reply to my email, but I believe she’s retired as her serialization ended and she hasn’t published a new short story in a while. (But she has no social media presence, so perhaps she’s just taking a break.)
• 「偽りのマリィゴールド」 (“Itsuwari no marigold”, Sasuke) is a sort of Taishou-era drama about a young woman who finds out that her recently deceased brother had been seeing a blind girl; unable to tell her the truth, she tries to pretend to be him instead.
• 「スポットライトは当たらない」 「あんたが言うな」 (“Spotlight wa ataranai” and “Anta ga iu na”, Tsudura Ryo): a pair of short stories about two friends, one of whom seems to have a thing for the other. Short and sweet.
• 「こよりの帰り道」 「ふたり。」 (“Koyori no kaerimichi” and “Futari.”, Ashioka Rangyo): two short stories by the same author (who I hope comes back with more or even a full serialization). One is a slightly supernatural road trip, the other about a broken family and trauma.