The Last Newsletter (of 2022)
Favouritest books, K-dramas and podcasts
Here’s an admission — I love the night of new year’s eve. Not for the tradition of parties. You won’t be able to drag me out of my cocoon (especially post-sunset) for love or money, but the idea of the last hours of the year being both an ending and a beginning is an idea that sits well with me. Whatever it is you choose to do — get drunk, walk around your neighbourhood, go to bed early — tonight stands perfectly balanced between two opposites. You invariably spend the day looking back (especially in the age of social media) and then, after day topples off the pivot of midnight, you look ahead. Everything stays the same and everything changes. New year’s eve, simultaneously ephemeral and constant, will happen year after year. And every year, you’ll have a chance to recollect, reorient, redo, retire… pick your “re” and go forth.
It’s also possible that you’re nursing a massive hangover on this day because you’ve been partying since Christmas and there’s obviously a new year’s eve party that you’ll have to make it to, so you go for the hair of the dog situation and next thing you know, you’re yelling “HAPPY NEW YEAR” and hugging someone who may be the love of your life or a stranger (with that much euphoria and alcohol, it’s hard to tell and really, who cares?) and just like that, it’s a new year.
Either way, it’s a good day, new year’s eve.
For my last missive of 2022, I thought I’d share with you not just my favourite reads of this past year, but also my favourite K-dramas since all those subtitles make for solid long-form reading. I was tempted to do a best-of-everything — films, K-dramas, shows, etc — but my Naga thali and momos will be here in 90 minutes, and I can’t write fast enough to cover all things cultural. Ergo, books and K-dramas it is. If the delivery guy is late, then maybe podcasts too. (This list business is definitely a hangover from having spent much of December compiling best-of lists for work.)
(This is a still from the gorgeous opening credits of Little Women.)
There were a lot of meh K-dramas this year, but the good ones more than made up for the disappointments. I’m a huge fan of the sageuks (historical K-dramas) because it’s always interesting to see what bits of modern thought have been included to create the fictionalised, idealised version of the past, and what from history (invented or real) is being glorified.
The Red Sleeve, Under the Queen’s Umbrella and Bloody Heart all told stories in which women were the central players in political intrigue and not limited to being romantic interests. Of these, only The Red Sleeve is a regular love story — prince falls in love with royal maid — but this K-drama is actually a treatise on women’s rights and the importance of freedom. For years, the maid Deok-im rejects Prince Yi-san’s overtures even though it’s obvious they’re both in love with one another. Even when he becomes king, she refuses to become his concubine and chooses to remain a lowly maid. It’s only in the last two episodes that you realise how constrictive the life of a royal is, particularly when she’s a woman. Deok-im may not have status in society or command the respect of others as a maid, but she has freedom and because of that, she has self-respect. I’m not usually a fan of sad endings — who the hell watches escapist stuff only to be left feeling miserable? — but The Red Sleeve was so, so good. Deok-im also had the best response to an emergency (a man-eating tiger going on a rampage, no less) : “I’m going to read a book.”
Bloody Heart and Under the Queen’s Umbrella imagine a Joseon in which women are able to carve out roles with power and agency for themselves, effectively defying the Confucian gender hierarchy that was prevalent at the time. In Bloody Heart, the romance between the king and the queen become secondary to the court politics. The courtiers seek to control the king and the king fights as dirty as he needs to in order to outwit his court. The queen begins as a puppet in the hands of one courtier, but slowly, she gathers her own pawns and becomes a power centre in her own right. Under all the poetic flourishes and pretty sets, the point of the show is that a political system must have the necessary checks and balances to prevent abuses of power. Bloody Heart is also one of the most exquisitely shot K-dramas I’ve seen.
Under the Queen Umbrella is about a common issue in historical fiction — finding an heir — but all the action happens in the inner court, with the queens, concubines and other royal ladies politicking to make sure their sons secure the coveted position. Even though they are constrained by social rules, the women have powerful weapons — like deciding what food will be served and bringing ‘healers’ in when someone is unwell (slow poison, anyone?). Also, unusually for K-dramas, this is a show about older women. The real contest is between the queen and the queen dowager, played brilliantly by Kim Hye-soo, who is the power-walking, no-nonsense queen who was born a commoner and is treated with contempt by her more aristocratic peers, and Kim Hae-sook. Kim Hae-sook was chillingly good as a villain in Inspector Koo and she’s absolutely vicious as the ruthless matriarch who has a chip on her shoulder because she was not the former king’s queen, but his concubine.
From the modern K-dramas, my favourites were My Liberation Notes, Little Women and Twenty-Five Twenty-One. All three had fantastic women protagonists, wonderful male characters and love stories that left you filled with yearning. All three also faltered in their final episodes. Twenty-Five Twenty-One was filled nostalgia for the Nineties and no matter what anyone says, for me, the real romance is the queer one between the two fencers, played by Kim Tae-ri and Bona. Admittedly, the journalist male hero Baek Yi-jin (Nam Joo-hyuk) was a charmer though. I’m used to seeing journalists vilified in shows and films, so it was unexpectedly heartwarming to see Baek Yi-jin come into his own as a man of principles when he is hired as a sports journalist. Unfortunately, the show felt the need to make him grandstand, which led to the story taking an idiotic and unbelievable twist by shipping him off to cover 9/11. Despite the disappointing ending, for most of its runtime, Twenty-Five Twenty-One was a wonderful ode to friendship and the idealism of youth.
Little Women, written by Jung Seo-kyung (she’s co-written a number of films with Park Chan-wook, including the heartbreaking Decision to Leave), was another show that made a hero out of a journalist. What made it more satisfying is that unlike the idealised Baek Yi-Jin, the journalist in Little Women is flawed and fallible. She’s one of the three sisters at the heart of this show. In-kyung makes many mistakes — not the least of which is keeping a stash of tequila in her work desk — but she doesn’t stop following the story. However, the real star of Little Women is Kim Go-eun as an office worker who finds herself with a rucksack full of stolen cash after her friend and colleague dies by suicide. A close second would be Uhm Ji-won, who plays a socialite and an ambitious politician’s wife. In her early scenes, Uhm seems to be an empty-headed pretty face, but as the story progresses, her character becomes one of the most complex and charismatic people in the drama. Jung’s radical adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel is a gripping thriller that is layered with pungent critiques of class and capitalism. Sure, the end felt a little contrived, but the rest of it is so good, it feels churlish to complain.
My favourite K-drama of the year has to be My Liberation Notes. Every now and then, there’s a K-drama that makes me wish I understood Korean and didn’t have to rely on subtitles. Much more rare is the K-drama that makes me thankful of the translator who has done the subtitling, because even though I don’t know the original language, I can feel the poetry and richness of the dialogues through the translation. My Liberation Notes is as novelistic as a show can get. It follows three siblings as they wander through confusion, misery and grief to arrive at a place of contentment. Each of them are stuck at dead-end jobs and dream of a different life. When they least expect it, little things shift in their world and set them off on journeys of self-discovery. I pity anyone who had to write episode summaries for My Liberation Notes because very little seems to happen and yet seismic shifts take place, quietly but definitively, through everyday gestures and seemingly mundane, soju-drenched conversations. It’s like a Hong Sang-soo film, but spread over 16 episodes. Practically every character is depressed and each of them manages their darkness in different ways — some act out, some withdraw; one turns to another and commands, “Worship me.” And he does. Funny, poignant, sensual, melancholic and insightful, My Liberation Notes is a masterpiece.
I would point out that this year has been filled with wonderful books for me, but the fact is that I read only for pleasure. Consequently, it follows that I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read. Of course, I’ll have pangs of discontent and anxiety each time a shortlist is announced for a literary prize I respect (to whatever limited extent I respect prizes as a concept). Looking at the list of titles, I will invariably berate myself for not reading enough and not knowing what is ‘happening’ in literature. However, these are fleeting moments because with age, I’ve come to the sad epiphany that no matter how much I read or how hard I try, there is a very high probability that the really inventive, radical literary work is something that I’ve missed. Because I’m reading in English. Because class and caste are fortresses that few can scale. Because the publishing business, around the world, is made up of nervous gatekeepers. Because there’s too much to read and too little time. That said, the four books you see above felt new, wonderful and enriching in different ways.
Two of these — The Absolute Book and The Mere Wife — I’ve gushed about in previous newsletters. The other day, a friend and I were talking about mothers, and it struck me that The Mere Wife and Sheila Heti’s Motherhood would make for a brilliant book/ reading club pairing. The mothers in both books are fierce and powerful women who refuse to be straitjacketed by tragedy. Since The Mere Wife is a retelling of Beowulf and Motherhood is auto-fiction (about a writer contemplating the idea of a legacy), they’re of course very different books and the women in them claim agency for themselves in very different ways. However, both books spend a lot of time thinking about what is the role of a mother and how mothers are seen by others. The reason The Mere Wife is on my list of favouritest reads is Maria Dahvana Headley’s language, which is just as lyrical as you’d expect from a poet writing a novel. Also, the note at the start of the book, about how translations have changed the way we read the mother of the monster Beowulf kills, still gives me goosebumps.
Ed Yong’s An Immense World is one of two journalistic non-fiction books that have stayed with me this year. The other one, for those interested, is Red Carpet, about the way the Chinese Communist Party government has established a stranglehold over Hollywood. I’ve written about it here. While Red Carpet is superb reportage, it’s not exactly uplifting and that’s why I gave it a pass, picking An Immense World instead. Yong started writing this book after spending more than a year doing Covid reportage and he felt the need to do something that felt restorative and hopeful. So he turned to nature. An Immense World looks at how other animals experience the world differently from the way we do. If you’re a trivia geek, this book will feel like Christmas, New Year, birthday and every other celebration rolled into one because Yong shares some insane biological facts. More importantly, An Immense World is a celebration of difference and a reminder that what we consider normal is just one of the many ways to navigate the vagaries of the world.
Nora Ephron’s I Remember Nothing was almost the book of the year for me, despite being 12 years old. I picked it up after reading Quentin Tarantino’s Cinema Speculation — I’ll tell you more about Tarantino’s book in the January newsletter — and two chapters in, Ephron had wrapped my heart snugly in the comfort of her inimitable wit. I Remember Nothing is a set of short essays in which Ephron talks about everything from her mother to dining at a restaurant. In her writing, the everyday is lit with eccentric charm and rich with insight. She never makes an exhibition of her intelligence and neither does she linger self-indulgently over emotional nuggets in the hope of yanking at your heartstrings. She just tells you a story, simply and perfectly. Reading I Remember Nothing is like sitting with Ephron, in a snug room, on a couch with comfy cushions, with a mug of hot chocolate (or whatever beverage you prefer) at hand. You can hear Ephron as you read her, which is such a rare quality in a writer, and you don’t stumble over a single phrase or feel the need to re-read anything in order to understand it. However, you may find yourself re-reading entire chapters just because of how much fun you had with that particular story. This book is a delight.
Topping my favourites pile is Elizabeth Knox’s The Absolute Book, which is part crime thriller, part folklore, part environmental fiction, and all kinds of fantastic. It starts off in the regular world, in England, with a tragedy — a young woman is killed in a hit-and-run and her younger sister, Taryn, is convinced that it was not an accident, but a murder. Taryn’s quest for revenge takes her on a revelatory journey, especially after she meets Shift, a not-quite-human being who can slip between different worlds. There are points at which The Absolute Book feels like it’s doing a cheeky hat-tip to thrillers like The Da Vinci Code. At other times, it feels like it’s revealing the arcana of fairy tales. It’s difficult to summarise everything that Knox has managed to weave into the elaborate and detailed tapestry of her magnificent novel, and frankly, I don’t even want to try. Like most good books, The Absolute Book is best enjoyed with no foreknowledge. There are many questions that The Absolute Book makes you think about and of them, one is the cost of building a beautiful world. Nothing, not even magic, comes for free and beauty is often made possible because of some rather painful and ugly decisions. The Absolute Book makes you think about why beauty is precious and what you would sacrifice for it. Some of this novel’s power is in the elegance of Knox’s language and some of its emotional heft must come from some incidents being rooted in Knox’s real life — if you’re interested, listen to this interview — but you don’t have to know anything about Knox to be enraptured by this book. It’s that beautiful.
And quickly, because my momos have arrived, these were my favourite new podcasts of the year:
(I’ve linked to the podcasts’ sites below, but you should be able to find these on all major platforms like Spotify etc)
The format of this ridiculously brilliant podcast is simple: Host Kelsey McKinney takes petty gossip, anonymises the people involved, and retells it to a guest who offers their running commentary to the events being recounted. Thanks to McKinney’s storytelling and her guests’ wit, the net result is the most entertaining podcast EVER. None of the incidents that McKinney talks about are particularly dramatic, but the way she tells you the gossip makes you feel so damn invested in these strangers’ lives that it all feels as action-packed as the Mission Impossible series. At the same time, the stories offer a portrait of middle-class life and restore a certain kind of dignity to the act of gossiping. This is not just idle natter, but a hilarious and revealing discourse on gender, class, and inherited wisdom — because the gossip paints a subtle portrait of our society and social attitudes. All while making the listener (and speakers) erupt in giggles and gasps.
A leaked letter causes widespread alarm in England because it alleges there is an organised attempt at introducing an Islamist agenda into several schools in Birmingham. An investigation follows and by the end of it, a set of teachers are banned from the teaching profession (despite having brought about dramatic improvements to schools that had been under-performing prior to their interventions). They are, of course, all Muslim. But who sent that leaked letter in the first place?
Years later, S-Town’s Brian Reed joins Hamza Syed — a former doctor who was a journalism student at the time of making the podcast — and this curious duo set out to uncover who sent the letter and why the British government chose to ignore certain key details about the case. Not surprisingly, the British establishment has been fuming at this podcast, which calls out certain politicians and local leaders. The show is less a whodunit and more a look at identity, politics and Islamophobia in Britain. Listening to Syed talk about being a Muslim and a journalist made me think very hard about the idea of neutrality, objectivity and the purpose of journalism, especially in places like India where the governments are becoming openly fascist.
Podcasts with short episodes are not really my thing, but this one worked for me. In each episode, host India Rakusen talks to a different guest about one aspect of the menstrual system. If you’ve done some research on the uterus and its tantrums, you might find some of the information basic, but there will definitely be stuff you didn’t know. Traditionally, women’s health hasn’t been given much attention and a lot of the ‘work’ has ended up to be assumptions and misconceptions. Fortunately, that’s changing now and Rakusen’s selected a great set of guests. One of my favourite episodes is one in which a historian of medicine points out that contemporary women have more periods than women from any other time in history. Mind: Blown.
I was convinced I was listening to a fiction podcast when I started listening to this one, but no. There is such a thing as a real-life superhero, by which I mean there are people who dress up in superhero outfits and go about fighting crime. So what happens when some of those people end up getting arrested for being criminals? Meet Phoenix Jones, who was the leader of a gang of crime-fighting superheroes until he had a spectacular fall from grace. Jones is charismatic and also a little bit unhinged, which makes him an excellent subject for journalist David Weinberg. It’s a weird and fascinating story.
This was such a strange case and one of those stories that feels better suited to audio than video. Kirat Assi is a successful radio presenter. She’s also in a relationship with Bobby, a cardiologist. Only there are some odd things about our man Bobby. Like the way he won’t do video calls, for instance. Catfishing stories are dime a dozen now, but few are as sinister and sophisticated as this one. It’s kind of insane the lengths a person will go to mess with another person’s head.
And here endeth the last newsletter of the year. I hope whatever remains of 2022 brings a smile to your face and warmth to your heart. Here’s to 2023 — may it be full of wonder, joy and kindness. And good food. And great spirits (physical and metaphysical). Thank you for reading and see you next year.
Your newsletters are a joy to read! And the Lit pickers too. Amazing recommendations as always 😊