Robin's Random Rambles

" Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called ... life ". I thought of this line while watching the final episode of When Life Gives You Tangerines . The drama opens and more or less closes with a very appropriate English-language song, Yesterday , but Prince's invitation does kind of sum up what the whole drama was about. Life, and getting through it. This was a remarkable drama. It was the 327th K-drama that I have completed, and the third which I have scored at 12/10. I score dramas at more than 10/10 when they impact me in some way that is more meaningful or more powerful than simply being a more or less flawless viewing experience. This drama scored 12 for touching me deeply and for overcoming an obstacle in the process. I was a three year old middle child when my mother decided that the role was not for her and left it to my Dad. She made the right call, for her and us, but that experience has long coloured my interaction with Ko...

My first ever KDrama review on my blog, prompted by realising that 500 characters on Mastodon was nowhere enough to express how I felt about Check-in Hanyang. I started this drama because the synopsis on MDL made it sound like a fusion sageuk, basically a youth/college drama transported into the Joseon era. And the first few episodes felt a little bit like that, but were also setting up the revenge arc which was at the heart of the story—a minor detail the synopsis I read completely omitted. Particularly since 2023, K dramas of no more than 12 episodes have become much more common. So I was surprised that this one was 16 episodes of around 70 minutes each. That length contributed to one of the biggest problems I have with the drama – tonal confusion. When I speak of tonal confusion, I don't mean that I expect a Drama to have only one tone, or flavour. What I do want is for the Drama to be clear about which tone or flavour is dominant, and which is the garnish. This Drama, lik...

Friday, July 27, 2022: The day I marked on the Storygraph my first ever Dean Street Press book as "read". That book was The Crime at the Noah's Ark by Molly Thynne. It was not love at first sight, as my reaction at The Storygraph indicates. Sunday, December 29, 2024: The day I marked on the Storygraph my 100th Dean Street Press book as "read." That book was Harlequin House by Margery Sharp and my Storygraph reaction shows how the times (and tones) have changed. They have me well and truly hooked! The image below shows all 100 of the DSP books I've completed up to the time of writing this post. This post is a paean, so what follows are reasons I think Dean Street Press deserve one. 1. Passionate People: it is very clear that Dean Street Press care very much about what they do. They don't just sell books, they sell readers on books, and they sell authors. I bought an entire series of novels by one author solely on the strength of a guest ...

 It's December 2024 and Dean Street Press have once again given me something to celebrate. The wonderful Liz Dexter's   hosting a third Dean Street December , and this year, my entries feature four new-to-me authors, between them accounting for all but four of my set. For the inaugural Dean Street December , I managed to read and review 27 books published by Dean Street Press. For Dean Street December Deux , I opted for a much saner 15, and that's where I've ended up this year too, shown in the image below. In last year's challenge, several of the non-mystery middlebrow books were new to my library, but this year the major new entries are two mystery series I'd not even heard of before and my first two non-fiction works from Dean Street Press, biographies by Sheridan Morley. One of the three middlebrow entries from is a second chance for an author who left me tepid on my first encounter, Susan Scarlett.  Once again, I plan to read the books in the left-to-ri...

 After a sad start to 2023 for Dean Street Press with the loss of its founder, I hope that Liz Dexter's   hosting a second Dean Street December will end the year on a brighter note for all involved. For the inaugural Dean Street December, I managed to read and review 27 books published by Dean Street Press. For Dean Street December Deux , I've opted for a much saner 15, shown in the image below. As with last year's challenge, several of the non-mystery middlebrow books are new to my library, another seasonally appropriate donation to DSP and Furrowed Middlebrow ! 😁  I plan to read the books in the left-to-right order of that screenshot, mixing up mysteries from Brian Flynn and Christopher Bush with middlebrow works from Molly Clavering and her next-door neighbour, D. E. Stevenson. Once again, many thanks to Steve Barge for Brian Flynn and to  Curtis Evans for Christopher Bush.   As an avid user and endorser of The StoryGraph , I'll again be posting all my...