8-24-2025 MY FAVES: damsels playing distressed

 books of the week

this week in my solo book club, i'm still engulfed in tajna krvavog mosta. i have such an urge to visit the croatian capital, zagreb, because most of the book is set there, in actual neighborhoods of it. my plan is to do a zagorka tour next time i visit. the book is huge, and i'll be sharing more bits about it.

so far, we're trying to solve a murder mystery, and possibly one of the first mentions of cross-dressing and drag in croatian literature. how hasn't hollywood, or at least the creators of downton abbey or bridgeton get their hands on this series? 

movies of the week

so far, just reruns of mentalist for sib and i as the evenings get cooler. 

we watched rosaline (2022), a hulu-produced period rom-cam depicting romeo and juliet, from cousins rosaline's point of view. 

the film had strong bridgerton influence mostly in music, and race-bending characters. i was positively surprised by the freshness of dialogue, wittiness of characters, and a simple but not boring or too fast plot. 

music of the week

sib and i went to the one world day parade at the rockefeller gardens on sunday, and when we stopped at the hungarian gardens, the lady we spoke to has a program on the college station that plays new and old hungarian faves, and she urged us to listen to azahriah, a young up and coming star. as i type my last bits of the blog entries for the week, i am listening to his songs. if you like rap, reggae and pop mix, or if you're a big reggaeton fan, azahriah would fit your taste. it sounds spanish without being spanish. he sounds like rasta if you're familiar with serbian reggae rap. 

i saved his songs pannonia and várnék.