It is that time of year, my friends. Time for my annual book and movie recommendations! As always, these are chosen from books and movies that I particularly enjoyed within the past year. They’re listed in no particular order.
There’s nothing better than snuggling up under layers of blankets and immersing yourself in another world. I hope the following list is useful, either for your own comfort or for your holiday shopping!
BOOKS
The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosume Natsukawa (2017)
As always, I like to start off with a Christmas-y work to match the season!
This translated Japanese novel is a charming, short cozy read featuring everything from a sassy, talking cat, to a magic bookshop, to an anime-esque, deadbeat but good-on-the-inside boy going on an adventure with a cute and over-achieving girl romance. Just think Suzume meets The Little Prince meets nerdy, book-loving author.
The whole book is a heartfelt cry for the publishing industry and readers alike to love literature for its intrinsic value rather than automatically prioritizing what’s new and hot or lucrative. The climax of the story takes place on Christmas, so if you’re looking for a holiday read that’ll touch the hearts of bookworms all around the world, this is the story for you.
The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar (2025)
Another cozy read! This wonderful book is written by the legendary Louis Sachar, author of Holes and The Wayside School series.
Albert and I had the opportunity to attend his author talk while he was doing the book tour for The Magician of Tiger Castle. I’m happy to say that the man himself is just as sweet and gentle as his book. There are several authors whose talks we’ve gone to who are ungrateful about the success they’ve achieved in their careers. Such authors tend to get annoyed and even openly roll their eyes when fans hone in on one of their past books and want to talk only about that older, more famous book. Louis, though, was happy to talk about Holes as much as his fans desired and emphasized several times that he was honored that Holes is still so well-loved today.
The Magician of Tiger Castle is a wonderful example of how skilled Mr. Sachar is as a writer. His words conjure up the most delightful feeling of being wrapped in a soft blanket that turns out to be a magic carpet that then whisks you off to far-away lands. My mom put it best when she said that the book felt like a peaceful bedtime story written for adults. A beautiful exploration of friendship, found family, and fatherhood, The Magician of Tiger Castle will leave you feeling happy, sad, and grateful all at once. Fans of The Princess Bride, in particular, will like this book.
Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)
Confession: I’m not a huge fan of The Lord of the Rings. Blasphemy, I know. Especially coming from a fantasy author. I do enjoy the movies, but I’m not that enthusiastic about the books. I find them hard to engage with despite their obvious literary, historical, and creative genius. So, when I heard that Dune is to science fiction what LotR is to fantasy, I procrastinated as long as I could from reading Dune. To make matters worse, the recent film adaptations, while visually spectacular, were hard for me to follow plot-wise, thus extending my procrastination. But as a genre fiction writer, I knew I had to read it eventually, and this year, I finally ran out of excuses.
Upon opening Dune, I was relieved to discover that the only real similarity between it and LotR is that they are both sizeable in world-building, cast members, and page count.
Oh, and they’re both works of genius.
I loved this book. And just so you know, the book is very different from the movies, so don’t judge the book by the movies if they’re your only exposure to this scifi classic! True, the movies do a great job at sucking out the fan-favorite main events of the book and translating them onto the screen, but there are so many major differences that the book and the films are two different experiences entirely. Take the portrayal of Jessica, the protagonist’s mother, for example. I don’t know why the movies chose to portray her as a straight-up crazy, evil witch when she’s not at all in the book. In fact, I really enjoyed her inner journey in the book, which explores the struggles of womanhood and motherhood colliding with the affairs of politics, religion, and much more.
The book as a whole expertly examines timeless aspects of humanity through its fictional setting and characters. It really is one of the most masterful displays of modern literature combining spectacle (in the form of sandworms, Fremen warriors, and a harsh but beautiful desert planet) with lessons that stretch across all human worlds, real or not. Such is the power of genre fiction. It shows that we humans will all act in our universal human ways no matter what crazy world we’re part of while, at the same time, demonstrating how circumstance and personality will make all the difference in shifting the sands of time and fate.
A work bursting with creativity and unique for its time, Dune is a must-read for anyone who loves to philosophize while exploring new and dangerous worlds.
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (2025)
Though this book wasn’t as much of a page-turner as its predecessor, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, it still proved to be an engrossing read like all the other installments of the Hunger Games.
The real reason this book made it onto my list, though, is because it successfully portrayed descent into madness and specifically, madness brought on through suffering and trauma. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m diagnosed with PTSD, and as someone who struggles with the inner madness and torment only trauma can inflict, I can attest to the fact that this book did an extraordinary job of creating a visceral experience in which readers are transported into Haymitch’s mind as he’s forced to travel down the tragic and slippery slope known as trauma.
I have mixed feelings about how Suzanne Collins leaned on Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem, “The Raven,” to portray Haymitch’s descent. “The Raven” is such a famous literary work that fans of the poem will likely love this book, or at the very least, have an easier time approaching it, simply because it contains this renowned poem. I’m not a fan of showcasing another writer’s work so extensively in a piece that’s supposed to be yours and yours only. Your art should test the limits of your intelligence and creativity, but can you really test yourself to the furthest extent possible if you’re incorporating another’s work to the point that it becomes inextricable with your own?
However, the way in which Collins used the poem really did drive home how this famous poem, which is so often reduced to friendly and marketable pop culture merch, is actually a disturbing and tragic tale of a man going insane due to loss and suffering, which in turn, heightens the intensity of Haymitch’s own madness and our own experience of that madness. Again, I have mixed feelings, but I must admit that Collins managed not only to honor Poe’s poem but also clarify its original message and use it to portray trauma on a deeper level, making this read that much more convincing and absorbing.
Eye in the Blue Box by Ann Yihyang Kim (2025)
You didn’t think I’d pass up on a perfectly good opportunity to advertise my own book, did you?
You can find everything from a synopsis to an excerpt on this page, but since most of you are already familiar with my work, I thought I’d share instead on a surprising discovery I’ve made in the past few months: a good number of my book’s biggest fans are also die-hard fans of the mystery/thriller/suspense genre.
Interesting, isn’t it? Especially considering how I’ve always categorized my book as dark fantasy and action & adventure. Plus, I’m not well-read in the mystery/thriller genre.
When I step back and think about it, though, it does make sense. I was hellbent on making Eye in the Blue Box (as well as its sequel) a page-turner, and one of the best ways to ensure that people keep flipping the pages is to crank the stakes up to maximum intensity, add a bit of mystery, and keep throwing one dire and mysterious conflict after another into the reader’s mind.
I also shaped the plot around my world building so that much of the world is a huge unknown at first and the plot progresses by discovering one aspect of the world then another and another. Each time the reader learns something new, more mysteries are presented through that new knowledge. Questions are always being answered and created, all at a clipping pace, thus sustaining the reader’s curiosity and willingness to keep on turning those pages. So in a way, Eye in the Blue Box can be considered a dark fantasy thriller, which is a categorization I didn’t even consider until I started getting more feedback from all my wonderful mystery/thriller/suspense fans!
MOVIES/SHOWS
Samurai Jack, created by Genndy Tartakovsy (2001-2017 with a long hiatus in between)
If I had to name one of the greatest TV shows of all time, Samurai Jack would be in my top 3 picks. Let’s just say this show won 8 Emmy Awards for a reason.
The character design for Aku, the villain of the series, is one of the most intimidating yet intriguing character designs I’ve ever encountered in an animated medium. Actually, his looks scared me so much as a kid that I only ever watched a few episodes of the show. At the same time, I kept watching what little I did because Aku’s design was as unique and absorbing as it was intimidating. I made a firm decision to watch the whole series once I was older and less scared of Aku, and decades later, I still remembered my promise to myself because Aku’s image was forever branded onto my memory. The fact that the legendary Mako voiced him (as well as Uncle Iroh in Avatar the Last Airbender) only makes him that much more memorable.
Even with Aku aside, though, all the artwork and animation are absolutely stunning. The simple yet bold style, the color palettes, the experimentation with composition, contrast, and inversion, the flow of the action sequences, the camera angles, the sound effects and tracks. All of it brings heaping loads of originality and some kind of speculative twist that scream “genius.”
The show also pays constant homage to some of my favorite genres, including Miyazaki films, anime/manga in general, old samurai films, Frank Miller comics, scifi and fantasy classics, and much more.
The plot is often simple as the series was categorized as a “kid’s show” at the time of its original release. But let’s be real here. Samurai Jack is an adult show, and it always has been. Instead of complicated plots or deep character development, the show offers extremely meditative and immersive experiences through its mastery of its visual medium, almost in a Christopher Nolan-esque way.
There’s a good amount of filler episodes, but even these I often found witty or engaging in a way that helped me to dive deeper into the fascinating world the creators made for Jack, a world where anything goes and combining whatever genres is somehow always possible. No matter how many weird elements the creators decided to combine in a single episode, they always found a way for it not only to work but also to scream “Samurai Jack.”
Here are some short clips from my favorite episodes. I hope you check them out!
Ballerina, an 87Eleven production (2025)
Ballerina is a John Wick spin-off that this time, features a female protagonist. 87Eleven, the company which produced this movie as well as the whole Wick saga, is composed of veteran stuntmen famous for combining the typical, unrealistic action eye candy of Hollywood action movies with grounded martial arts and gunplay that could actually be used in real life.
I love how they made “fight like a girl” the primary theme for Ballerina and put their own 87Eleven spin on the motto. The protagonist is clearly outmuscled by all her male counterparts and, in turn, must resort to resourcefulness, savagery, and a healthy education in weaponry to survive. This is a cliche that many other movies have already explored, but the mind-bogglingly creative ways in which Ballerina shows how, exactly, to fight like a girl make this movie unique. Combining “feminine” objects, like ice skates and skillets, with the flexibility and endurance of ballerinas as well as realistic MMA moves and gunplay to take down hulking men, this movie is a more thought-out and satisfying answer to the question of “how do you fight as a girl but still realistically win?”
Frankenstein, directed by Guillermo del Toro (2025)
Oscar Isaac is hot. Huh? What? Guillermo del Toro? Frankenstein? Oh, right, right.
Albert and I both loved that this movie is an adaptation of the original book, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, rather than yet another homage piece to pop culture works that have spawned from the book over the decades. I also appreciated that Guillermo del Toro, in his usual del Toro style, injected his own, very personal perspective on life and death into this movie. Pretty ballsy, if you ask me, especially considering how all his cutting, unstitching, and restitching of the story causes the movie to send a very different message than the famous book it’s based upon. Despite all the alterations, though, he still manages to preserve that sad and philosophical air that I associate with the book while also extracting all the core horror elements the story is so famous for.
While I’m not a huge fan of del Toro often portraying women as falling in love with literal monsters to prove a metaphorical point, I still greatly appreciated his overarching message in this movie, which is one of acceptance and hope.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle, from the world of Koyoharu Gotouge (2025)
This rated-R movie has all the spectacular, blood-splattering action sequences you could ever hope to see in a shonen anime movie, so much so that it’s quite easy to see how it broke pretty much all box office records ever. But the main reason I loved Infinity Castle was because it managed to tug on my heartstrings like no other film before it. I’m serious. This was the first time in my life that I almost excused myself from the theater because it was getting too difficult to stifle my ugly sobs.
It begins - I repeat, begins - with the tragic and brutal death of a beloved character. From there, we see dramatic and rewarding conclusions to previous cliffhangers and character arcs. And, as expected in any Demon Slayer arc, we’re blasted with heartwrenching backstories of protagonists and antagonists alike.
Infinity Castle, in particular, is a great example of why I love the Demon Slayer series so much. It doesn’t indulge in graphic violence or dark material for the sake of reveling in darkness but uses its heavier material as metaphors to portray inner, human darkness and broken circumstances so many of us in reality can relate to. Demon Slayer is adept at asking viewers to show compassion and mercy upon others, especially those who may seem undeserving of patience at first glance, while also upholding a sense of justice that refuses to sweep wrong-doing under the rug.
My only gripe with the movie is that viewers do need to watch the previous four seasons and the Mugen Train movie to follow this film. But rest assured that all previous material is also extremely entertaining, so if you haven’t watched any Demon Slayer, it’s time to use Christmas break to binge!
