Reading
In January, I read 4 books:
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Tuina — 3.5/5. A novel that draws you in right from the start, but by the end I felt the author intentionally included quite a lot of sexual content.
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A Salty Joke — 3.8/5. A fairly long novel, still in Liu Zhenyun’s signature style—simple language telling an absurd life story.
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The World I See — 4/5. Li Feifei’s autobiography. I plan to read it again and write a brief reading note. While reading, I kept marveling at how random and difficult each person’s journey is. Li Feifei is truly humble, recognizing that personal effort and decisions matter greatly, but so do the destiny, benefactors, and luck given along the way.
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A History of Venture Capital in China — 2.5/5. Read it more like gossip. Too many characters, and I was only interested in the ones I already knew. Got a quick overview of Shen Nanpeng and Sequoia; Zhang Lei and Hillhouse; Xu Xiaoping and ZhenFund; Zhang Ying and Matrix Partners.
I watched Quasi-War, quite a unique film with background music playing throughout.
Also caught up on Avatar: The Way of Water and Fire and Ashes, but the repeated plot patterns make me feel I probably won’t watch any more of this series.
This year, I’m looking forward to the release of Dune 3.
I’m still following The Years of Peace, a TV drama that stays close to historical facts—worth watching.
Throughout January, I kept replaying Soundtoy’s Your City. Previously, I listened to another of their songs quite a lot—No One Can Get Closer to Us.
Oh, and at the end of the month, I really wanted to hear the ending theme Homeland from Beyond the Horizon, sung by Liu Huan. Fortunately, it’s available on Apple Music. 🎵
Creation
I recorded a video sharing my newly upgraded microphone, but the engagement wasn’t great. Two consecutive videos have had low numbers, which dampened my enthusiasm for content creation.
The first video in February will be a quick-start tutorial for Apple Reminders. Both A-roll and B-roll have been shot, but the B-roll filmed on an iPad didn’t turn out very well, and editing has been delayed…
Once I finish the Apple Reminders tutorial, I’ll need to adjust my upcoming topics. I think I should focus more on AI-related content this year.
On the side, I’m having Claude Code help me build my first app.
The app framework is done, but there are still many details to refine before it can be launched.
The working name for the app is Booko — adding an “o” after “Book.” It’s a reading-related app, and I want to combine the elegance of Mudi Vinyl with the card-note style of Flomo, so that highlights from WeChat Reading, Apple Books, and Kindle can be presented in Booko.
I’m still brainstorming ways to make the app more unique and fun. One interesting idea is to add a map view for imported books:
The earliest launch would be in March.