november 2025 finds is here! it’s kinda long, grab a snack.
BOOKS
1. i read slowly but boldly going nowhere by megan dominescu. it’s an art book by a romanian artist whose show i saw in bucharest recently. i liked it!
2. baggage by alan cumming is his second book i read. it was entertaining. you would enjoy it, especially if you are already his fan.
MANGA
3. i re-read volume 3 and 4 of midnight diner. i loved them all over again, it felt like i had never read them.
MAGAZINES
isamaya french is featured in both the magazines i read this month. i guess she must be pushing something at the moment.
4. the cover girl on the december issue of british vogue is the stranger things kid. very nice wintery outfit!
5. and in apartamento issue 36 isamaya talks about herself and about her apartment.
MUSIC
6. ca7riel and paco are still riding high: latin gramys and this new banger. i love the track and both videos. chaos!
7. the neighbourhood are back with (((((ultraSOUND))))). i’m already obssessd with lovebomb!
8. pulp needed to have their own tiny desk!
9. how can goo goo dolls sound just as good as back in the day?
of course, nothing can top iris in the rain.
this is iris live this year.
and the original iris video.
10. i have missed israel fernandez and tomatino recently. they had live concerts close to my city, but not close enough.
11. the white stripes were inducted in the rock’n’roll hall of fame. twenty one pilots pay homage to them by doing seven nation army live.
12. brian molko helped out with two songs during a recent deus concert.
an optional video of roses and disappointed in the sun.
and here’s more info about the happening and brian’s history with deus.
13. love is here to stay by tony bennett and diana krall is a jazzy album that seems appropriate for the holiday seeson. that’s probably because the music is by george gershwin.
14. wet leg have a new video for mangetout. i love how they made the low bugdet work.
15. paul anka wrote my way when he was 25!
16. artanu was one of the biggest names of the romanian alternative scene. he died recently.
17. air had to have their tiny desk, too.
FILMS
18. a24’s sorry, baby by and with 31 year old eva victor is a film on a rather difficult topic. you might like it.
19. i liked urchin by and with 29 year old harris dickinson. he’s found the right tone for the topic, go watch it.
20. i went to see several documentaries in the andrei ujica retrospective during the porto post doc festival.
i saw the videograms of a revolution. i cried half the film. it’s been 36 since the revolution and we’re still very stupid.
21. 2 pasolini is a short about pasolini’s location scouting in palestina in 1960.
and unknown quantity is a long discussion between paul virilio and svetlana alexievich (who wrote a book about the cernobyl catastrophe). i liked the minimalist camera angle, but the monotonous tone of the voices made me fall asleep at times.
22. the autobiography of nicolae ceaușescu is another film painful to watch for romanians.
23. twst – things we said today is his 2024 film about beatlemania as well as about the watts riots.
20. father mother sister brother by jim jarmusch was the closing film of the festival. featuring literally only celebrities, the film is made of three parts, all about family dynamics.
TV SERIES
24. i love la has a chaotic vibe that i like. rachel is starring in the show she created and produced: power moves at 30 years of age.
25. i binged the 3 seasons of white lotus. all three are worth watching. production of the forth season starts in 2026. the story will take place in france.
PODCASTS
26. alexa chung is not my favourite, but the episode was interesting enough.
27. i’m one of the few people who doesn’t like how rosalia appropriates and then discards one culture per album. on her most recent one, she sings in 13 languages. oh, dear. there’s a video out there where she explains how now she can say sauvignon blanc properly. no, she cannot.
28. annie leibowitz was way more interesting than i expected.
29. i listened to the louis theroux podcast episodes with bob vylan si with david byrne.
30. jefferson hack has a podcast called where it’s at. i listened to the mark ronson, rick ruben and merlin sheldrake episodes.
31. this month, i listened to two good bad billionaire episodes: hetty green and sam walton of walmart fame.
32. i liked the diary of a ceo episode with dr. robert lustig called 17 seconds of pleasure can rewire your brain. i need to listen to it once again, since there is so much scientific lingo.
33. i listened to both wpisodes of unpacking japan with alex shapiro aka tokyo portfolio. you’ll like them if you’re interested in the japanese and tokyo real estate market.
EXHIBITIONS
34. as i was saying above, i saw megan dominescu‘s show if we lived here, we’d be home by now at anca poterasu gallery in bucharest. and i really liked it!
35. i also saw dumitru gorzo’s show called does anyone want to be me?, at mare. his work invades the inside as well as the outside of the museum. interesting.
YOUTUBE
36. aomori is a prefecture in the north of japan. it’s worth visiting, like probably all the rest of the prefectures.
37. where to eat in cdmx.
38. where to eat in zürich.
39. where to eat in paris.
40. where to eat in kolkata.
41. this is an introduction to spanish tapas.
42. find out what a kafana is.
43. it seems that i need to go back to lille and discover more of it.
44. i’ve always wondered about the way memory works.
45. getting out of poverty is not as easy as you’d think.
46. youreally need to know this.
47. emotional intelligence is a great set of skills to have.
48. we should be good at protecting ourselves.
49. being a good friend is not easy.
50. choosing a good partner is a very important things.
51. i need the lotus method every single day.
52. this was fun enough.
53. chris abroad tours the japanese island of shikoku and eats local delicacies with his friend ryotoro.
how was your november? i spent 2 days in guarda and 2 weeks in bucharest. you can check the resulting posts on my insta.
since this is my last post this year, enjoy your winter holidays!
photo and video credits: copyright holders and little aesthete
