Read-in-Progress Wednesday

[geraineon]

This is your weekly read-in-progress post for you to talk about what you're currently reading and reactions and feelings (if any)!

For spoilers:

<details><summary>insert summary</summary>Your spoilers goes here</details>

<b>Highlight for spoilers!*</b><span style="background-color: #FFFFFF; color: #FFFFFF">Your spoilers goes here.</span>*

Comments

[duckprintspress]

I finished Yuwu!! imo, the pacing falls off a cliff near the end, especially Highlight for spoilers!*after Mo Xi passes out after confronting the Emperor and dealing with the backlash from the Vow of Calamity.* I'm just pretending the last 20% or so of the book didn't happen and imagining my own fix-its. *shrug* Overall, despite that, I enjoyed it. All the pieces were there - Meatbun nailed the angst-filled set-up - she just ultimately failed to give Mo Xi any agency in his own story, and pissed me off bad enough I wrote a long Tumblr rant about it, lmao.

I made a little progress on Dream of the Red Chamber, but the number of characters is so confusing, sigh. I know it won't get LESS confusing if I don't keep reading it regularly, but. oh well.

I'm now at 73% on 我和我对家 and continue to flip-flop between "I suck at this and understand nothing and will be a Chinese failure forever" and "oh, I followed all of that, I CAN DO THIS!" I'm starting to think a lot about which of my books to tackle next and how to handle things, and I'm considering some changes to my approach to help me improve my vocab more than the current method is doing. I'll probably post to the group for help picking cause I'm indecisive af.

Lastly, I started Peerless! I'm already in vol. 2. I'm absolutely loving it. I kinda want to eat it. It's everything I'd hope for in a Meng Xi Shi political asshole4asshole drama.

[larryhammer]

How far into DRC are you?

[duckprintspress]

around a quarter, of the version I'm reading, which is abridged I think

[larryhammer]

Who's the translator(s)?

[duckprintspress]

Chi-chen Wang. I'm reading this one: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/a736fefd-7844-4e0a-8764-8225d9b007ad because I found it on my mom's bookshelf and was like, oh, I should read that.

[larryhammer]

Haven't tried that one -- I've heard it praised as a decent abridged translation.

[duckprintspress]

that's good to know!

The biggest challenge I'm facing with it, aside from keeping track of the characters, is that it's not using modern pinyin, so the transliterations are different than I'm used to, and words I know look new and strange. The amount of time it took me to figure out that "chieh-chieh" was jiejie, sigh.

[larryhammer]

I've slowly picked up Wade-Giles transcription because it's still used So Danged Much, but I still hesitate on a lot of words. It'd take me a while to connect chieh-chieh to 姐姐.

(Heh -- just realized my reaction to Wade-Giles is similar to the kids' reaction to traditional characters. I've no idea, if they've even met Wade-Giles, what they think of it.)

[halfcactus]

"I suck at this and understand nothing and will be a Chinese failure forever" and "oh, I followed all of that, I CAN DO THIS!"
Average Chinese learning experience lol

You're in the home stretch though good luck!

[duckprintspress]

thank yooooou <3 the end is in reach!

[geraineon]

I love Peerless and I'm glad you're enjoying it as well~

[duckprintspress]

I just finished Eng vol. 4 out of 5 and I'm enjoying it so so much.

I clearly need to just. get my hands on everything Meng Xi Shi has ever written. (this is my third and I've loved all three...)

[thispatternismine]

Finished My Husband & I Sleep in A Coffin volume 1. For all the misgivings I had about the quality of the book, the actual text itself was fine. Though admittedly I have no Chinese ability, so my assessment of the translation is based on it being a coherent & well-written story in English (as well as comparing a few early passages to the fan translation, triangulating the original intended meaning based on that, & figuring out who expressed that better), & this is. It's a lot smoother than the unofficial translation, & sentences that I struggled to parse in that make much more sense here.

My original plan was to read volume 1 then continue on from where the official translation left off using the fan translation, before picking up volume 2 when it comes out in late December (assuming there isn't a delay on that as well...). But somehow the end of December looks a lot closer to the middle of November than it does the beginning. Even with my terrible memory it'll still feel like I only just read it, & that's assuming I finish it quickly & don't get distracted. Plus the official translation really is better, so I'd rather wait.

I've just started Offering Salted Fish to Master (aka When Destiny Brings the Demon. Like just started. I'm on chapter 1. I loved the drama, so I'm hoping I'll enjoy the book

[geraineon]

Good to hear that the actual text itself is fine. Too often, somehow the translation for chinese webnovels can sound very stilted...

[larryhammer]

Little progress on The Beauty's Blade, to less than a quarter in -- too danged much adulting going on around here.

[geraineon]

I hear you about the adulting. Had a work trip last week and well, my time sorta disappeared.

[aurumcalendula]

I'm still rereading Reading the Remnants, caught up on To Embers We Return, and just started Thrice Married to a Salted Fish!

It looks like Dragon Subjugation Incantation's translation just updated, so I'll probably check the newest chapter out soon.

[geraineon]

Are you reading the official tl for Thrice Married to Salted Fish? How do you find it so far?

[aurumcalendula]

Yep! I found the translation pretty smooth (there were some phrasing I thought were a little awkward, but nothing to distracting imho).

I like the story so far (Highlight for spoilers!* I'm enjoying the outsider POV on a transmigration story and I liked seeing Lu Wancheng encouraging Ling Qingyu's more morally grey impulses*), but I feel like the antagonists are a bit more flat than I prefer.

[silverblade219]

The new SVSSS extra inspired me to reread the series from the beginning, I am now up to volume three. Highlight for spoilers!*I actually assumed for a while that Luo Binghe guessed that SJ!SQQ and SY!SQQ were distinct people, especially since faelicy pointed out on their tumblr once that Binghe never questioned anything prior to 14 years age mark during the post Abyss arcs. There is a conversation between lbh and sqq directly after the without a cure poisoning that sqq fails to decipher but now could be that lbh was trying to say it indirectly at that point. And the fact that he refuses to call anyone else Shizun has an additional layer, since that would be the only ‘name’ he has for sy!sqq.

Also when Shen Yuan thought he was hiding the fact that he Peerless Cucumber while lbh was reading PIDW, he completely forgot that he used the Peerless Cucumber while in mushroom body and that the mushroom body had some of his sy features lol. *

Also excited to eventually reread Married Thrice to Salted Fish with the new official translation.

[geraineon]

I'm really loving whatever snippets and spoilers I've seen of the new SVSSS extra. So much fun! I'm terribly biased for SVSSS of all the three MXTX works.

[halfcactus]

*kicks unfinished books under the bed* Again, cdiaspora lit--I started Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang bc I read an entry about it here and thought I'd be into it bc twins! Switcheroos! Sounds cool! Unfortunately the impersonation plot is too stressful for me lmfao

(Probably not going to finish another book this year, my ability to read or focus is just so shot)

[geraineon]

Ah, that sounds like an interesting book but yeah, I can imagine the stress of the impersonation plot.

There's still a month plus! Where has time gone, seriously...

[ehyde]

I finished Panguan! I found it very satisfying, although I feel like it took me a while, it was less edge-of-your-seat than some other novels I've read, more something to savor. I was a little worried it would feel like the ending was missing something, since the extras aren't translated and sometimes "extras" feel more like "epilogue" -- iirc with Copper Coins at least the first extra felt like part of the story proper? But here it felt like an ending. I'll be happy to read the extras when they're translated, but feel no need to mtl them.

I'm reading a couple of english language novels before picking up another cnovel; read Hench (in one day and it was fun but blindsided me with the fact that I might've been meant to be shipping two characters I definitely wasn't shipping, and am now starting Adrian Tchaikovsky's Spiderlight on the recommendation of a friend. Thinking about reading The Beauty's Blade as my next cnovel since it's just one volume.

[geraineon]

Yay! I'm always happy when more people end up liking Panguan. It is definitely not edge-of-your-seat but I think it's overall a very warm and heartfelt story.

I read your thoughts on Spiderlight else-web and it sounds like an interesting fun book to read too.