Read-in-Progress Wednesday

geraineon posting in

This is your weekly read-in-progress post!

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From:

geraineon

I am attempting to finish the last two paintings in Paintings of Terror, as a low-hanging cnovel reading thing but the mood is still not there. orz

In non-cnovel reading news, I finished the food zine I mentioned last week (Serving Suggestion) and started on the bilingual Indonesian anthology I bought (Stories from the Islands).

And I'm still deeply in love with Lovebrush Chronicles. I played through the latest story update even though that means I'm missing a lot of context (I haven't played through all the stories in the middle, and didn't the prologue) because it's my fav character's route (lol, I have four favourites... this game is hell as a gacha). I really like the story writing though it hurts my brain a little to think about the layers of dreams in that story (it's still percolating in my brain).

(I am early/on-time on posting this time! Maybe it's best I do these posts before I lose all my energy from work day and forget.)

Hope you all had a good week since the last post!

From:

lee_bella

I tried the first 2-3 chapters of Paintings of Terror. The writing didn't click with me, so I dropped it.

Hope you are having a good week! (And thank you for doing this post every week.)

From:

geraineon

I didn't really enjoy the CP in Paintings of Terror, but I liked the concept and so stuck through it. I don't know if it was worth it in the end, but I enjoyed reading how the paintings were interpreted into "levels" to be solved.

Thank you for regularly participating!

From:

dayadhvam_triad

Skimming the table of contents, that food zine looks interesting :D

From:

geraineon

I'll be posting pics/thoughts about it once I get off my ass and upload photos XD I'll mention it when I do!

From:

halfcactus

Serving Suggestion looks sooooo good

From:

geraineon

It is! I might not enjoy all the stories in it equally, but I do like that it felt that every story has a soul, if that makes sense.

From:

douqi

+1 that the zine looks super cool! Would also love to hear about your experience of reading in Bahasa Indonesia.

From:

geraineon

The bilingual book actually has the original Bahasa Indonesia text right after the EN translation! There's just enough differences to throw me off, so I do rely on the English translation. But I think it'll get better!

Serving Suggestion is entirely in English, and it's not limited to Indonesian food/culture/history and there are even some recipes in the zine. I'm gonna post some pictures of the inside of the zine! (when I have ... the energy... to upload photos and then post it ahaha)

From:

douqi

Ooh looking forward to pics! (when you have the energy)

From:

duckprintspress

I finished My Husband and I Sleep in a Coffin. All things considered, with all the negative things I'd heard about it, I actually enjoyed it more than I expected to. Which isn't really saying much, it's still not a book I'd particularly recommend, but I at least got enough out of it that I don't regret the money I spent on it.

I then started Qiang Jin Jiu, which I've been waiting to read for years, and I'm only 100 pages in to volume 1 (of 8 volumes) and I'm already lowkey obsessed. The only reason I haven't been binge reading is that I've been stupid busy the last week.

From:

geraineon

Mm, glad you enjoyed My Husband and I Sleep in a Coffin well enough to not regret buying!

I kept thinking that you've already read QJJ... if this is your first read, enjoy! Excited for you~

From:

duckprintspress

it IS my first read-through, and it's making me insane. I want all the answers and I want them now.

From:

larryhammer

Still adulting, still no cnovels. Became League Champion in Pokemon Red and started Crystal, also a first time play.

From:

geraineon

Still otome gaming, no cnovels on my end!

Are you gonna play through all of the Pokemons?

From:

larryhammer

I don't have a device* that can play 3DS or Switch games, so nothing past Gen 5 for sure. I'm more likely to branch off into the vibrant ROM hacking scene, as there's some pretty darn good fan-made games out there (I for sure plan to someday play Pokemon Unbound, P. Lazarus, P. Elysium, and P. Dreamstone Mysteries), plus there's the Mystery Dungeon games.

* Other than my PC, but I don't game on it -- I game to get away from it.

Edited (formatting borked) Date: 2026-08-26 03:03 pm (UTC)

From:

halfcactus

Erhathings:

I've stalled on the novel;

duckprintspress's comment about there being less Mo Ran whump than Chu Wanning whump is making me second-guess my desire to continue 😂

The whiplash I got from the joyful announcement about an Erha manga coming out and then the cancellation of said manga two days later because the mangaka (Yamane Amano, a yaoi mangaka) was found (via old social media posts) to have xenophobic sentiments towards Korean and Chinese people... I feel bad for Meatbun now.

From:

duckprintspress

oh noooo I'm sorry! there's still a lot of whump for both of them! it's a very whumpful book.

and yeah the manga thing is such a huge, depressing mess.

From:

halfcactus

LOL no worries I was slowing down anyway bc I wasn't particularly invested! It heartens me a bit to know that there is some more whump in the future 😂

From:

duckprintspress

understood!!! <3

I'm just always hoping for more people to read and like 2ha, lmao.

From:

geraineon

The whiplash I had too when I saw the news and went "oh wow, now that's a name I haven't heard in a while, ah nostalgia for some of my earliest BL manga" and then the next day, cancelled.

Ahaha, I feel bad for meatbun too.

From:

aurumcalendula

I'm partway though volume 8 of QJJ, although I haven't gotten much of a chance to read it this week.

From:

geraineon

Hope you got more chances to read this week!

From:

dayadhvam_triad

I haven't read much recently... But I did translate a Three Kingdoms RPF cfic into English. That was ~~knifey~~ fun! XD

我还以为是游戏呢 finished earlier this month, and I ended up liking the third & last Tang dynasty arc the most for its poetry funtimes even if the story as a whole is kind of disjointed. Baily's Beads (by priest) is still languishing on my JJWXC bookshelf for whenever I'm in a cnovel-reading mood again.

From:

geraineon

Ohh, do you mind linking? Is it on AO3?

From:

dayadhvam_triad

yep on AO3, though fyi it's set during the later Three Kingdoms era so most of the more well-known characters besides Zhuge Liang are out of the picture XD Zhuge Liang Weighs a Hundred Catties

From:

ehyde

I foolishly packed volume 2 of Mo Du for my vacation but not volume 3 (this is a 3 volume edition), thinking that I'd be lucky if I could pull myself out of my current fanfic loop and read even one book, and then I finished it. Yes, I could read the epub, but I printed these specifically to be able to read them on paper, so I'll guess I'll wait.

From:

geraineon

How long will you be on vacation (and therefore be Mo Du-less?)?

From:

lee_bella

I finished What Naughty Thoughts Could the Heavenly Tribulation Thunder Possibly Have? (天雷能有什么坏心思呢) by Chun Feng Yao (春风遥), a xianxia comedy. It was a lot of fun. Chun Feng Yao knows how to write comedy.