Chinese Novels

There’s only one week left to get this awesome bundle of 7 trans and nonbinary winter stories. Transmute: Winter Magic includes our novella To Drive the Hundred Miles by Alec J. Marsh, and works by 6 other creators – all starring trans and nonbinary characters, all by trans and nonbinary authors! These awesome titles can be yours for only $3 – a savings of 81% compared to buying them all individually. Indeed, the $3 price is less than we usually charge just for To Drive the Hundred Miles – so this is a pretty great deal!

Get your holiday celebration going with this awesome bundle before time runs out!

1. What are you currently reading?

• Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle: idk I think biphobes deserve to get hit by trucks. at least fictional biphobes. it might be a bit extreme for someone in real life but in a book, 100% reasonable in-proportion response. Anyway, I'm a quarter into this and it's due in 3 days so I'd better read fast lmao.
• 铜钱龛世 manhua vol. 1 by 木苏里: another manhua I've previously read in English (it's Copper Coins); I'm just reading this one to tide me over til the new year when I'll start my next novel in Chinese.

2. What have you recently finished reading?

I had a bunch of Libby holds come through a few weeks ago and now they're all coming due so I'm frantically trying to read them all before the due date  

• The Dream of the Red Chamber by Tsao Hsueh-Chin: slow times vending last week gave me the chance to knuckle down and finish this. Interesting book over all. I can see why it's a classic. I'd love to read a more modern translation that uses pinyin and isn't abridged, especially now that I've basically got the characters straight, but. not now.
• Lout of Count's Family vol. 5 by Yu Ryeo-Han: I think this has been my favorite volume so far. I need volume 6 so bad. I will almost certainly buy it with holiday money (it came out earlier this month but none of my libraries have it, sigh)
• I Ship My Rival x Me manhua by PEPA: I celebrated finishing the heavily censored Chinese print edition by rereading the manhua again. I deserve all the feels they cut for censorship reasons.
• A Dragon for Hanukkah by Sarah Mlynowski: really cute book my daughter got from the library.
• After Hours vol. 1 by Yuhta Nishio: this was a fine, if unremarkable, modern GL, that is full of reviews calling it toxic which is absolutely fucking baffling to me.
• The Backstagers vol. 1 to 3 by James Tynion IV, Rian Sygh, Walter Baiamonte, and Jim Campbell: fun lil modern series with m/m and a trans guy, about backstages of theaters being liminal spaces that are all connected. Very Nightvale and Dead Endia kinds of vibes. I enjoyed it. The main story is only the first two vol, the third is all extras/asides.
• Heavy Vinyl: Y2K-O by Carly Usdin: continued this wlw modern series. The time skip from vol. 1 to 2 felt really abrupt, and theoretically there's a "to be continued" but it's been 5 years so I'm assuming it's done, and eh. It was fine.
• Sakamoto Days vol. 15 by Yuto Suzuki
• Yona of the Dawn vol. 19 by Mizuho Kusanagi

3. What will you read next?

Novels: my libby borrow of Lucky Day has 3 days left and my loan of A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett has 4 days left and the odds I can finish both before they're due, when one of those days is Christmas, are basically non-existent but I'm gonna try even if I cannot expect a Low Probability Event like in Lucky Day, lmao. After those is, again, finally, The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin. Unless I get my hands on Lout of Count's Family vol. 6 first.

Physical loans from the library: NONE. I have FINALLY caught up and returned them all. I took way too long reading this last batch and I feel guilty about it, so I'm gonna take a little break from physical loans and focus on reading down what I've got on Libby.

Libby loans: aside from the novels mentioned, I've got a bunch of manga due soon: Girl Friends vol. 2 by Milk Morinaga, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime vol. 3 by Fuse, Gachiakuta vol. 1 by Kei Urana, and The Way of the Househusband vol. 14 by Kousuke Oono are all due in under 7 days, and Dinosaur Sanctuary vol. 6 by Itaru Kinoshita and Inside Mari vol. 1 by Shuzo Oshimi are both due in 8 days, so. I've gotta try to get through like all of those before they're returned. I didn't mean for so many holds to come through so close together, I'm kinda overwhelmed sigh.