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larryhammerOh, and I've been reading some things. As one does.
Finished:
The Year of the Book and The Year of the Baby, Andrea Cheng, the first two installments of a middle-grade series about an American-born Chinese girl (her father is also ABC, mother is from Shanghai) struggling through friendships and family relationships. Anna is, btw, excellently bookish, and there are many shout-outs to other children's books. (Disclaimer: I am an outsider to Anna's situation, but FWIW many details resonate with things I've seen and heard of through connections made as the parent of a China-born adoptee.) Low-key, well-written, and addictive: we have two more at home, and I'm starting #3 as soon as I can pry it from Janni's hands.
Monkey King vol 4-6, adaptation by Wei Dong Chen, art by Chao Peng -- which takes us through chapter 27 of Journey to the West, with theAvengers party fully assembled in volume 5. So far so good, and TBD is requesting repeated rereads.
In progress:
The Avalon of Five Elements, Fang Xiang, to chapter 241. There was a pause there when I got irritated at an out-of-character decision by the MC apparently done only for the plotting -- it's not that it couldn't have been sold as in-character, but no selling was done -- but I pushed past it. So still bounding along with the weird adventure, though there's been rather more body horror than I was expecting.
To Be a Virtuous Wife (何为贤妻), Yuexia Dieying (月下蝶影) -- like the author's Eight Treasures Trousseau, this is a Chinese pseudo-historical webnovel with a modern female lead reincarnated-with-memories into the body of a woman married into the imperial family -- in this case a complete doormat who, two months after becoming principle wife of a prince, had failed to establish control over her household and her social position. This changes quickly. FWIW, the setting's template is mainly Ming dynasty with some Qing details,* and the translator provides extensive cultural notes with pics, which very much help. Slightly longer than ETT, but at 120-odd chapters still easier to swallow than fantasy epics. Am up to chapter 49, so almost halfway through.
On hold:
Village Girl as Family Head (农女当家：捡个将军来种田 -- the subtitle means something like "a general comes planting the field," though there's probably an idiom I'm not grasping), Yiyi Lanxi (依依兰兮) -- another historical novel of the reincarnation-into-the-past sort, but in this case the "host" is no one important: the orphaned teenage daughter of a village farmer with three younger siblings. Her "new" personality is also anything but a doormat, is excellent at family scheming and invective, and -- possibly most significantly -- was an agricultural researcher in the present day and so knows Improved Farming Techniques. It takes her a while, however, to get a handle on all the things she should know about the present era but doesn't (unlike Yuexia Dieying's protagonists, she doesn't have memories from her host body, just her previous life). I suspect I'm doomed to perpetual disappointment here as the original is long-ass and the translator very slow: I caught up with it at chapter 41. Enjoyed just that much, though, even in very rough fan translation.
The King's Avatar, Butterfly Blue -- Caught up to chapter 1056 and the conclusion of the story-defining comeback tournament. Mind, this brings me to the 2/3 point of the novel as a whole. But back on hold this goes till a significant backlog gets translated.
DNF:
The Undefeatable Squirrel Girl, volume 7 -- even though there are dinosaurs and robotics competitions and a sweetly awkward romance, this somehow didn’t catch my interest enough to get through it before I had to return it to the library. Maybe there wasn't enough time travel to ancient China.
* Only without foot-binding -- I've yet to meet a pseudo-historical popular novel that includes it.
---L.
Subject quote from The Progress of Error, William Cowper.
Finished:
The Year of the Book and The Year of the Baby, Andrea Cheng, the first two installments of a middle-grade series about an American-born Chinese girl (her father is also ABC, mother is from Shanghai) struggling through friendships and family relationships. Anna is, btw, excellently bookish, and there are many shout-outs to other children's books. (Disclaimer: I am an outsider to Anna's situation, but FWIW many details resonate with things I've seen and heard of through connections made as the parent of a China-born adoptee.) Low-key, well-written, and addictive: we have two more at home, and I'm starting #3 as soon as I can pry it from Janni's hands.
Monkey King vol 4-6, adaptation by Wei Dong Chen, art by Chao Peng -- which takes us through chapter 27 of Journey to the West, with the
In progress:
The Avalon of Five Elements, Fang Xiang, to chapter 241. There was a pause there when I got irritated at an out-of-character decision by the MC apparently done only for the plotting -- it's not that it couldn't have been sold as in-character, but no selling was done -- but I pushed past it. So still bounding along with the weird adventure, though there's been rather more body horror than I was expecting.
To Be a Virtuous Wife (何为贤妻), Yuexia Dieying (月下蝶影) -- like the author's Eight Treasures Trousseau, this is a Chinese pseudo-historical webnovel with a modern female lead reincarnated-with-memories into the body of a woman married into the imperial family -- in this case a complete doormat who, two months after becoming principle wife of a prince, had failed to establish control over her household and her social position. This changes quickly. FWIW, the setting's template is mainly Ming dynasty with some Qing details,* and the translator provides extensive cultural notes with pics, which very much help. Slightly longer than ETT, but at 120-odd chapters still easier to swallow than fantasy epics. Am up to chapter 49, so almost halfway through.
On hold:
Village Girl as Family Head (农女当家：捡个将军来种田 -- the subtitle means something like "a general comes planting the field," though there's probably an idiom I'm not grasping), Yiyi Lanxi (依依兰兮) -- another historical novel of the reincarnation-into-the-past sort, but in this case the "host" is no one important: the orphaned teenage daughter of a village farmer with three younger siblings. Her "new" personality is also anything but a doormat, is excellent at family scheming and invective, and -- possibly most significantly -- was an agricultural researcher in the present day and so knows Improved Farming Techniques. It takes her a while, however, to get a handle on all the things she should know about the present era but doesn't (unlike Yuexia Dieying's protagonists, she doesn't have memories from her host body, just her previous life). I suspect I'm doomed to perpetual disappointment here as the original is long-ass and the translator very slow: I caught up with it at chapter 41. Enjoyed just that much, though, even in very rough fan translation.
The King's Avatar, Butterfly Blue -- Caught up to chapter 1056 and the conclusion of the story-defining comeback tournament. Mind, this brings me to the 2/3 point of the novel as a whole. But back on hold this goes till a significant backlog gets translated.
DNF:
The Undefeatable Squirrel Girl, volume 7 -- even though there are dinosaurs and robotics competitions and a sweetly awkward romance, this somehow didn’t catch my interest enough to get through it before I had to return it to the library. Maybe there wasn't enough time travel to ancient China.
* Only without foot-binding -- I've yet to meet a pseudo-historical popular novel that includes it.
---L.
Subject quote from The Progress of Error, William Cowper.
no subject
Date: 2 May 2018 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 May 2018 04:05 pm (UTC)That's the attitude of the MC of that one -- the cover description is "As a virtuous wife, does it include tolerating his cousin, enduring his concubines, bearing his mother? If you will not let me live freely, why would I let you live in satisfaction? Did fate let a woman time-travel so she could learn the three morals and four virtues? Rather than act like a coward and live, it would be better to live in satisfaction and die."
Not that dying has, so far, been much of a threat.
no subject
Date: 2 May 2018 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2 May 2018 05:35 pm (UTC)I have all the current volumes, at least as of last month. :-) The library system has most of them, shelved in the adult graphic novel sections (no doubt for the occasional nudity).
(I still object to the translated title -- context shows it should be understood as The Brides' Stories.)