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Could have been better, could have been worse… got a Keqing along the way… It’s actually the first time I get her on banner!
I’m pleasantly surprised by Sandrone’s traversal ability! It didn’t look that great on the SP for some reason, but I like it a lot. Still have no idea how to play her, but I think I’m going to enjoy her playstyle! I don’t have Neuvillette, so to me it feels very unique and new!

Could have been better, could have been worse… got a Keqing along the way… It’s actually the first time I get her on banner!
I’m pleasantly surprised by Sandrone’s traversal ability! It didn’t look that great on the SP for some reason, but I like it a lot. Still have no idea how to play her, but I think I’m going to enjoy her playstyle! I don’t have Neuvillette, so to me it feels very unique and new!

Read two chapters today!

I finished adding new words from 礁与浪的相逢 and I’m starting the 幻友绮旅 now!
I’ll try to work on one small segment per day, so that I can finish it by the time the Fontinalia Festival gets added to the DB. Oh and the next WQ will be voiced!!! That is insane!
If they decide to make all WQ of Snezhnaya voiced, I would be so happy, it would make playing the game in Chinese so much easier too, because right now WQ are the hardest content.

Just read a few pages today. I actually wanted to read a full chapter but I had no time and no energy anyway. I did read a few pages to stay in the story (because I haven’t touched the book during the weekend).

There’s something interesting I noticed while I was listening to my audiobook last night: it looks like weixin dushu automatically sets a 60-minute timer if the phone is on sleep. I don’t know if it’s really the case, but the timer was on even though I didn’t activate it myself.

To be honest, I’ve never really liked Alice, from the first moments she appeared in game to the Nod-Krai arc where she was more present… but now I’m starting to warming up to her because of Prune’s story.

Now I understand why this book has been ranked first on このミステリーがすごい!, ミステリが読みたい! and 週刊文春ミステリーベスト10,
The book was really great, and it’s right up my alley as police procedurals are my favourite sub-genre. I also liked that the story is not focused on the main police detective but on the case. The plot is really good, the case is very complex, elements that seemed unrelated at first turn out to be more important that they looked, the end is excellent, but most of all, it’s heavily focused on characters, their motives and how they’re dealing with the situations they’ve fallen into.

Finished! Last two chapters were very short.

I couldn’t sleep at all last night, so I listened to 失踪假日. I really love this story.
Also listening lying in bed was much easier than listening on-the-go or while doing other things. I felt like I understood everything!

I started The Resurrected, it looks very good, though the first episode was really depressing…

Ended up reading another chapter, the plot is incredibly good!
There are two chapters left, I’m keeping them for tomorrow.

Finished chapter 5. I say it after every chapter, but wow this book is so so good!! This chapter was the best so far!

I saw 冲刷 twice in a similar context, things, past being washed away by the rain. It’s the best way to remember a word, and to understand how it’s used.

I finished 玛利亚的手指, which I loved, and started 失踪假日 which is also the longest.

I found it hard at first and couldn’t follow well, so I read the first pages in the book. The text is very easy (as everything I read by Otsuichi so far), but my listening is bad compared to my reading.
It’s interesting that just reading the beginning is enough to get me started. I know the context, setting, character names… and then I can just listen and understand pretty well.

Finished chapter 4, wow this book is really great. Best police procedural I’ve read in a while. This chapter in particular had decisive elements, it’s very suspenseful!

My initial plan was to study character’s mails on their birthday, but I have a lot of catch up to do… Mails have piled up so quickly these past weeks.

His kit is pretty easy, there’s only three key words: 欢悦 (the thing he accumulates to unleash his special skills), 争胜 (the thing teammates accumulate for him to increase damage of special skill and burst) and 乘兴 (the thing that increases his skill level).

Finally did Fischl Witch’s Homework! The story was so great, I think it was the best one from the ones I did. And it would have probably helped to do it before my IT run rather than after but oh well…

I’ve completed all the tasks I wanted to do during the patch, which included a lot of content from previous patches. I’m still very late in Nod-Krai exploration and anecdotes.,,
I will pull for Sandrone. and it would be tempting to go for constellations of Mizuki on the special banner, but I more or less like all the Snezhnaya characters so…

Finished the event! It was really cool talking to Bennett, and I had completely forgotten how fun the region was with the asha exploration mechanic!
The event was okay, I like coop events anyway, but it was also not the most memorable one imo.

With this done, I cleared all the events of the patch, I’m ready for moon landing!

Finally finished an IT run! It was NOT easy… I managed to keep Zibai for the last boss, but even her with Aino and Illuga cleared on the last second.
I probably won’t try another run, I don’t see my characters able to make a full flowers run.

Also, strongest single strike was Linnea with other 500k!! How!?!

I did everything I wanted to do in the patch! The achievement card is complete, I can peacefully wait for Enigma to release.

I didn’t like this version of UTTU, why did they make restrictions on the characters we can use? I really don’t see the point of the event, if we just use trial characters. It felt bad not being able to use my P5 Ezio, or my favourite character Charon.
And the restrictions were always the same, there was not a single stage that allowed us to play dynamo? Unless I missed something?

Limbo is done too, and I played Critter Crash until I got the skin. I’m missing some rewards, so I might do a couple of other runs if I have time.

Finished chapter 3, halfway through already!
I like that each chapter is one day, and we really follow the characters through the whole day. Given that I’m reading one chapter per day, it feels like the story is unfolding in real time.

Finally did Prune’s last ascension, but I’m not maxing her level (still 80) nor her talents. I won’t really play her anyway, I built her for IT and because I like her, but I have no idea if she would be good in any of my teams.

Both Reverse 1999 and Genshin new patches come out next week! And I still have quite a lot of things to do in each game especially R1999… like really a lot!
This weekend is going to be a gaming weekend for sure

I finished the first chapter/story. No real surprise in the end, the solution was pretty obvious and I’m not sure I found it that convincing, but it was entertaining and very easy to read. Overall, it was a enjoyable read!

I won’t necessarily love books that get good rankings or win awards, but 1/3 into the book, I must say that 失われた貌 is really good. I feel motivated to continue reading the prize winners and books that ranked in the top 10 of major mystery rankings.

Snezhnaya characters look great
I especially love 达妮卡 and 阿罗夏
I’m so happy that Snezhnaya will release during August too, Summer always feels so long, so it will be something to be looking for.

I finished the second chapter… this book is really great!! An excellent police procedural so far, the case seems really complex, I love it!

Finished chapter 2! Love it as much as 403小組，警隊出動！so far.

I looked at Kanae Minato’s books ranking in the major mystery novels rankings, and there must be a mistake… According to Wikipedia, only 告白 ranked in the top 10:

• 1st in 週刊文春ミステリーベスト10
• 3rd in ミステリが読みたい!
• 4th in このミステリーがすごい!

And that’s it… three other books made it to the rankings, but not in the first 10 places.
I find this very strange, how come that books like 白ゆき姫殺人事件 or 豆の上で眠る never got into any ranking at all? These are my favourites, but she wrote so many novels I haven’t read which I’m sure are great.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to read much, but I absolutely love the beginning! I had no idea that this book featured one of the main characters of 403小組，警隊出動！, that’s really a nice surprise.

Reading in Traditional Chinese after reading in Simplified for a long time always gives me a headache. Took me one hour to go through 20 ebook pages. I know it’s going to get easier with time, I just need to get used to it again.

Oh, 林木森 is also from 403小組，警隊出動！, hard to forget that name!

After just 2 or 3 pages, I was thinking that this Wang Shuochan felt very similar to the partner of the protagonist in 403小組，警隊出動！And the more I was thinking that, the more the name actually sounded similar, so I checked: it’s the same character!
That’s pretty cool!! I’m super happy, really loved this character!

So given that I’m following a list that gave chronological order for Yen Yu’s books, I guess that this novel takes place after the events in 403小組，警隊出動！

Every time I read a book in Chinese after reading in Japanese I feel so let down when I see a character name. Wdym you’re not giving me the pronunciation??

I started the first story (I’m assuming each chapter is going to be a different case), it’s very good and reads very easily!

I’m not doing my Korean food notebook anymore, but there’s a mention of 갈비탕 and 냉면 right on the second page. Having to go through a whole dialogue during which characters are eating galbitang and naengmyeon is pure torture!!

I read the first chapter! Loved it, looks like a good police procedural!

They don’t work in the same departments, but here are the police ranks of the main characters:

• Takamiya is 警視 Police Superintendent, two ranks above Hino.
• Habaro is 警部, Police Inspector, one rank above Hino, even though they’re the same age.
• Hino Yukihiko is 警部補 Assistant Police Inspector.
• Irie Ayano is 巡査部長, Police Sergeant, one rank below Hino who is her direct superior.

The 生活安全課 is a branch in Japanese police specialised in prevention and public order. They handle juvenile delinquency, DV, cybercrime, economic crimes, illegal gambling, prostitution, drugs, etc.

Given that I have three new books at the same time (a rare occasion!), I’ve decided to start them all today.

When I decided to start this reading challenge of reading one book per language, I was thinking of it as a friendly competition between my target languages: see which language I will read the most each month.
If I start the three current books at the same time, we’ll see which one I’ll finish the sooner! I know it depends on a lot of parameters, but to me it’s just a fun way to make things more interesting.

I did Lohen’s Witch’s Homework (his story was pretty good!) and tried the new IT, but it’s really tough. I’m halfway through, but I’ll have to give up on the full flower clear. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to complete the run even. If not I’ll have to redo a run without trying to go to the flowers, which will allow me to keep better characters for the last combats. And borrowing my husband’s Kokomi was a mistake…
MVP so far is Durin for sure.

I finished the last chapter of Nicole’s quest. It was a nice event overall, it’s cool to have new formats for events/stories.

All three books are bought and added to the DB. It’s so exciting! Can’t wait to start them!

Now that I finished 暗黑者2 I’m going back to reading Yen Yu’s police novels. There are three that have a similar title:

• 警察執勤中：正義的代價
• 警察迷途中：誰是兇手
• 警察執勤中：宣戰角頭
  I don’t know if they are a trilogy or a series, or are completely independent, but I’m going to read the three anyway. Starting with 警察執勤中：正義的代價!

I found the second volume of 暗黑者 overall entertaining and suspenseful, but it felt diluted at times, and even though it does have great plot, memorable scenes and good twists, it doesn’t have the impact of the first one in my opinion.
The plot is really great, there are several cases, several story lines, but everything ends up being connected. Everything makes sense, the plot is complex but easy to follow, there’s a lot of suspense too.
However, I found that some chapters, especially in the second half, tended to be repetitive (there’s one in particular that feels oddly placed), and there are a couple of things that I dislike in the author’s writing style. First, there is a tendency to conceal the identity of well known character when we open a new scene. They are even described as if it was the first time we saw them. This didn’t bring anything imo and was just annoying to read. Then there are the small commentaries: oftentimes, we get a dialogue, then the author would add something like “indeed, …” followed by generalisations, clichés or useless explanations for things obvious and simple.

I also find the characters are generally just all too strong and too perfect. Luo Fei’s observation skills could be a nice addition if they were not so exaggerated. Overall, male characters in the novel are all heroes, and female characters tend to be the weakest link. It’s pretty obvious (the person who lets Chengyu in the archive room is a woman, the nurse who lets the journalist visit Wu Yinwu is a woman, Mu Jianyun is the reason why Luo Fei had to let Eumenides kill Deng Hua in vol.1, and she let Chengyu plant a microphone in her phone, even Zheng Jiao ends up handing the recording to Chengyu without questioning what it could be).
On the contrary some characters like Han Hao and Ding Ke are overpraised. Ding Ke in particular was really annoying: the author kept praising him in such a superficial way it felt very strange. It was all tell not show, and the only things that the reader actually know are despicable: covering for student and son, fleeing and hiding from the consequences of his choices… Despite all these, the novel kept trying to make us admire and revere Ding Ke.

When I finish volume 1 I would have said without hesitation that I would read the whole trilogy, but now I don’t really feel like starting volume 3. I’m pretty sure the story will be great, and I will like it, but I’m afraid the things I didn’t like in the second one will be in the third one as well.

Done! The last chapter was so good too!!
I was about to say that it’s the longest book I read in Chinese, but then I remembered 網內人 which is about the same length (and there’s the Gu Long novel too, but this one read so easily it didn’t really feel that long).
The book was good overall, but I felt like it had a tendency to drag on in the second half. Stil very entertaining!

It’s crazy that I actually need to buy three new books today, one in each language . Funny that I finished all three more or less at the same time.

NamuWiki says that the 한국추리문학상 is the only Mystery Award in Korea, and looking at the list of winners, there are a lot of years in the 2000s where the award hasn’t been given. Last year without winner is 2023.

I find this strange because I do think that mystery fiction has a lively and active scene in Korea, I constantly see new publications of thrillers and mystery novels, there’s more coming out that I can keep up with. I find it strange that there aren’t other prizes, but seeing that the only one existing has so many missed years is quite depressing.
I’ll probably have to find the list of nominees somewhere just to have more books to choose from.

I chose my next Korean book: 교통사고 전문 삼비 탐정 by 윤자영. I’m going to go through the list of the winners of 한국추리문학상, at least the most recent ones, and in no particular order
I already read two of the winners, one I loved and the other not so much.
I chose 교통사고 전문 삼비 탐정 because I already read one novel and at least a couple of short stories by 윤자영 and loved them all.

Finished chapter 27, just one more to go!

失われた貌 by 櫻田智也 ranked first on first on three of the biggest Japanese rankings for mystery novels last year! So I guess it’s good?
It’s decided, this will be my next read!
I haven’t read a lot in Japanese lately (since I started reading in Chinese), and I’ve lost touched with newer publications. Time to go back to it!

I don’t know what my next Japanese book will be. Part of me is tempted to just continue reading Otsuichi, but given that I brought the lists of rankings and prize winners to the website, I also want to start reading those…

I loved both 夏と花火と私の死体 and the short story 優子 that is featured in the book. 夏と花火と私の死体 was really good, especially for a debut novel and given that Otsuichi was so young when it was published. The way it’s narrated was very interested, very detached given the circumstances, very factual and descriptive too, which contrasted with the tension inherent to the plot.
And 優子 was a really good mystery, there’s both a good twist at the end, and a constant sadness and feeling of loneliness in the story.

I finished 優子, it was really good! It has a very good, surprising end, but it’s quite sad too.

Today I’m going to try and finish 暗黑者2, I wonder if it’s going to end on some kind of resolution or leave things open. I don’t want to start volume 3 right away, I would rather read other things, I’m not even sure I’ll read volume 3 this year. That’s the reason why I wrote down summaries for every chapter, it won’t be a problem to go back into the story when I decide to.

I will also continue reading 優子, the short story in 夏と花火と私の死体, which I might also finish given that the book is rather short. And I still haven’t bought nor started a Korean book, so it would be the first time since I started this challenge where I have no book at all for a day, so I probably should buy the Korean book before finishing the other two (I don’t want the currently reading section to stay empty).

There are actually two stories in 夏と花火と私の死体, first the short novel of the same name, that I finished, and a short story: 優子 that I just began,
I loved 夏と花火と私の死体 very much, there was such an emotional detachment in the narration, it was a really interesting reading experience. The story was great, not my favourite one, but impressive for a book published at what, 18 or something like that?

I finished Lohen’s SQ, so great!! I loved it, makes me feel like I know the character better, it was not too long which I really appreciate, and there was good pacing and action. No cutscene though, exactly like the event… really hoping this is not a trend.

Finished chapter 26! This one was long for nothing, the author is taking so much precautions to explain something obvious and simple as if it was a super complex and new idea that most readers wouldn’t understand.
I also think there are a lot of problems surrounding Ding Ke, that made the whole thing really painful to read. The fact that he covered for Yuan Zhibang twice, and then for his son, is described like something perfectly okay. The character of Ding Ke is unbearable. It would be interesting to make him ambiguous or despicable in some ways, but the problem is that the novel never stops to praise him, this is so annoying.
This chapter could have been so much shorter, I’m feeling more and more that the novel is dragging on.

Finally finished Lohen SQ which gave me the last materials to build him! Artifacts are very bad. Durin has the best pieces which were not even that good to begin with… but it’s fine, I don’t really care about his damage.
Given that Xiao is using Ineffa’s weapon, I gave Lohen PJWS which I believe is really good on him.
And artifact passive and cryo resonance give 35% CR, but maybe I should adjust his build if I decide to not play him with granny.

他 (Luo Fei) 终于知道，这个慈悲的老人 (Ding Ke) 虽然早已不是一名刑警，但他从来没有逃避过任何责任，他只是找到了另一种方法去化解世间的罪恶。这是一种更加温和、更加合理的方法，同时也需要更多的耐心和智慧。

Sometimes I just don’t understand what the author is thinking… Ding Ke covered for his student, then covered for his son, and both time we’re talking murder, yet characters are still sighing in admiration before him and even say 没有逃避过任何责任? Do the author expect the reader to feel the same way? It’s so weird…
It is also all tell not show, I think everything revolving around this character is by far the weakest part of the novel.

Chapter 25 done! I’m nearing the end of the book now so the tension should be at the highest, but I’m starting losing interest in the story. I found some chapters a bit too long for nothing, there are some repetitions, and the tension feels diluted to me. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve been reading this book for so long now, I’m looking forward to reading something else.
The first volume being shorter was very impactful, there was no time to catch your breath, it was a real page-turner. With this one, I find the author tends to spend too much time explaining or describing things that are already obvious for the reader, making the book a bit longer than it needed maybe.

I found 홈캠 okay overall, but it tried to be two films at the same time, and I personally find that it could have been such a great film if it had stuck to one story line only. First of all, I find the two lines to really belong to two separate films. Together they make the plot unnecessarily complicated, and I do think that one was enough. And one of these story line was your classic possession/demon stuff with your mandatory 굿 scene, which was not bad to be fair, but we’ve seen this so many times already, not bad per se, but also nothing special or particularly inventive or new. The other story line though was really excellent: the fact that the mother thought her daughter was still a child, while the home cam started revealing the truth was a great idea. It was very well done, a lot of clues were planted all along, and all the strange little things made sense in the end. I personally think that if the film had only revolved around it, it would have been much much better. The tension that arise from the presence of other characters was enough to make the film a good psychological horror movie. Everything could have been resolved with no supernatural at all.

I think I finished a part, even though it’s not really defined as such. Still absolutely loving this novel!

I’m happy with my progress on the DB today, it’s definitely a slow and long process, but it’s going to be so worth it!

I went over a lot of prizes and rankings for mystery novels, the number of awards and rankings in Japan is insane… I only have one prize for Korean fiction, one for Taiwanese fiction, and one for the Chinese written works cross regions. Nothing for Mainland China specifically, I’ll have to dig more into what exists.
So so so many books to read!!!!

I listened to the main story today (only did a couple of chapters), just listening, not looking at the text. It was okayish, I can’t say I’m following like super well, but enough to find it interesting and know what is happening.

Read another chapter today! This one was a nice change of pace, only based on discussion and deductions. But to be honest, I find all the psychological profiling not convincing at all, it’s full of generalisations and cheap shortcuts. Still enjoyed reading the whole chapter!

When talking about choosing a name for her imaginary friend, the text say that 德斯卡戴 felt full of philosophical reasoning. I didn’t understand why, so I looked at the name of her imaginary friend in English: it’s Descartes! But René Descartes in Chinese is笛卡儿, so the two sound very different.

Another example of sexist role attribution at the beginning of chapter 24: Mu Jianyun, a psychologist working with the police, unable to look at crime scene pictures because she’s a woman:
慕剑云却又和曾日华截然相反，只要遇到有照片的章节，她都于脆闭上眼睛直接跳过，即便如此，随着阅读的深入，她的呼吸还是变得越来越急促，像是有些承受不住的样子。
It’s so annoying…

One more chapter done! It’s really going to take me the whole month to read this book.

The four short stories of 불빛 없는 밤의 도시 have all been great, but what I really loved in this collection is that it never gives easy-to-love protagonists. They’re all morally questionable, do condemnable things or blame others for their failure (even though I read it years ago, I remember the protagonist of 인생, 리셋 really falling in this category). 불빛 없는 밤의 도시 and 아름다운 괴물 both featured very interesting characters: they have detestable aspects but it’s also easy to understand where they come from.
Overall a very good collection, but I wish the publisher had stated clearly which stories had already been published and which (if any) are new exclusive ones, because I know at least that the last one, 인생, 리셋, had already been published in a collection from 2022 and the author said she wrote 아름다운 괴물 5 years ago, though I don’t know if it had been published before.

So I started the last short story 인생, 리셋, and it took me a couple of pages to realise that I had already read it: it was featured in the collection of short stories: 밀지 마세요, 사람 탑니다.
It’s very strange, I couldn’t see anywhere that this story (maybe the others too?) had already been published elsewhere, I thought it was a new collection.
밀지 마세요, 사람 탑니다 was so great, featuring stories from different authors with the common theme of Seoul metro. 인생, 리셋 was one of my favourite stories from the collection! I’m not going to re-read it though, so I just finished the book!

I read the book when it came out, and I actually didn’t have a lot of recollection of it. I remember liking it overall, but thinking it wasn’t worth the hype. The idea is good and the plot was entertaining, but there are too many things that are here because the plot needs these elements as devices and foundation, but it just doesn’t make much sense to act like that in the first place. I like when characters and their motivations come first, I want their actions to make sense from their perspective, but in many books, and this one was no exception, they are sacrificed for good tricks and a twisty plot. As a result, some decisions from the protagonists didn’t make much sense imo, and I also found their reactions to be frustratingly unrealistic.

I did enjoy the film much more than the book though, probably because acting was good!
One thing that I disliked though is how over sentimental they made the end, with a stupid piano music in background, like you don’t trust your actors to perform well enough to make the public feel emotional too. I can’t stand this kind of scenes, and it really dragged the film down to me.

Read some pages today (though didn’t have time to go very far). Really loving this novel!

Listened to 玛利亚的手指 a lot today and made good progress. Another really good story!

I finally started Lohen’s SQ! I love it so far! It has good pacing, we spend time with Lohen and we’re learning things about him. I also just reached the point where the plot is becoming really intriguing. There were some funny moments too!

This novel is fantastic, it’s fascinating, suspenseful, sad, and intriguing at the same time. I’m loving the beginning very much.

I’m finally starting 夏と花火と私の死体 today!

I wanted to do things in Genshin this morning, but I spent my time working on the website instead. I’m really motivated to make this crime fiction awards page, it’s going to be so great!!

I want to go back into reading the winners of the Mystery Writers of Japan Award, and more generally, I want to read winners of crime fiction prizes. So I’m working on selecting some awards I want to follow, make a list of winners so I can check the works as I read them. I already did something similar for the MWJA on Notion, but I hated using Notion anyway and stopped updating it at some point. It will be much better when everything is on the website.

Read my daily chapter today!

I’m working on really organising my reading history and maybe doing author cards. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do! I would like to really organise the books I’m reading, and try to explore the bibliography of authors I like, instead of reading book after book, and forgetting who even wrote it or what it was about a couple of months later.

I have read a lot of different Japanese authors, but now I want to focus on reading more extensively the ones I love.

I didn’t read anything else today, but I finished the short story 아름다운 괴물. It was excellent, really felt like a short novel rather than a short story. I really love how the main character is morally grey, doing disgusting and condemnable things, while at the same time being relatable. I couldn’t help but root for her still, despite everything. Overall, all the three protagonists of the collection have had complex personalities, I find all characters are very well written.

아름다운 괴물 is really good! It feels more like a novel than a short story.
I don’t know if I’ll have time to finish it today, but maybe I’ll try to continue it later!

I started the third short story! It’s also the longest one.
I had originally planned to read half of it today, but I was busy with the website, so I only started it. I really love the beginning, looks very promising!

I really had underestimated the number of books referenced on notes… It’s going to take a while before I sort the DB, and I’ve already spent so much time today on it… Haven’t read as much as I wanted because of it, but it’s a good step forward.

I finished 幸福宝贝, and I really really love Otsuichi’s stories. This one was fantastic, I loved the main character, and I was loving the story so much (I thought it would be a story of friendship or romance), but then all of the sudden I realised I was reading a mystery all along, even though it didn’t feel like it. The end was really good, and at the same time, like many of the short stories I’ve read, it left me quite sad.

Going over all my read Japanese books to add to the new DB, I realise that a good chunk of them are books I didn’t really want to read… I mean, they were not exactly books I didn’t want to read, but rather books I read for other reasons: some were because I was looking for easy books to recommend to Japanese learners… At the time when my blog was still insidethatjapanesebook, some people were asking for recommendations on my blog or Twitter (X), so I felt like I needed to do this kind of content. It was a good experience, I learnt a log of things in the process, and I’ve always loved recommending books to others, so I don’t regret reading these, even though some were very far from what I personally enjoy reading.

What I absolutely regret though are the books I read because everyone was talking about them, or because I thought that, as someone who reviewed Japanese books, I ought to have read. There are so many books that fall in this category, and no surprise, I rarely ended up liking them. But it’s hard to not get influenced, especially because at the time, I was on Twitter. Like when a book got translated into English everyone was talking about it, praising it like it was the best thing ever published, but me, I don’t think these books are anything special, they’re good yes, but good books are everywhere, so I might as well read the ones I want to read rather than the ones that are the current trendy thing.

So now I’m making a promise to myself: life is too short, books are too many, I’ll only read the books I want to read, not the ones that are hyped, not the ones it would be nice to have read, not the ones you read to look smart, educated and trendy, just the ones that trigger that spark of excitement when you see them or hear about them for the first time.

I’m going over the list of books imported from notes, just to check that author and titles are correct, add the cover if needed, etc. It’s a repetitive and boring task that does not require much attention, so I’ve been listening to my audiobook, 失踪假日 by Otsuichi, while doing it. This allowed me to finish the first short story, but now I have to take a break to digest it. It was such a great story once again!

It’s happening, I’m actually working on importing my reading history from notes to the new website. It will probably be missing some books, but it’s better than nothing.
It’s such a shame that I didn’t have a proper DB before, it was just me posting without any kind of formatting…
It’s going to take a while to make everything look clean, associate a cover to every book and check that title and author are correct.

Finished chapter 21! That’s exactly why I love the series, this chapter was so great!

Just bought 夏と花火と私の死体 on Booklive!

I’m only just at the beginning, but I love it and it’s crazy how we’re immediately drawn into the story and we start caring for the characters right away. The author is such a good story teller…
The first short story is also extremely easy to listen to! I’m really happy about that, it means I can listen to it while doing other things, I don’t need to be 100% focused or look at the text.
The narration is very good, background noises are okayish, but I would have preferred the audiobook without the background music that is sometimes added.

I decided what would be my next Japanese read: 夏と花火と私の死体, Otsuichi’s debut novel (I think it’s a novel?), it was first published in 1996, which means Otsuichi was very young when he wrote it! I’m really looking forward to read it.
I’ll add it to the DB and buy in tomorrow!

That was an important chapter, things are taking a turn now it looks like!

I can’t decide what my next Japanese book will be… I’m always drawn to those honkaku mysteries with closed-circles and locked-room mysteries, but I often end up being disappointing. Not necessarily because the book is bad, but because I’m not that interested in tricks, more on characters and motives.
Maybe I’ll just end up choosing another book by Otsuichi, but my current audiobook is also Otsuichi, and I just finished ZOO, and my last audiobook, which I also just finished, was the Chinese translation of メアリー・スーを殺して. So I’m afraid I’ll get tired of the author’s style, but at the same time, I don’t feel like this could really happen…

I can’t find the time to start Lohen’s SQ, and I’m waiting for the ascension materials it gives to fully level him up. I’ll only try an Abyss run with him once he is 90 and talents 9. I still don’t know if I want to double crown him…

Now I’m also thinking about creating author pages on the website. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and I used a plugin on Wordpress that allowed me to do that, but even though the plugin was really great, it also did not correspond exactly to what I wanted to do, so I’ve never been happy with this page on the old blog.
Here I think I could do exactly what I want to, the question is whether I have the courage to bring older datas from notes to this website. Or I could start from scratch with what I have here, but it would feel strange to say I only read like 2 books by Higashino.
That’s a new project to think about and work on!

Finished Centurion’s Anecdote, I liked it! The end was a bit underwhelming though…

I don’t have the courage to try and unlock the other ending, I’m not a fan of the multiple endings mechanic, so I’m giving up on the weapon ascension mats, but I do have the weapon!

I finished the second short story, 보름, and I loved it. It was a very good mystery with very dark themes (depression, alcoholism and DV among others), but I loved how it makes you see the characters differently as the story goes.

I’ve been working on the lyrics of this song by 阿禹ayy.

As per tradition, my first Abyss clear was Xiao and Mizuki! Clearing with those two makes me so happy every single time
First half:

Xiao

Durin

Faruzan

Xianyun

Durin is back on NO for the clear… I’m so glad I pulled him for Xiao, because it’s so much easier to clear content that requires pyro.
And yes, I chose to play Xianyun instead of Nicole, but this Abyss is actually a good way to test the Durin-Nicole core for Xiao, maybe I’ll try later in the month if I feel like it.

Second half:

Mizuki

Ororon

Columbina

Ineffa

I didn’t think it would work because of the Suanni, but they did it!

Read chapter 19 today too!

Part of me wants to bring all my read books to this new website, but the task sounds daunting… I could start with Taiwanese and HK authors, because there’s not a lot of them and they are listed on Readmoo. For Japanese, most of the books I read are on my older website, so maybe there’s a way to fetch them from there? As for Korean, it’s all over the place or nowhere at all…
I won’t be doing full book pages, just write the name of the author and the title of the book somewhere so that stats like “number of books read by author” would be more accurate.
What I could also do is only add books for authors I’m currently reading. So if I start a book by an author I already read, then I could make a list of the already read books.
Or maybe I’ll get too lazy and drop the idea entirely.

I loved the second volume as much as the first one, it’s crazy to think that all the short stories of ZOO are, without exception, equally fascinating. My favourite ones were 血液を探せ！and 神の言葉, but I loved them all.

The last story was much shorter than I thought… and so strange too!

Finished chapter 18, this one was really great, I might just continue and read 19 today as well.

I wanted to try Lohen in the current Abyss so I did a run last minute! He is still half built (level 69, talents 6/6 and no Witch’s Homework yet).

First half:

Lohen

Durin

Kazuha

Nicole

I tried with Citlali, but it didn’t work, I was missing a few seconds on the third chamber. Changed to Kazuha and cleared everything with a lot of margin. Lohen’s damage was really low given his build. I was also not doing his combos really. But Durin’s damage is impressive. I never really played Durin dark form before, he was just a Xiao support. But with Lohen, I gave him his DPS set, and I’m really shocked by his numbers!

Second half:

Columbina

Lauma

Linnea

Ineffa

The support team from Nod-Krai. It’s probably not optimal to make them all fight for hydro, but the team is mega strong still, and I find it fun to play.

I finished the short story 落ちる飛行機の中で, I loved it!
I’m tempted to read the last one too, because it’s very short, but I’ll keep it for tomorrow instead.

Either I don’t understand what I’m reading, or there’s a problem with the book. Talking about Han Hao and Eumenides, the book says:

那个“很坏很坏的坏人”，自然就是Eumenides! 正是他害得韩灏身负血案，不得不抛妻弃子，亡命天涯。

What?! Han Hao shot his colleague by mistake, then decided to kill the witness to protect himself. When another witness resurfaced, Han Hao decided once again to protect his position, by killing him and killing the captain of the SWAT team Xiong Yuan too who was protecting the witness. So this guy not only killed a policeman by mistake, but then coldly murdered three other persons to protect himself! Then he also killed Deng Hua thinking it was Eumenides but oh well. Eumenides had nothing to do with the shooting of the colleague and the first murder, and even though he did stage the setup for the two following murders, Han Hao didn’t have to play along, he is the one who took the decision to kill Xiong Yuan to continue hiding his secret. I just don’t get it, why is the novel describing it as if Eumenides was responsible and Han Hao was a victim?
More generally, I find the whole Han Hao thing very strange, like the man killed innocent people to protect his position and privileges, what could be more despicable? Even Eumenides kills for justice. But even though they had knowledge of all this, Yin Jian and his colleagues were still very respectful towards Han Hao at the beginning of the novel. It also always seems like Liu Song is singled out as being strongly vindictive for personal reasons - he loved and admired Xiong Yuan - but his attitude should actually be the norm rather than the exception.
And since I started pointing out things that bother me, it’s the same with Ding Ke. The single one argument to prove how good a policeman he was is the 100% success rate, something repeated several times in the novel. But to me, this looks extremely bad: a 100% conviction rate screams wrongful convictions. And everyone sighing in admiration when just hearing his name is just cringe. And when the characters thought that Ding Ke quit the police because he couldn’t face a failure, they still admired him? What is there to admire when someone flees as soon as things don’t go their way? But worse, we later know that Ding Ke covered for Zhibang, and the novel makes it look like it was the right thing to do, and he resigned to what? maintain his integrity? Like, knowing he covered for his favourite student - and not a slight mistake, Zhibang did kill a man (although I’m sure, we’ll learn he had no choice or a good reason to act so), shows him under a very bad light, but it’s almost described as a noble sacrifice.

I finished chapter 16, and I was not convinced at all by the whole thing, especially Huang Jieyuan’s plan to catch the murderer of the 1/12 case. It also felt very repetitive, like for example, we already went through the whole description of the special performance given at Jieyuan’s bar, but we have to go through the same exact description a second time.
Some details were also strange and not convincing.
I also find that some things that I would consider flaws in the novel but that I accept because it doesn’t prevent me from enjoying it, are becoming more and more pronounced to the point when it’s becoming irritating. (Some generalisations about policemen, women, etc., a tendency to over explain things that were obvious in the first place, some sexist attributions of roles, like Mu Jianyun being here mostly to fill the “woman” role - she can’t bear gory descriptions and gets really unsettled by the performance - a strong tendency to idealise characters, they are all so clever, perfect, diligent, fighting for justice, etc., and maybe it’s a writing style, but constantly adding small commentaries, for example describing a scene and then adding an explanation or a generalisation as to what happened or why characters react as they did, often feels like the author thinks the reader is stupid.)
I’m still really enjoying the book!

Chapter 16 is great, and we finally get to know more about something the author has been teasing for a while, but I was so tired today, I could barely keep my eyes opened while reading, so I preferred to stop mid-chapter. I’ll continue tomorrow!

I can’t really express how much I loved this audiobook. It’s kind of scary that one person can write so many unique and fascinating short stories (I’m currently reading Zoo, which is equally incredible).
Otsuichi’s stories all have this strange mix of sadness and loneliness, but also something warm and tender, while being excellent mysteries or horror stories or delivering really unsettling plots or denouements.
I loved all the stories in the collection, but 山羊座的友人 and 宗像與鋼筆事件 are my favourites.
And as I said before, I can’t find the name of the narrator, but the narration was top-notch.

Now that I have Mika, it makes farming 空羽蛾 for Lohen much easier than it was for Linnea!

I can’t wait to start Lohen’s SQ but I didn’t have time this weekend… I’ll wait to have the ascension materials from his SQ to fully ascend him too, so it slows down his build. I’m working on building Prune in the meantime.

I looked at which Otsuichi books were available as audiobooks on weixin dushu, and there’s 失踪假日 (失踪HOLIDAY), 只有你听到 (きみにしか聞こえない CALLING YOU) and 寂寞的頻率 (さみしさの周波数), which are all early works. If I’m not mistaken they are respectively from 2000, 2001 and 2002.
So that’s perfect, I’m going to listen to them in this order, they’re going to be my next audiobooks. I might listen to something else in-between to change things up, but these three audiobooks are on my list for this year.

My flashcards retention rate has been very bad yesterday and today… I need to focus!

I used to think that Udaru Oshita (大下宇陀児) and Jokichi Hikage (日影丈吉) were my favourite Japanese authors, but now I think it’s Otsuichi (乙一).

I finished 伊娃．瑪莉．克羅斯, I didn’t need to look at the text after all, it was easy to follow once I got started. Loved this one as well! Very disturbing, but very good!

I took the Miliastra personality quiz and my result was “Master Strategist of Liyue“.
I’ve been having fun with “One Stroke Puzzle”, “Nonogram Scrolls” and “Flappy Linnea” among others to farm primogems. Then I spent 15 minutes customising my Manekina. Some standard fates gave me the autumn-theme outfit I wanted so badly when it came out, but now the weather’s much too hot to wear that…

I finished the combat event, and it was so much fun!!! I loved it!! I’m hoping they will add this as a regular combat feature one day.
I named 咕咕丸 as champion
The most difficult part of the event, was to read the five sections tutorial in Chinese.

At least, now I know how to say “to parry” in Chinese.

Also, one thing we can say to Kazuha is 下回可以一起到処游览。If only it was true and we really could…

I loved this film much more than I expected to! I’m not surprised that the film leaves us with more questions than answers, but I find it a little bit too opened in the end, though it’s been fun to try and give it my own interpretation.
I found some scene surprisingly terrifying too.

I finished chapter 5, and this one felt oddly out of place. The chapter was okay overall, but there was a whole passage where characters seemed to understand something from the first time, when we already went over it previously. I’m pretty sure it must be a mistake, it felt very odd. Not only do the characters realise something everyone already knew, but we even already went through the consequences of it in a previous chapter.
I still enjoyed reading it, and I do still find the novel very suspenseful, but this chapter in particular felt quite repetitive.

I have mixed feelings about this series, on the one hand, I think it was excellent as a young adult horror series, on the other hand, it was a “not for me” kind of series, so there’s a lot of things that I disliked.
If you like both k-dramas in general, high school stuff and horror, then you’ll probably love this drama.
But personally, I really dislike k-dramas in general. It doesn’t mean that I don’t like Korean series (I absolutely love series like Hellbound or Kingdom, and Karma is one of my favourite series of all times), but you know the set of rules that make k-dramas kind of a genre in itself, especially the feel-good and romance ones. I found that this series had a lot of those typical k-drama stuff that I absolutely cannot bear like characters freezing and looking dumb for several seconds when situations call for a prompt response, useless dialogues when the situation is urgent, and very clichéed and unrealistic characters. I really dislike this kind of perfect characters: Hajun clearly has financial difficulties, but he is a mathematic genius who does well at school. Se-a has a very traumatic past, lives quasi alone, but still found the courage to fight for her dreams, etc. On the contrary, the rich and privileged Nari is the most ambiguous one.
As a result, Nari was by far the most interesting character for me, she’s the only one who felt real, who seemed to have emotions like a normal human being, in opposition to her k-drama stereotyped friends. The two girls at the origin of the curse were also very interesting and I really liked the episode focused on them. I also found Se-a quite dull which is a shame because she is the main character of the series. Overall, the “bad” characters like Nari and Siwon were the most interesting ones, compared to our “good” perfect cast of heroes who have no flaws at all.
I also found some episodes better than others, not really liking the more action-focused ones.
Overall, it was entertaining enough, but even though the story was good, I was so annoyed by the characters that it prevented me from really liking the series. Probably won’t watch if there’s a second season coming.

I played a little bit of Critter Crash, I had a broken Dynamo deck which got me my best result.
I’ll continue playing until I get the skin, but I probably won’t have time to go beyond that.

Critter Crash is actually the perfect thing to do while watching the World Cup.

I’m debating whether I’m going to add entries for all the film and series I watch or keep it for the ones I watch in my target languages. I started a physical notebook for Korean films only, and this website replaced it, but it’s not just limited to Korean films.
I forget everything if I don’t actively try to recall it or make some kind of output about it. Maybe everyone is like this, or maybe it’s a problem with me, but I absolutely cannot remember the plot of films, series or books I watched or read in the past. That’s why I’m obsessed with writing things down, taking notes and writing reviews.
So even though my website was focused on language learning, it could be nice to just record all the films and series I watch just to not forget about them…

I found another word whose meaning was a surprise to me:

Because the hanzi are so common, it felt like I should have known the meaning of the word, but the real meaning was not what I imagined.

I continued the story a bit, I finished chapter 9. I like it so far, but it’s also not my favourite.

I finished Varka SQ, it was insane!! He got a crazy trial, I can’t remember any character having so much combat in their story! (though to be fair, there are a lot of SQ I haven’t done yet). I loved the last part a lot, the cutscenes were great too, and the combat was really cool. Thank goodness I haven’t played his story during his banner! Varka’s playstyle is so good

Cleared Lucidscape! I always try to speedrun with my best characters. Teams were:
First half:

They cleared in 4 rounds. I did a retry, but I couldn’t clear in 3 rounds no matter what. Maybe the team is not optimal, because Fatutu didn’t do anything.

Second half:

Not sure what this team is exactly, but they cleared in 3 rounds no problem (Ezio is P5 and Charon P3). I didn’t play Cassandra at all.

There were only two character names in 神の言葉, so I’m not doing a character list. Even for Closet it was not really necessary.

I finished 神の言葉, another incredibly fascinating story. It’s kind of scary to think that someone can write so many unique yet equally impactful stories.
I really loved this one, the end was so striking and terrifying too… But what I loved the most is the protagonist, it was such an interesting character, not just his personality and how it made him struggle, but that he was aware of it.

I went through Lorentz Butterfly story. I found some parts interesting, some less, so I skimmed through them. I initially thought I would skip the whole character story, so I’m glad I went through it. But yeah, I don’t feel invested in this patch at all.

With Anki, my biggest struggle was to add cards regularly so that I could study new things every day. With my new flashcards, the struggle is to not add too many cards at once… It’s so easy now, I have popup dictionary on all the texts I import to the website, and I can add them to the flashcard from the popup window directly, so it’s tempting to simply add all the words I look up. And given that the sentence they’re coming from (as well as all the sentences saved on the website that contain the word) are shown as example sentences on the card, I also don’t need to worry about adding context.
Adding new words used to take so much time…

Starting reading Mika’s character story! I don’t like reading in-game so I take the text from the wiki. With new characters, I want to only read as I really unlock them in-game, but given that Mika is not in the party, I’ll just read everything even if I don’t increase friendship with him yet.

I had started the last short story, 伊娃．瑪莉．克羅斯, then given up because it was too hard and I couldn’t follow well enough. I gave it another try while keeping an eye on the text this time, which makes it very easy. I listened to 1/3 already, I don’t know if I’ll continue to read along while listening, or try to listen only from now on. Now that I know the context, it should be easier.

Finished chapter 14 and the first part too! There are two parts in total in the book.
I’m halfway through the book now, still loving it very much!

I’m still in the middle of the second chapter… I love how almost each time we get to do a different activity or game. On the one hand, I’m happy to still have these to do, so I can also meet Columbina still, but on the other hand, will I ever get the glider… not before Snezhnaya that’s for sure…

Did a lot of things in Genshin today, Nicole’s quest part 3, Prune’s Witch’s Homework (it was adorable!), some exploration, visited Columbina, and I just did the introductory dialogue of the new event (so happy to see Kazuha!! ) but I haven’t started it yet.

I still haven’t done the new IT, but now I might as well wait for Lohen to be IT ready. I think that even at 70, he would be a big upgrade to my cryo roster!

Finished chapter 13, almost halfway through!

Her character story 1 was so sad it made me cry. I kind of want to equip the bubble pistol gadget when she’s in the party, no actually I’m going to look at all the toy gadgets I have in the backpack and equip them all!

I completely forgot about Reed! I mean I forgot we got her for free and she was sitting at zero friendship in the suitcase. All my other characters have max friendship now.
I added her to the Wilderness, and I’ll need to redo my farming stages! My teams are always Ezio + whoever needs friendship levels.

Why so many names!?

I finished the first short story, 불빛 없는 밤의 도시, and I think it was a really strange one.
It feels like there was a lot of interesting threads, but none was really fully developed. Maybe it would have been better as a novel? For example, the idea of the zero lights nights was really interesting, and we do follow the different steps of its implementation, but at the same time, the character of Jae-u could have been more developed I felt like. The idea of linking those zero lights nights to crime was also very interesting. But challenges like CCTV being useless, were not really the focus of the short story, event though this had a lot of potential. Similarly, the tensions with the environmental maintenance workers could have been an interesting thread if the story had focused more on that. The end was very good, but also felt strange to me, maybe because we never get to know the characters completely. I feel like this short story could have easily been a novel, because there was so many things going on.

I wanted to study Mika’s voicelines but the audio is not on the cn wiki. So strange! I don’t want to study in-game, so I’ll just read his story for now, in parallel with Prune’s.

Chapter 11 done!

I had a really scary moment when Weixin Dushu was not working on my e-reader anymore. I was using the mobile app, and it was working just fine until now, but apparently, an automatic update broke it. Solution was to install the 微信读书墨水屏版 directly from ink.qq.com instead of downloading from the app store.
It works now!! And the display looks much better too, menus, comments, everything is more adapted and looks better. It’s really an upgrade compared to the mobile app!

I read Closet, this short story was really brilliant! I loved it so so much.

The first short story is really not easy to read, so I’m progressing slowly. I wanted to finish it today, but it’s probably not happening.

Lohen’s story details and kits aren’t updated on the Chinese wiki yet, so I’ll probably won’t start studying them today.

I finally got around to reading Prune’s kit… it’s so hard to read character kits in Chinese, but I decided to really immerse and stop watching guides in English or read anything in English about the characters. So from what I understand, I need to stack attack on her, and ideally, I would like to have her burst up too… There’s also a special mention if the DPS swirls, so I guess she only gets her full value with Varka or DPS Venti? I might just play her a bit in overworld for fun, but I won’t completely build her right now, and I don’t think I could slot her in any of my teams right now.

It’s a shame that Lohen is really not the best choice to farm his boss and his talent domain…

I’ve been lazy with reading character stories lately, because I can’t deny that with content in Chinese, I just don’t have the motivation to start reading character stories in-game, with everything else there is to read. It’s really a shame, so I’m going to study character stories from the wiki instead, that way I can paste them to my learning Chinese website and use the dictionary. I don’t know if I’ll have the courage or time to catch up on older characters, but I’m starting with my latest ones: Prune, Lohen and Mika.

I finally started the story, I love it!! I’m watching on bilibili instead of playing in-game, I wish I could just listen to it and not have to always look at the screen, but it’s too difficult. I can follow quite well, but I need to read the subtitles in Chinese.
I love Loggerhead the most, I love her voice so much, so melodious! Then I also really like 野木蓝.

Finished chapter 10! This book is such a page-turner, exactly like the first one.

I don’t know why but the total number of pages on weixin dushu never stops to increase as I read. These are e-book pages, but I didn’t change the font nor the size. I noticed this with all the books I read on the platform.

Saw this character in 暗黑者2, and it feels like I never saw it before. I know 皱眉 with the same meaning, it’s probably more common.

There’s something with Zhao Haohui’s writing style I always find strange. We’re always following the same characters, but sometimes (or rather often), the author conceals their identity for a while (like the first paragraphs of a new section), sometimes even describe them (appearance, age, etc.), and after a while says: this man is Luo Fei, and the young man beside him is Zeng Rihua.
I don’t know, I find it odd every single time, I don’t know what purpose it serves, because usually the reader already knows which character we’re talking about, there’s no surprise.

I just got one Mika on the Lohen pulls, so now I finally have all the 4-star characters in the game. I’m quite happy too, because I like Mika a lot, I absolutely loved him in the Waterborne Poetry event! I’m not going to build him yet, but I’m going to study his voicelines and his story. I’m not even sure what his kit is doing exactly… later I might level him to IT requirements.

I went to pity and won my 50/50, it’s such a relief! My primogems count has never been so low…
As usual, I haven’t pre-farmed at all so it might take all the second half of the patch to build him and find him decent artefacts. And I don’t know what his best team is, but I do have Nicole and Durin, so it’s probably okay.

Started the first short story that gives its name to the collection. I found it hard to read (in terms of language level), but it’s very interesting!

I finished studying chapter 2 of 礁与浪的相逢, I only have chapter 3 left! I love this event! I also saw that the 幻友绮旅 event story is already on the Chinese wiki! I’m tempted to start it right away…
So my plan for the second half of the patch is to finish studying 礁与浪的相逢, then do 幻友绮旅, and maybe study Lohen SQ, but only if I like it enough. I don’t think I will study Varka SQ.

불빛 없는 밤의 도시 is a collection of short stories! I thought it was a novel. I’m super happy, because I actually wanted to read short stories in both Japanese and Korean while I was busy with 暗黑者2, but then I saw this book and really wanted to read it, so I chose this one even though I thought it was a novel… It’s a nice surprise!

Wow Lohen’s trailer… this guy feels like a mix of Sparkle and Jane Doe, clearly worth risking going to double pity for him.
I should also have two points of capturing radiance already, so it will help, because I do want Sandrone…

Won’t have time to finish chapter 9 today, but I’m still happy with my reading progress.

I finished chapter 8, it was another extremely suspenseful one!

Episode 5 of 기리고 was quite good! I liked the change of point of view!

I chose my next Korean read! The latest novel by 정해연, 불빛 없는 밤의 도시. I read two books by this author and loved them both, so I’m confident I will love this one two.

Chapter 8 is very long, I just started it but was too sleepy to really focus, so I didn’t make any real progress today.

I made some progress on the quest, but then there’s a warning saying the next part is going to be long, so I’m keeping this for another day. My goal was to finish it before Lohen’s release, which might not be possible now but it doesn’t really matter.

风起之日

I forgot this set actually gives 20% CR! Thankfully I was a bit short on Durin, so he’s build is not as bad as I initially thought, even though most pieces I found rolled poorly.

My exploration team is all broken supports from the version. I need Nicole to find treasure chests, Lauma because I love using her deer form to run around, Linnea for ore mining and healing, and Columbina is not there for any exploration abilities, but we need her because the team would fall apart otherwise.
I also use the team for farming, Linnea is dealing so much damage, nuking most ennemies, and Lauma’s hold skill can finish off whatever is still alive. Nicole is completely useless as no one scales attack, but I love her burst animation so I do it anytime I get a chance.

Nicole

Lauma

Linnea

Columbina

I’m not playing any Reverse1999 at the moment, just logging in to do my dailies. I haven’t done the story yet, and I’m somehow not really motivated to do it at all. What I think I will do is listen to it on either YouTube or BiliBili instead of playing in-game, so I can do something else why I listen.

I watched episode 4 of 기리고 and loved this one! I’m right back into the series now.
Young Adult stuff is still not my really my thing, but the series has a lot of great things.

I probably won’t be reading much or at all today, as I’m mostly busy working on the website and adding post layouts.

I read the second story 冷たい森の白い家, such a fascinating, strange and sad story…

Chapter 7 was not an easy read, not just because it was an unpleasant description to read, but it was also more difficult in terms of language level.

I pulled Durin for Xiao, so I put him on NO and never farmed his DPS set (I did farm the domain a lot, but never found good Rising Winds pieces). But there’s two things happening now:

• I’m thinking of continue playing FFXX rather than the Nico-Durin core for Xiao
• I will pull for Lohen, which means that Durin is probably better on Rising Winds, and that Lohen will need a set of his own anyway!
  So I need to find two good sets now, with DPS requirements…

I haven’t watched 기리고 in a while. I liked the first episode, and found the second one even better. I liked that the episode worked in two directions: showing deeper layers of the characters relationship while quickening the pace of the story and diving more into horror. But I found the third episode rather boring, it’s mostly classic horror stuff, not really scary to me, and I was also kind of annoyed that situations happen because of weird lack of communication (하준‘s sister should have told 세아 what she would have to deal with - I know she couldn’t know the extend of the trauma 세아 had gone through that could be used against her, but they could have talked about it, or the shaman could have warned her the demon will try to use her memories and weaknesses to create illusions, or just simply tell her more than just “pass through three doors”. The last trial was really good though!).
So since episode 3, I’ve been less motivated to continue the series, but I won’t give up just yet.

Working on the blog display and post headers is taking much more time than I thought. And I’m so sleepy too, I’m not making good decisions I feel like. I’ll probably continue working on this during the weekend.

This book is incredibly good!!!! I loved it so so much!!
It’s not a found footage per se, but it does have a lot of found footage elements with other media that work better in books than film like mails and forum discussions. The setting is very classic, just your typical strange things happening in a building, but it’s so well done. I love the horror genre, but I’m not easily scared and most of the time, I end up being disappointed by the horror fiction I read or watch. I guess that the more you consume this genre, the less impressed you’re bound to be. But this book was so well executed: it has a good variety of “media” sometimes we follow the main characters, sometimes we watch or read past documents. It has extremely good and scary scenes, like the kind that really sends chills down your spine. Reading the book really felt like watching a film, it’s well written and reads very easily, once you started, it’s just impossible to put down. The end was excellent too.

I thought I would continue 죽은 집에 관한 기록 today because I didn’t touch it yesterday, and just like that I finished it. This is the definition of a page-turner!

Chapter 6 read!

I started Varka SQ and I loved the beginning: lore impactful, but sounds intriguing with a good plot. And a lot of characters too! I’ll need to note down some names in Chinese to match with their equivalent in English.
I wanted to play all chapter 1 today, but I won’t have time. Anyway, I’m glad the story looks promising.

I was so sleepy today, but thankfully, chapter 5 was a suspenseful one!

I’m reading Lohen’s skill showcase and anecdote in Chinese, and there’s a passage where he says:

快、准、狠。我的技巧就是这样，不知道你跟不跟得上？

These three adjectives immediately brought me back to 流行蝴蝶剑, I think Gu Long liked to use them in combination to praise a martial art, I remember it because I found it so cool haha.
I found some examples:

够快、够准、够狠的暗器

他武功本和孟星魂是同一路的，又狠，又准，又快

One more reason to pull for Lohen then!
Also 火光炸开，冰晶封路—— So cool!

Lohen teaser is so good… I guess he’s kind of a must-pull now… my plan to save for Snezhnaya has been short-lived…
It would be funny if I get Lohen before Mika, he’s the only 4star I’m missing.

I finished chapter 4, I hope I’ll have time for one or two more chapters today!

I listened to 某印刷物的下落, it has a really interesting (but dark) topic!

I actually picked 죽은 집에 관한 기록 to have something short and easy to read on the side, while my main reading focus was supposed to be my Chinese novel 暗黑者2, but 죽은 집에 관한 기록 is so good, I ended up reading only that today…
I remember 불귀도 살인사건 being an extremely suspenseful thriller that I would definitely place among my 10 favourite books read in Korean. I should really explore 전건우‘s bibliography more!

I’m stopping here for now, because it would be a shame to finish it too soon, but wow, this book could really be read in one sitting. I’m halfway through and so far it’s one of the best horror story I’ve read/watched (including films and series) in a while.

This book is impossible to put down!!!

This book is so so good!! Extremely suspenseful, I love it so far!

Finished chapter 3, so suspenseful!!

I had a good time in the game today! Visited Columbina and Nicole. I really love her side quests, 胜过白银与精金! The first two chapters were great. I love listening to Nicole
I finished the mini games (the Yaoyao and Qiqi one was so cute), so now I completely finished the event. I also got the Dust from SO farming, so now I can go back to regular farming, which allowed me to finally complete (for now) Nicole’s build.
I didn’t have time to start something long like the Temple of Space WQ or Varka SQ as planned, but I’ll probably have time tomorrow.

I started it and read the first chapter, it’s so good!! It’s a documentary with some found footage elements. Reading it actually feels like watching a found footage film. I love it so far!

If she ever officially replaces C2R1 Xianyun in Xiao’s team, then she’ll be double-crowned, but… I’m in denial, I don’t want to accept the fact that she can replace Xianyun. I want to believe that this is just a dream, and we’re all going to wake up to Adepti buffs or sth, that will make Xianyun BIS again and Xiao completely broken…
3735 is probably not enough, but oh well… good enough for now!

I finished the first short story 血液を探せ！and this one was so funny. Not just humouristic elements that make you smile, but actually so funny I was laughing almost the entire time. And the end was so great too!

I chose my new Korean book: another short one (180 pages) by 전건우, the author of 불귀도 살인사건 which is one of my favourite Korean crime novels. Given that 暗黑者2 is my main focus at the moment, and that I’m going to be mostly reading it this month, I prefer having shorter books that are easy to read for the other two languages.
I actually wanted to choose a collection of short stories, but the book I had in mind was not available yet in e-book.
I’ll probably buy it tomorrow!