Blog

I feel like I’m in a bit of a reading slump since I finished 百年の時効. It was one of these books that was so intense and so engrossing, that it’s hard to feel any kind of motivation after finishing it.

I was wondering which book or author could help me find motivation again, and the answer was obvious: 전건우! And his most recent novel, 믹스테이프, looks so great too!!
I think I need to switch genres a little, because any police procedural I read right now will feel worse than 百年の時効, so horror seems the right place to be. And Jeon Gun-woo is simply the best author of horror fiction I know.

Books by Jeon Gunwoo read so far

죽은 집에 관한 기록

Jugeun jibe gwanhan girok

믹스테이프

migseuteipeu

듀얼

불귀도 살인사건

I finished chapter 1, loved it very much! I also just started chapter 2 out of curiosity, I still don’t understand if this book is a novel or short stories… Chapter 2 starts on a brand new setting, but I think it might be linked still. It’s quite intriguing.

I’m not in a really good reading mood at the moment, so it’s just going to be these few pages for today.

Progressing slowly, but I love the book! I like how the plot seems to be linked to real criminal cases.

I had yet another insomnia, I have zero energy today. I’ll probably focus on working on the database and the transcription of character names. It’s a repetitive task that takes forever but doesn’t require all my attention.
I’ll probably won’t read much today.
But tonight is Genshin SP for Snezhnaya!

I have both 烧灼 and 灼烧 in my flashcards and one has an ease of 2.5 and the other of 1.8. How is my brain even working?

I haven’t made a lot of progress, but the beginning is really good, I love it very much. The chapter names are very intriguing too…

I’m working on making better character/glossary lists for the books I read.

Reading 百年の時効 made me realise that I needed to rethink the character list. A static, chapter-sorted list was not that useful because the plot was so complex. I think it would have been nice to be able to link characters with one another, link them to cases, timeline, places, etc. It’s too bad I hadn’t had the idea sooner, doing this kind of mapping for 百年の時効 would have been perfect.

But better late than never, I’m working on it now. Not every book will need it, but some will, and anyway, I find it fun to do! I’m testing with my current book, 千禧黑夜, so I’m progressing very slowly on this one as I am both taking notes and improving the website tools while reading.

No time to read today, I really wanted to start 千禧黑夜… Well I did open the book, read three or four pages and noted down some characters, but that’s about it, and it’s not even worth logging an update for that.

I looked at my reading stats and the language split is actually almost even so far this year!

13 books read in Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional)
11 books in Korean
11 books in Japanese

It’s the idea of the language competition that motivated me to consistently record my readings, which I started in Summer last year. It’s pretty close this year, and everything is possible! Still 5 months to go, let’s see if Korean or Japanese can overtake Chinese.

I don’t really have time to read today, but I opened 千禧黑夜, and there’s a reference to one of Beyond’s songs right at the beginning.
There was also a reference to Beyond in the last HK book I read! That’s actually how I learnt about the band for the first time.
This time the song quoted is 打不死, it’s a song released after Wong Ka Kui‘s death, when the band only had 3 members.

Now I know two songs by Beyond, if I continue to read Hong Kong literature, I might deepen my knowledge of their discography haha.

I decided to go back to the Readmoo reading challenge, starting with my first of the long books category: 千禧黑夜 by 冒業. I never read this author before, but I saw that he won the Mystery Writers of Taiwan Award and also participated in several editions of 偵探冰室, an anthology of mystery and detective fiction by Hong Kong authors. I still haven’t read any volume, but it’s definitely something I want to do. I also plan on reading previous issues of the MWT Award collections, so I know I’ll encounter this author again in the future.

I think it’s the second time this year when I find myself with no current book at all.

I also read 7 books in July, the most so far this year! Several of them were short, but one was very long.

It’s completely random, but all the covers of July are either grey/black and white or red/orange in tones.

I liked 교통사고 전문 삼비 탐정 at first, especially the first story/chapter, but the more I read, the more I realised it was rather a “not for me” type of book.
I really appreciate that it’s easy to read and entertaining, but it’s a bit too light to me. Everything seems a bit too simplified and sometimes unrealistic to facilitate the plot going to its resolution. Characters are mostly either good or bad, though our protagonist, 3B, has a more complex personality that makes him interesting, though I personally did not really like him all that much.

I think the novel is good overall, it’s just that the style and tone were not what I’m looking for. I did enjoy reading it to some extend, as I said the first story was great, the third had an interesting plot and twists, the second and fourth ones had interesting topics like corruption or frauds.