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I listened to 山羊座的友人 for about 30 minutes today, I think I’m almost halfway through. Somehow, the story has become very easy to follow now, I don’t have any problem understanding it, and I really really love this story. This one feels closer to the short stories from Zoo 1.

I really wanted to love this book, and I did at the beginning, but the more I read, the more I realised it was a “not for me” type of book. I think the book is great, but there are mainly two things that bothered me (not flaws of the book, just things that I personally don’t like). I know it’s not really a hardcore mystery novel, it has a lot more dimension than just the mystery parts, and it’s more focused on characters than the plot. But it does have a mystery flavour too, and I did not really like how episodes of the past are just revealed to the reader when the time has come to reveal them to us.

The most annoying thing to me is something that is very present in Korean fiction in my opinion: there’s an excess of out-of-the-ordinary characters. I don’t know how to describe it, but characters can never be boring, ordinary people to whom something happens. They all have either a traumatic past and extreme experiences, or have neurodivergent traits and personality disorders of some sorts (some recurring traits are not being able to have emotions or lacking empathy). The problem is that it’s not necessarily thematised, it’s more like a fictional trope.

But in this book in particular, though we do have a character lacking empathy, what bothered me is that all the main characters have a really heavy past and went through really traumatic experiences. The problem is that it’s true for all the main characters, so it kinds of loses its impact (at least that was my reading experience), and the novel wasn’t long enough to really spend a lot of time with each of them, when it feels like each of them would have necessitated a whole novel just for themselves.
Maybe for this reason, I never felt close nor really interested in any of the characters. It might just be that I spent too much time reading this book over a period of time that was too long, but as much as I loved the story, the characters left me mostly unmoved.

Finally finished it today! I’ve been reading it for more than a month, and unfortunately, I was reading it during a long reading slump, so I’m really glad I finished it now.

I don’t have the courage to start the new Japanese book today… Maybe tomorrow then!

I read a whole passage with the floor plans, and it was not difficult at all! I must have been very tired yesterday when I tried to tackle it, because today it felt very easy with the detailed maps. I can take screenshots with my e-reader, so I transferred the images to my phone. That way I could read and check the maps at the same time without needing to go back in the book, which I always find annoying to do with e-reader.

I wanted to finish the chapter today, but I start feeling tired again, so I’ll stop here for now. I’m waking up at 5 every morning right now and I can’t really go to bed early, so my attention span for books is very short.

I must say the novel is really really good, such an intriguing mystery! The passage I read was really engrossing.

I looked at the 6 books that were selected to be featured in the series アジア本格リーグ, but most of them are not available anymore TT. And I’m talking original language (when I can read it of course, so English, Chinese and Korean) and the Japanese translation.

The アジア本格リーグ is a series of 6 honkaku mystery novels from Asia selected by 島田荘司 and translated into Japanese from 2009 to 2010.

Except from the first book of the series, 錯置體 by 藍霄 (TW), that I am currently reading, and 乱神馆记系列之蝶梦 by 水天一色 (MC), all the others are - as far as I could tell - out of stock, are not reprinted anymore despite being translated - and, I would expect, be a somewhat representative book of the genre in their respective countries - and worse didn’t get any ebook version.

I thought this series would be a good opportunity to read honkaku mysteries from different countries, either in their original language or in Japanese translation, but apparently it’s not happening… Thankfully 錯置體 got a new edition in 2024 and is available digitally. The other available one, 乱神馆记系列之蝶梦 by 水天一色, got a new edition in 2023, but I couldn’t find the digital version.

Traditional characters are not a big problem to me, even though I do read more slowly in Traditional, but sometimes, there are characters that still puzzle me like 蒐 = 搜. I guess because it doesn’t look like a Traditional vs Simplified character at all.

Plan for today is to start my new Japanese book, and go through all the floor plan section in 錯肢體. When there’s a difficult part in a novel, I often put off going through it, and without realising it weeks have passed and I don’t feel like opening the book anymore because I’m not in the story anymore. So today, I’ll read those pages!

I continued Emilie SQ, there was a big chunk where I couldn’t pause, so this means I have a lot of text to study now before continuing. Still enjoying the story very much!

I started chapter 2, and the story is really taking an expecting turn, it’s so intriguing! The book is starting to become a page-turner, BUT, I reached a point with maps/floor plans, and it looks very detailed. At the same time, it’s the first time I’m reading detailed descriptions of buildings and floor plans in Chinese, and it’s very difficult, even with the drawings. I don’t have the courage to tackle it right now, it’s going to be a touch passage.

So Hsieh Pin-lin rank in Chinese is: 高雄市刑事警察大隊偵一隊隊長.
隊長 is captain, 偵一隊 is 1st Investigation Team, 刑事警察大隊 is Criminal Investigation Corps.. so yes, I think it’s correct.
Kaohxiung Ciy Police Department is 高雄市政府警察局.

I like having a double rating for books: a five star rating and a favourite checkbox. The star rating is for how good I think the book was, and the favourite checkbox is obviously whether I loved it or not. There are books I absolutely loved even though they had flaws or books I think were great but that I didn’t like as much. So the star rating would be closer to what I would recommend or not to others, whereas the favourite mark is more personal.

I made some progress on the book yesterday. I think it’s a good novel, but I’m not loving it as much as I wanted to. I think I don’t like it very much when point of view changes when convenient, and episodes of the past are just revealed to the reader at some point. I hope I can read a little bit more today, but in any case, I should be able to finish it this week.