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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!