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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.

I’m just connecting that the 瑕 in 完美无瑕 is the same as in 瑕疵. Makes it much easier to remember! 完美无瑕 (perfect, flawless) is in one of Mizuki’s voicelines, and I had to look up more precisely what 瑕 means, because I thought I didn’t know this character. Then I realised I actually knew it from 瑕疵!

I’ve been browsing Japanese mystery books, and I saw this title: ネタバレあり～双紋島の殺人～ by 下村 敦史, and it sounds so intriguing! I never read this author before, but they’ve written a lot of books. ネタバレあり seems to be the most recent one. I don’t know if it’s the best one to start exploring the author’s bibliography, but I find the concept really interesting (apparently, the novel opens with spoilers for the story), so it will probably be my next Japanese read.

Now that I finished the first volume of ZOO, I don’t know if I should continue with the second volume straight away, or read something else in between.