Reading Record 19

 Hm.  19 since May 1.  That feels pretty small, doesn't it?

Oh well.

Anyway.  This morning I finished reading Golden Terrace, Book One, by Cang Wu Bin Bai.

So, this was absolutely an impulse purchase:  not long after that previous post where I said I was starting to feel weird about reading so many novels that had always been in English, I happened to go to the bookstore and once there I found myself actively looking for a new danmei to read.  (Instead of doing my usual thing of picking titles in advance by way of reading their page on the publisher's website.)

I had been pretty meh about this one when I saw it on the website, so I hadn't planned on picking it up, but seeing it right while I was wanting a new read pushed me over the edge to buy it.

And I'm glad I did!  If the second volume (it's only got two!) is as good as this one, it will probably end up on the short list of my favorites in the genre.  Although, speaking of the genre, I'm not sure quite what this one's other genre is.  Or rather, I have no idea what its other genre is called.  Since "danmei" is pretty much just an umbrella term for all Chinese webnovels (and other media?) with leads in a gay romance, each work is also in some other genre.  A lot of them are either xianxia or wuxia, Astrolabe Rebirth was sci-fi, Riverbay Road Men's Dormitory was a slice-of-life dramedy kind of thing, but this...?  The closest genre I know of would be "palace intrigue" but since this is centered around two military men outside the palace (though one of them works directly for the emperor, so the palace is visited repeatedly), that's definitely not right, but I don't know what is.  I'm sure it has a name (beyond "period drama") but I am ignorant of that name.

Anyway.  I really enjoyed the relationship between the two leads.  The back of the book oversold the "rivals-to-lovers" thing (unsurprisingly!), but that element is certainly there; I think their much more complicated situation is probably far superior to a standard rivalry situation.  I also find it both entertaining and very realistic that these two men who were forced to marry each other argue repeatedly about who will play which role when they finally consummate the marriage.  (One of them had known he preferred men for years, and the other was such a career soldier that he had never even thought about love and romance...but deep down he had definitely also already been gay (plus the uncle he admired highly who had practically raised him was gay, so he had that positive association) so the fact that they actually will end up happily married despite being forced into it (by a paranoid emperor who wanted to stamp out the one man's bloodline) is not super unrealistic.)

Hmm...I feel like there was something else I wanted to say, but now I can't think what it was.

...

Hnrgh....

...

*sigh*

Oh well.

If I think of it later, I can add it in.

Original language:  Chinese

Random thought of the moment

 Okay, so I am currently playing Persona 3 Portable.

There are a couple of layers of reasons for this; the immediate layer of "why now" being that after finishing with Pokopia, I ended up dropping seven other games (in one case because it ran like garbage on the Switch, so I plan to try on the Switch 2 when my brother is done borrowing it, then on the Steamdeck if that doesn't work, but all the others I'm unlikely to return to) and wanted to pick something I knew I could and would actually complete (also I wanted to play some kind of Persona game this year because of the series' 30th anniversary, and it's awkward trying to play 1, 2 or 2 due to lack of modern console support).  The less immediate reason, the reason I even owned a (physical) copy of it, is that when Persona 3 Reload was announced, I saw people on Discord talking about how awful it was that they had left out the female lead from the portable version.  In talking about that, they gave examples of how much more personality the female player's dialog choices had, and I was won over to the idea that hey, maybe it was actually worth replaying to see her version of the story.

I hadn't realized just how different it would be, but that's not actually what I wanted to talk about.  What I wanted to talk about was this random thought I just had about the foreign exchange student that the player character forms an S.Link with.

As translated, he's from France (with an accent so overstated that it borders between comically overstated and downright offensive) but I don't know if he always was, or if in Japanese he was American and they changed his name to make him French instead.  Either way, what just struck me randomly was how absurdly stupid his dialog is in translation.  (More observant people were probably struck by this straight away, but I have a disturbing tendency not to think about this sort of thing while I'm engaging with media; I only tend to think about these things afterwards, and while I'm reading/watching/playing something I mostly only think about things like where the plot might go next.)  The character, Bebe, is overwhelmingly in love with Japan and its culture, so in the English translation of the game, he is constantly tossing in Japanese words then repeating them in English.  Common enough in American media when dealing with an otaku character...but he's supposed to be speaking Japanese, or the player character wouldn't understand him!!!  So wtf?  How are we supposed to interpret his dialog?  Is he actually tossing out French (or English, if he was originally American) words and then recalling the Japanese word he was looking for?

Or was he just given the most absurdly stupid translation possible?

😰

Pretty sure the answer is number two, there.

Which sucks, because he's one of the few boys the player can't force the heroine to date (I assume, since his S.Link is so far unchanged from the original version).

I absolutely do not intend to force the heroine to date any of the boys, ofc.  (Especially not Shinjiro!  I know what happens in the end if she's dating him, and it's actually pretty twisted!  (Especially since Akihiko is obviously into him!  Don't be denying the doomed yaoi, Atlus!))  If she can't date Aigis then she will not date.  (Given the ending of the game, isn't it better for her not to date anyone anyway?)

Anyway.  That was my random and pointless thought about one small aspect of the Switch port of a PSP reworking of a PS2 game from like 2006.  (Which I haven't played since its first release, 'cause why would I have wanted to replay it with that ending?)

Reading record 18

 I decided to go ahead and finish up reading that ebook short story collection off Project Gutenberg.  There were only a couple stories left, so....

The collection is called The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange by Anna Katherine Green.

The ebook itself doesn't say when it was written, and I've forgotten (and don't feel like bothering to look it up at the moment) but I'm wanting to say in the neighborhood of 1900-1910.  There isn't electricity, only gas lighting, and there's no mention of WWI, but there do seem to be automobiles, so...my detailed knowledge of the early years of the 20th century is too sparse to be helpful.  Or rather, too absent.  I have some general knowledge of that period, but very few details, because my interest in history has always been further away from the present than that.

Trying to pin down when it was written is also compounded by the difficulty that despite being set in New York, the author seems to have been English:  British spellings are used, and one man on surrendering himself for a murder asked if the procedure was to take him directly before the magistrate.  (Or something like that.  Key detail being that he said "magistrate" rather than "judge.")

Anyway.

Much better than the earlier ebook of mystery stories from about the same time period.  The mysteries themselves were not always particularly good or mysterious (one problem with a short story mystery is that when one extraneous character is introduced partway through the story, then you know that they're the culprit!), but despite the heroine's wealthy status, they were at least not particularly classist.  Racism had little to no opportunity to arise (though that in itself is actually rather racist), but there was still some internalized misogyny, though at least it wasn't too bad.

Honestly, my biggest problem with it was something also shared by the other one, by Baroness Orczy, which is that an "explanation" for the female detective was provided at the end.  An explanation and an end to her detecting:  she had a purpose, and having fulfilled it, she no longer needed to take on cases.  Frustrating, to say the least.  Male detectives in this period were surely never given an explicit reason to be taking cases (aside from it literally being their job, as I'm sure there were plenty of stories written about police detectives) nor a reason to stop taking those cases.  When a reason was provided, it would surely have been to serve justice or to prevent injustice, or similar aphorisms along those lines.  Not to seek the chance to prove her beloved's innocence (Baroness Orczy's Lady Molly) or to earn money to pay for something very expensive that was necessary for her disowned sister to regain a comfortable life (Violet Strange).  Maybe that was a necessity for writing about a female detective at the time.  I don't know.  But I do know that as a modern reader I found it frustrating.

Still, at least in this case the stories were okay and I don't regret having read them.

Original language:  English

[Hmm.  Been a lot of that lately.  I wonder if there's anything on my to-read shelf (other than 3/4 of a danmei novel that won't get its final volume until September) that isn't originally written in English?  I'm starting to feel weird about bothering to list that at this point, it's been so long since the last one that was originally in any other language...]

Reading record 17

 Finished reading another book today:  Bromantasy by Máire Roche.

The text on the back (and the tagline on the front) pushed this a bit too hard as comedy (when in fact comedy was merely one element, and not even the largest of them), and definitely spelled out too much of the plot, so I went in expecting something a bit different than it actually was.

However, it was still quite delightful.  Sweet and charming, for the most part.  Though some of the "fantasy versions of modern stuff" like talking about reading news scrolls as "scrolling" felt like some degree of forced or exceptionally dating or both.  But maybe that's just me.  🤷🏻‍♀️

Not sure which book off the to-read shelf I want to read next.

Or rather, what I most wanted to read next on my to-read shelf was a fantasy alternate history that promised (among other things) Napoleon leading an army of the dead, only it turned out to be book two in a series so I really need to get myself to a bookstore and find part one first.  😅  I really need to pay more attention to things like that in the future...

Original language:  English

Reading Record 16

     And I've finished reading Life, The Universe and Everything (still by Douglas Adams, obv) now.

    So.

    Thoughts are...hmm.

    This one is a little bit of a jolt to read now, because I've read the other version of the main story now.

    See, the tale of the Krikkit robots started out as a script for a Doctor Who movie starring the fourth Doctor (Tom Baker), but the BBC rejected it, and so Adams reworked it into the Hitchhiker's Guide universe instead.  But a few years back, one of the modern Doctor Who screenwriters adapted that script into a novel with Adamsian prose.  So my brain is sort of jumbling them together awkwardly.  😅  In most ways, it's more fitting as part of the Hitchhiker's universe, since it's inherently pretty goofy, and yet it's also sort of an awkward fit, since the story is much more adventurous and "dealing with a terrifying enemy" than the usual tale from the lives of Arthur Dent and co.  Not to mention the oddity of slotting Slartibartfast of all people into the role of someone traveling about and trying to correct problems caused by time-travel.  (I kind of wonder if maybe the BBC was actually deeply offended by the Krikkitmen story, and that's why the fifth Doctor (Peter Davison, who actually had a cameo in one of the episodes of the Hitchhker's Guide TV show) is dressed in what is essentially a cricket uniform.)

    Uh.

    Anyhow.

    A few thoughts on the trilogy on the whole:

    Firstly, these novels are actually quite short!  I'd forgotten that.  These days, he'd probably have trouble publishing them at that length.

    Second, I found myself noticing various places throughout where the standard grammar rules we're told to observe at all costs were relaxed or outright ignored.  (There was even a place where there were lines of dialog from two people were in the same paragraph!  Thankfully, only the one, and it was very clear about the switch in speakers, but still, I was stunned.)

    Third, he uses a lot of single-line paragraphs.  Also ending a paragraph in the middle of someone's line of dialogue so that they're still speaking in the next line.  Or lines plural.  Things like this:

"Words of dialogue," Arthur said.

"Um, I mean," he added.

"Uh, that is," he continued.

Like that.  Only not as dumb and pointless.  And with a lot more spluttering nonsense noises.  I found that quite surprising.  (But again, it was always very clear who was speaking.  Which is the truly important part!)

    Anyway.  Classic of sci-fi comedy, as always.

    Not much else to say, since this is just me making a note about what I finished reading and when.

    Now the question is "do I tackle one of the ever-multiplying books on my to-read shelf next, or do I finish off that ebook of short stories?"

    Original language:  English, of course

Reading Record 15

 And this morning I finished (re)reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams.

Not a lot to say, because what is there to say?

Well, except that, being more familiar with the TV version, seeing the concluding conversation (since this book and the TV show end at the same place in the story) expanded to add a couple of the Golgafrinchan girls was...disquieting.  The conversation being between the two of them was appropriate to the focus throughout the story on their friendship (let us not forget that it was Arthur and Arthur alone who Ford took the risk of saving from the doomed Earth!) and the simplicity of the exchange gave a nice tone to the ending.

For that matter, the entire notion that Ford and Arthur would decide to hook up with Golgafrinchan girls despite their disgust with the entire Golgafrinchan race is troubling.  It implies that having zero regard for their partners is their standard position.  I'm sure that wasn't the intent, but that's how it comes off, regardless of intent.

But it was written in the 1980s.  What can ya do?  😭😭

(This is, of course, one of the reasons I don't plan to reread So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, because a hetero romance is a fairly big part of that one.  Though as I recall Arthur does at least treat her as more or less an equal, a proper partner, not just a...)

Anyway.

Onwards!

Original language:  English

Reading Record 14

 So, got through the book I borrowed from my dad on the 4th.

Well.

I got through most of the first novel in that book and then I bought my own new copy of the entire series (in a single hardback that actually cost less than the one I borrowed from my dad did originally) because my dad's copy was super-musty as it dates to like 1986 and I was afraid it would make me sick.

Uh.

Anyway.

The book was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, which I chose to reread at this moment because it's our book club book for June.  (Epicly, I got to choose the one for July!  Though my first thought had been to go Victorian so people could download a free ebook from Project Gutenberg, only it turns out The Pickwick Papers is over 800 pages long, and the book club put a 400 page limit on selections.  😰  Even if it hadn't, I'd never ask other people to read 800 pages...)

I've read the book before, but one thing that really struck me was just how much better I know the TV and radio versions.  It kept throwing me when the dialog was just slightly different!  But it's always fun getting to hear the dialog in lots of other voices in my head.  😁

Anyway, I will obviously be going straight into The Restaurant at the End of Universe, 'cause even if the trilogy didn't feel like "it's not a full story if you stop without all three" that ending was actually very...not an ending.  😅

I wonder if anyone in the book club will have actually stopped there, or if they'll all have finished the whole trilogy?  (Hopefully they'll stop after the trilogy.  So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is kinda uneven, and I actually have never read Mostly Harmless because I was warned about how it ended.)

Before the 4th, I got about 2/3ish through that short story collection, so I'll probably finish it up after Life, The Universe and Everything.  Probably.  Who really knows, though?  That'll be, like, next week.  Anything could happen.

Hmm.  Wait.  Will it be next week?  Or will it be, like, Friday?  I have to wait at the service station tomorrow while they work on my car, so I'll probably get a lot more reading done than usual (and a lot less writing 😭😭 even though I've been doing pretty well on that new fic!) so I might get through a lot quicker than usual....

Enh, what will be will have weasels on its face.

Original language:  English