Reading Record 44

 So, yesterday I finished reading The White Cat's Divine Scratching Post, volume three, by Lv Ye Qian He.  (And considering volume two was in the Reading Record 10 post, I think I can forgive myself for any details I forgot in between them!)  Didn't want to post about it yesterday because of IWSG.

Anyway, final volume of the novel.  Did not disappoint.  😁

In the course of my new danmei obsession (if "new" is the right word for something that started in like 2022) I have now read three novels in which the main pairing is between a cultivation master and one of his pupils.  This one was by far the least questionable of the three.  (Unsurprisingly, actually.) For comparison's sake:

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System:  the protagonist died and was reborn as Shen Qingqiu, a villain in a particularly bad webnovel, which the protagonist had actively been griping about when he died.  (In fact, he basically died of rage at just how badly written Proud Immortal Demon Way was!)  To save himself, he decides to treat the original novel's protagonist, Luo Binghe (a student of Shen Qingqiu's), like a precious pearl, so that he won't want to rip all of Shen Qingqiu's limbs off, like he did originally.  This, of course, proves a little too effective, and Luo Binghe falls in love with him.  The "romance" is definitely the weakest part of the novel, and has a lot of questionable aspects to it, but the teacher-student aspect ranks much lower than some of the other aspects.

The Husky and His White Cat Shizun:  protagonist Mo Ran, having taken over the world, commits suicide and wakes up in his own teenage body, then proceeds to relive his life, and instead of coming to hate his teacher, Chu Wanning, as the ultimate enemy, he falls head over heels in love with him.  (Er, well, that covers at least a little hint of the earlier portions of the plot...this book is crazy long (it ends halfway through volume ten!) and the plot goes all over the place...)  There are so many unsettling aspects of both this book and the primary romance that I couldn't list them all even if they were all things I was willing to talk about on my blog!  Weirdly, the teacher-student aspect of the romance is so tame by comparison that it doesn't even make the top ten.  😰  I saw someone on discord describe this book as "not for the faint-hearted" and they were very right...

The White Cat's Divine Scratching Post:  protagonist Mo Tianliao dies after protecting his precious pet kitten from the forces that are causing his own death, but his spirit doesn't dissipate, and after three hundred years he manages to possess the divine Undying Tree, turning it into a new body for him.  Before he can resume his life, he has to join a cultivation sect to train up a bit...and the teacher he ends up studying under just happens to be his pet kitten, who has cultivated a gorgeous human body over the last three hundred years.  Again, there are some issues with their relationship (mostly the whole "pet kitten" issue), but since their teacher-student relationship was fake to begin with, it really isn't one of those issues at all!  This is, in fact, a pretty sweet and almost innocent novel...(aside from how many of the other cultivators are treating spirit beasts with full human sentience as essentially slaves...which is at least a practice the hero wants to put a stop to...)

So...yeah...why did I just spend so long talking about other books in this post...?

Hmm.

Well.  Anyway.

Uh.  Yeah.

Book was fun.  Will probably read again someday.  😊

Original language:  Chinese

In other news, my November writing challenge numbers for the last two days:

Yesterday's total was 12419

Today's total was 15536

Tuesday's total was 9689, so that means

Yesterday I wrote 2730 words and

Today I wrote 3117 words.

Seems like 2-3k a day has become my new norm?  Not great, but not terrible, either.

IWSG - What is "Good" Writing?

 

 So, lately I've been thinking about what makes a novel (or other work of fiction) "good."  And, by extension, what makes a work fail to be "good."

Thinking about the way works are discussed in various times, places and settings, it seems like maybe there are a variety of criteria one might judge.  Summing up my perception of those criteria...

Prose that is one or more of the following:

• Eloquent
• Clever
• Beautiful
• Entertaining
• Readable
• Erudite
• Etc.

Characters who exhibit one or more of the following:

• Entertaining
• Likable
• Deep
• Realistic
• Possessed of a notable growth across the course of the work
• Exhibiting a lesson to the reader
• Admirable
• Deplorable
• Etc.

A story that is one or more of the following:

• Instructive
• Educated
• Allegorical
• Filled with symbolism
• Possessing natural foreshadowing
• Neither too simple nor too complex
• Making a statement about humanity, the world, history, society, etc.
• Deemed "of value" (whatever that means)
• Etc.

Obviously, even those lists are filled with vagaries, redundancy, repetition and incompatibility.  Which is partially a symptom of the fact that I don't often think about what makes a work approved of as "good" and partially because it's been a very long time since I took a literature course.  😅

Part of the reason I've been thinking about this is because I know that any and all academic criteria would say that Frankenstein is a better book than Dracula (which I read for Halloween) and yet I also know that no matter how many times the choice is put before me to read one of those two books, I would always pick Dracula because it's much more pleasant to read, in addition to being considerably more satisfying as a story.

But by extension of all this, there's the fact that I long ago abandoned any pretense of pursuing the idea of making my own writing "good" by these social standards...and I kind of wonder if that makes me somehow a weakling or quitter or something.  Like, I have never written (and undoubtedly never will) anything I would want to share at a family reunion or tell former classmates about.  Is that a failing on my part, or just a reflection of my innate sense of inner privacy?

Is anyone else ever plagued by these kinds of questions?

November Writing Challenge '26, day 3

 Okay, so today's total is 9689 words.

Yesterday's total was 6673 words.

That means I wrote 3016 words today.

So...more than "on track" for 50k by the end of the month, but a sad showing in comparison to some of my early NaNoWriMo endeavors.  🤷🏻‍♀️

Kind of a pity that I ran out of steam when I did, though; the love interest is about to show up!  (And yet, I just couldn't keep going today, somehow...)

November Writing Challenge '26, day 2

 Today's total is 6673, from a shorter writing window than usual due to life stuff.

Yesterday's total was 3910.

So that means today I wrote 2763 words.

Not great, but not bad.  (So far, I'm having fun with putting an old-school vampire in an ancient China setting...)

November Writing Challenge '26, day 1

 So, trying the whole "write 50,000 words in November" thing again.  Going it on my own, using the blog to keep track.

This time, I'm putting everything I write in one big file for convenience (and then copy-pasting into other files as needed if I write anything on pre-existing works)

Currently counting both planning text and the actual text as I start a new project that is a Dracula-style vampire in ancient China.

Current word count is 3910 (though only 1173 of those are the actual story)

We'll see how this new way of handling the challenge works out, I guess.

Reading Record 43

 I was gonna wait until tomorrow morning to post, but I am not quite tired enough to sleep yet, so...

Finished reading Dracula by Bram Stoker tonight.

Not a lot to say since I've read it three or four times before.  Though it might be fun to someday do as I've heard of others doing and reading it in "real time," which is to say reading each segment on the day it happens.  It would mean reading some bits out of order, but... 🤷🏻‍♀️

Anyway...

Um.

Half an hour to midnight.  I should be trying to sleep, not to write a blog post.  😅

Original language:  English

Reading Record 42

 So, I just finished rereading volume five of Mo Dao Zu Shi (English title Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, which completes the novel!  😁

Naturally, volume five (despite being the longest volume) is the fastest read, because the quite long incense burner bonus story is...uh...well...cursed.  I like the introductory materials for each section--especially the first part, where we get insight into the recurring dreams of the two leads--but as soon as the story gets to its intended 'subject matter' then I skip ahead because...*shudder*...

Anyway.

Hmm.

What else was I gonna say?

Dang.

I am distracted by my impending dentist appointment, I guess.

If I remember what else I wanted to say, I can always add it back in later.

Original language:  Chinese