Reading Wednesday Meme

Currently reading:

Still on The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (aka, Mo Dao Zu Shi) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, the source material for the Netflix Chinese drama, the Untamed.

I am finding some of the issues I had with the show (when I tried to watch it several times) persist. This is mostly tone issues - it's a bit jarring to read stuff where something truly ghastly and horrible is happening but the main characters reaction is minimal or nothing. There's also an odd thing of POV, where the author will shift into one character's mind for the duration of a few observations and then move on, and that exposition are often dumped after an event. Something will occur and then characters will react Very Strongly, and the story will have to pause for a paragraph or two and explain all the backstory. (Example - a haughty young man makes a sneering comment in public about his fiancee, who we have never met or seen mentioned before but [we are now informed] is a nice girl but nothing special and only engaged to this guy because their mothers were friends. Hearing him, two people absolutely lose their shit about his bad behavior - because it's their fucking sister! All of this information arrives after the fact. We have never seen this haughty young man before.)

Overall, I can see why fans went apeshit over this book and I'm also willing to bet that this novel works better in its original language. I keep wondering about the allusions I'm missing (which I know I am) and how I work to catch up. It's all going a bit better now that I'm taking notes.

Recently finished

Once & Future by spqr on AO3 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/35856907) - Reminiscent of The Accidental Warlord and His Pack by inexplicifics, (Links: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683661). This is a very charming story about Jaskier kissing an enchanted statue and it turning out to be a hot dude. Lovely fic, deeply uninterested in the violent edges of the Witcher universe. Just got posted this week!

The Witcher and the Lordling: Into the Mountains by Alex51324 (https://archiveofourown.org/series/2331386) - Technically, this second entry in this series is not entirely finished but it didn't impede my enjoyment at all. In an alternate universe where Witchers were not culled so much as leashed, Geralt and Jaskier break free and head out into the world. If you would enjoy reading a detailed breakdown of how to make a winter camp in the woods with nothing but a few tools and some knowhow, this is a great fic.

Up next:
Really I need to get back into House of Leaves before I completely forget the characters and the plot. I've also got the last two novellas of Neon Yang's Tensorate series up with my book club, so those will probably be the next on my list.

Reading Thoughts

(A computer crash ate the last attempt to put this all down and that is something I am trying to avoid this time!)

So, I have been thinking about doing a reading notebook this year - I kind of want to be a bit more deliberate about writing down what I have read, and what I thought about it.

I fell down a rabbit hole last night on Youtube, watching videos made by bullet journal influencers (a thing that exists!) about their own book journals and the elaborate art projects and data collection that they are planning on using to set lofty goals for their reading in the new year. Bullet journalling seems to have turned into art journals in the last few years, as far as I can tell? There is watercolors and scrapbooking and lots and lots of washi tape. I last checked in to the bullet journal system in about January of 2020 bc I did want to be a little more thoughtful about things, and I've modified it enough that it's hardly like the minimalist lists that were part of the initial structure. It is quite useful to have some mechanisms to check out what you're working on and if it's working out for you.

That said, I have some clear thoughts about what I do NOT want in a reading journal:
- Annuality - I am not making a reading journal for 2022, I am just setting up a journal to write down what I am reading and how I think about it, it will not turn over in 2023 automatically.
-Star based rating systems - I might use one as a joke, but I think they are a bit dumb.
-Goals - I am not trying to hit 50 books or whatever. I might count things up at the end of the year, I might not, it hardly matters. I have Storygraph for stats if I really want them.

Things I do want:
-A Ravelry-like vibe - On Ravelry, you're working on your version of a project, with your needles and yarn, and while I see lots of people's other projects based on a similar pattern, it's not about a competition or making the socks for an audience. It's for me to wear them. The reading journal is for me, an aide memoire.
-A way to track publishing - I am going to count fic over 50K as a book, so fic v. self published v. traditional publishing is something I want to track.
-A To Be Read section - I keep buying books and forgetting to read them or getting distracted. I want some structure there to keep hold of things.
-Books are entered as they are started - I want to record what books I start and don't finish or set aside. Those are also interesting.
-Short book reviews - maybe a few sentences, very simple and breezy, about books that I do finish and want to talk about.
-genre - some way of tracking that

There is a part of me that is honestly just as interested in writing up all the media I enjoy in a similar way - not just which books I have read, but which movies and tv series and when I watched them and what I think of them. That seems like it might be a big goal to enter into all at once, tho, so I am going to put a hold on that for now.