What are you reading?

[PerpetualChange]

I am absolute breezing through 许三观卖血记. On page 100 and every word lookup has been just out of curiosity and not really necessary for me to follow the story. 

 

I'm sure this will be fleeting when I start my next novel but the confidence boost is nice after kinda forcing myself to finish a Wang Dulu novel earlier. 

[Aile]

On 4/12/2021 at 6:15 PM, Balthazar said:

I'd be interested to hear how you find this in terms of difficulty.

Finished today, it was generally lucid and understandable to me but I've taken 文言文 classes before so the more formal sentence patterns weren't a massive problem. I looked up 650 words throughout, which were mostly chengyu, Buddhist and other religious terms (hard to learn and remember as they tend to be phonetic loans or calques from Sanskrit) and some Japan-specific vocabulary (木屐，艺妓，尺八 etc) which I'd never encountered before. The hardest passages were the ones involving lots of Japanese place names, as these don't stick out to me as toponyms very readily. Overall I would recommend it as an achievable challenge! I'd never read any translated Japanese literature before so it's exciting to think that Chinese might bring me culturally/idiomatically closer to this body of work than English could.   

[imron]

4 hours ago, PerpetualChange said:

the confidence boost is nice

This is one of the main reasons I recommend choosing content at the appropriate level and reading easier things first.

 

The confidence gains far outweigh the marginal vocab gains from studying something more difficult (I say marginal because you’ll still be learning plenty of vocabulary from easier novels, and you’ll be able yo digest it more easily too).

[matteo]

I am slowly progressing through 兄弟. I really enjoyed the beginning which I thought was quite interesting and even humorous, but I now hit a point that is incredibly sad. 

I don't hold myself to be an overly sensitive reader but reading day after day of such violence and callousness is really depressing - maybe it's the times?

Anyways that's slowing me down considerably cause I often don't feel like reading!

 

it is also a massive book apparently - which I discovered after downloading it - so it's slow going in percentage as well.

[imron]

The second half of 兄弟 is really good (much better than the first), but you won’t appreciate the second half unless you read the first half. 

[Guest realmayo]

7 hours ago, matteo said:

I now hit a point that is incredibly sad. 

 

I liked both parts of 兄弟 equally, I think it's my favourite 余华 novel (Lord of the Rings compared to 活着's Hobbit? ) and am rereading it now - currently half way though the second part. But I did have to skip a few pages of part one because I remembered how awful they were to read.

 

7 hours ago, matteo said:

Anyways that's slowing me down considerably cause I often don't feel like reading!

 

Definitely!

[Woodford]

I've made some headway into 猫城记, and I must say that even though it's my tenth book overall, and I keep up with an SRS flash card database of 16,000 cards, each new book and/or author never ceases to humble me. On the one hand, Lao She's style is minimalistic, simple, and pithy. On the other hand, he uses a lot of dated expressions (I guess it was written as early as 1933). I'm definitely not an expert in Chinese literary style, and it's hard for me to articulate what's happening, but it seems he uses a lot of single-character words, whereas more contemporary books would use compound words (and thus have a bit more clarity). Sometimes, he puts two characters together into what looks like a compound word, but Pleco doesn't seem to recognize them as such. So I have to look up each character and guess what they mean together. On every page or two, there's often a phrase I have to stare at for 30-60 seconds, wondering what on earth it could possibly mean. Ultimately, it's readable! I'm just reminded that I still have a long road ahead of me when it comes to developing Chinese reading skill.

[Balthazar]

On 4/14/2021 at 12:05 AM, Aile said:

Finished today, it was generally lucid and understandable to me but I've taken 文言文 classes before so the more formal sentence patterns weren't a massive problem. I looked up 650 words throughout, which were mostly chengyu, Buddhist and other religious terms (hard to learn and remember as they tend to be phonetic loans or calques from Sanskrit) and some Japan-specific vocabulary (木屐，艺妓，尺八 etc) which I'd never encountered before. The hardest passages were the ones involving lots of Japanese place names, as these don't stick out to me as toponyms very readily. Overall I would recommend it as an achievable challenge! I'd never read any translated Japanese literature before so it's exciting to think that Chinese might bring me culturally/idiomatically closer to this body of work than English could

 

Thanks, that's good to know! Just added the book to a TB order I'm making. Probably going to continue with some easier material for a while longer, but at least it will be close at hand when the time is right for something a bit more challenging. I've read it in English so I'm eager to see how much of a benefit that will be.

[jannesan]

Read 草房子 (loved it, I want to read more 曹文轩) in Jan/Feb and now close to finishing 一地鸡毛 (a bit boring, especially the stories on party politics).

For the next 3 books I'm jumping on the 三体 hype train, I'm finally feeling ready in terms of language difficulty and Sci-Fi is totally my thing:)

Also good to hear that others here found it manageable after reading fewer books than I have read now.

I'm sticking with my reading goals for this year, so I'll give myself half a year to finish the series.

[Ori_A]

I’ve finished about half of 红手指, a Japanese thriller in Chinese translation. Good story so far, and I can read it with just the right amount of dictionary usage, meaning that I occasionally have to look up a word in order to understand the sentence, but most of the time I can understand everything even without certain words. That means I can enjoy the book without too many pauses, but still have enough new words to learn if I want to.

It has a decent amount of police investigation-related vocabulary, some of which I already know, but still a lot to learn, and feels good to read it as part  of a full story.

I’ll write a more educated opinion once I finish.

[darel aranovski]

I am also currently reading a Japanese book in Chinese translation. Haruki Murakami "Norwegian Forest" is serenely simple, but a few words are complicated in places related to politics and philosophy.

[Woodford]

I have finished 猫城记, and...OOF. I needed to buy an English translation just to make sure I was understanding it correctly. Most of the story was simple, but there were a bunch of awkward phrases scattered throughout. Now I'm moving on to 小坡的生日 (by the same author, in the same volume), and again...Ouch! So many dated phrases. I try to enter those phrases into Pleco, and I get nothing. I try Baidu Translate, and nothing!

 

Truth be told, I can understand enough of the story to follow along, and I can tell that Lao She was a sharp-witted, funny person.

[amytheorangutan]

On 4/27/2021 at 1:55 PM, darel aranovski said:

I am also currently reading a Japanese book in Chinese translation. Haruki Murakami "Norwegian Forest" is serenely simple, but a few words are complicated in places related to politics and philosophy.

May I know your approximate Chinese level in HSK term? I'm around HSK 5 ish and I'm tempted to get this book at some point but it's quite a big book so if it's too difficult for me I might not be able to force my way through it. 

[PerpetualChange]

Finished 许三观卖血记. 

 

That was excellent, maybe my favorite Chinese language novel I've read. Ill probably read something in English next as a break and then spend the spare time looking for my next Chinese novel, preferably something similar other than 活着 which I've read already. 

[NanJingDongLu]

45 minutes ago, PerpetualChange said:

Finished 许三观卖血记. 

May I ask roughly what your level of Chinese is? I'm around HSK 5 level (although not a purist for exam purposes which I've seen you don't like) and am curious how I would find this. I might just buy it and give it a try for myself, but I wanted to ask first. I've attempted to stalk your profile to get an answer to this but you haven't answered it recently

[Ori_A]

1 hour ago, PerpetualChange said:

preferably something similar other than 活着 which I've read already. 

If you liked 活着, I recommend trying 第七天, by the same author. It’s about the same length, and I thought the story was pretty interesting and well written.

[PerpetualChange]

1 hour ago, NanJingDongLu said:

May I ask roughly what your level of Chinese is?

I'm not really sure. I studied the Integrated Chinese series in college. After that I started via a random assortment of advanced textbooks and readers on my own. I did not start reading novels until almost 2 years ago which was probably well into my 10th year of Chinese study, and I think I waited too long. If I could go back in time, I'd give this book a shot after my first or second year of college study. Not saying for sure that I would have succeeded with it but it's impossible for me to know which vocabulary I picked up over the years mattered if it was even retained as I have never really thought about the hsk much.

[matteo]

In my opinion 许三观卖血记 is the simplest and shortest of the 余华 novels (as a matter of fact It think It's the simplest non-graded book in Chinese I've ever been able to find so far...), I'm also probably about HSK5 and really enjoyed reading it, I'd recommend it!

 

[PerpetualChange]

It was simpler than the children's novel we read together last year for sure. But I've also read two novels since that so... 

[ZhuoMing]

I am a big fan of 许三观卖血记，it's a bit easier than 活着 and the story is just as good. I agree HSK5 people should be able to read it. If it's your first book and you are around HSK5 level, it will be very slow at the beginning. But if you keep going you'll realize by the end of the book you can read way faster.