Online Novels

[simc]

There is a nice article about online novels from Tea Leaf Nation.
http://www.tealeafnation.com/2013/04/whats-behind-chinas-growing-legions-of-online-readers/

At the moment I'm reading one called My Gangster Boyfriend (我的黑道男友). It is a kind of an escapist fantasy romance novel, or YY小说 as they are apparently called. Its pretty trashy. The main character is a 16 year old orphan girl whose parents were killed in a car crash. Having to support herself, she quits school and begins working. One day, a hot "hooligan" (i.e. 流氓) corners her in a dark alley way. She manages to fight him off but he stole her first kiss. The next day, she is kidnapped by men in black suits who bundle her up and put her in a private jet bound for Hong Kong. It turns out the guy who kidnapped her is Hong Kong's top gangster at the tender age of 16 and still a high school student (he started killing people when he was 12). They end up being boyfriend and girlfriend etcetera etcetera.

 

Basically, the story is a bit like Sweet Valley High except for more violence and organised crime.

You can get it from http://wodeheidaonanyou.quanben-xiaoshuo.com/

The audio book is here: http://www.999tsw.com/book/e21fbd3fec3772fb.html I used Audacity to tape it and put it on my MP3 player.

A lot of sites used to have this book, but on many of them it seems to have been taken down. The authorities were not amused by the book's premise, perhaps.

Anyone else have any guilty pleasures which would be good for extensive listening and reading?
 

[MPhillips]

...

[Bad Cao Cao]

Han Han's Triple Door was my guilty pleasure, back in the day. mp3s are even available of it now. 

 

I'm liking Xu Zechen "Running through Beijing", at present, and am reading it together with Eric A's translation.

 

Generally, just search the xiaoshuo name + mp3 - will give you a bunch of listening and reading material.

 

However, I found that listening to natural dialogues/conversations, with transcripts, was a much better way to progress my Chinese (rather than listening to, and reading, pre-scripted monologues).

[laurenth]

I've read two novels in the  第十二夜 detective story series, written by 璇儿. It's supposed to be YA fiction. The first one was 万灵节之. It was gory and bordering on the fantastic, with a group of young electrical engineers stranded in a remote plant in a remote mountain, killed one by one in some horrible way. There was an oppressive atmosphere à la Shining, and it was rather good.

 

Then I  started reading 天方夜谭, in the same series. The Chinese detective goes to Iran to find a cousin who disappeared. After that, it consists mainly in an annoying series of unlikely events strung together.  Frankly, in my opinion, it's boring. So much so that I decided to stop reading it and switch to something else.

 

Anyway, make your own opinion, the whole series is available online here.

[simc]

Hurrah, finished the audiobook over the Christmas break. All 32 and 1/2 hours of it. Can't really say it was a good, mostly just one love triangle after another. It was very easy though, good for extensive listening.