☆*:.。. o reading retrospective o .。.:*☆
What with all the overtime I’ve been pulling and the shit sleep I’ve gotten recently, I haven’t had much brain power to actually read 《三国演义》 or much else in Chinese besides 漫画. So I figured I’d do a little retrospective on my Chinese reading journey.
When I think about it, I don’t feel like I’ve read that many Chinese books before. But last night I finally decided to stack up all of the books I’ve read and boy was I shocked. I was thinking I’d barely read any books at all up to now, but I counted 27 books (there’s only 26 in the stack; 《家变》 was digital)! There are some in this stack that I didn’t read all the way through but still count as “read” because I managed to get through more than half or two-thirds of the book before dropping it. There are also ~10 books not pictured that I dnf’ed around 100 pages in that I count as “read” on sites like Goodreads but won’t include in this post.
I’ve compiled a bit of data on the books I’ve read, such as how many in different genres, how many translated from other languages, total characters read, etc. All of these books except for 3 were read between June 2021 and now. Looking back, I feel really impressed and proud of myself. I’ve made a lot of really obvious progress with my reading skills in under a year, and it was really fun! I’ve also developed a bit of a love for Japanese crime novels (*shakes fist* damn you 东野圭吾!).
I am constantly buying new books, so I will most definitely continue reading more books. I want to keep reading crime novels, but I am also trying to find some Chinese horror/suspense novels to dig into.