yuerstruly

My worst reading year yet, and I don't even have any of those. I track my reading on a spreadsheet I made myself, and to no surprise, there is a 5-month gap where I was not consistently reading. That doesn't strike me as odd because this also happened last year, but despite reading "more" this year, my overall reading experience did not feel rewarding.

In total, I read 16 books this year. 12 of them were in English and here is the breakdown: 3 standalone books, 2 duologies, 3 books that were the first in a series, and 2 that were part of a series where I did not start from the first book and do not plan to read the rest of, unless plans change. The remaining 4 were in Chinese, but one of them is so long that the physical uncensored version is 8 volumes, so we can also pretend I read 11 books in Chinese. I also read a poetry collection and two plays. I'll do my best to keep it short this time, but no guarantees.

Books I read:

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh
Starting off the year with depressing literary fiction that will make you consider going out to buy pills to overdose on is probably not the play when you are suicidal, but that is what happened. Given the situation, this was a cathartic read, but I think the average person would find me crazy for thinking so, or even enjoying it in any way. Great writing, and I am looking forward to reading more from Ottessa Moshfegh.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang
To date, We Do Not Part is the only work of Kang's that is translated by someone Korean and not a white women who seems to get basic nouns mixed up. Well, I'm aware I'm being a little mean here. However, given the prominence of The Vegetarian, especially following the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature announcement and the multitudes of articles written about the erroneous translation, I did not want to read anything translated by Deborah Smith. I could not trust her to deliver what I might be looking for. Shoutout to Hel for putting We Do Not Part on my radar, and I am so glad I picked this up. Me? Liking another litfic novel? Not a surprise. Liking historical fiction? A bit of a surprise because I find it hard to stomach, no matter how much I try to read about the horrors of the last century. What Han Kang does here is weave the traces of the Jeju massacre into the book, with the blur between memory and reality controlling how the story moves. The second half definitely hit harder for me when we get a clearer picture of the historical events, but the first half definitely makes you cry and wince in many places. I recommend for anyone looking for 1) historical fiction, 2) literary fiction, 3) "serious" literature, or any combination of the three above.

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick
Following my experience with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I was so sure I would enjoy whatever PKD work I read. I was wrong. I did not enjoy A Scanner Darkly until the last 40%. Crazy, because you would think I would drop it if I did not enjoy the first 60% but a part of me really wanted to read it until the end. Maybe it was to prove that I still wanted to read PKD—I still do, I'll just have to read more—but it definitely was not an enjoyable experience, and I am pretty sure this book was the reason for my autumnal reading slump. I was not particularly into the bug hallucinations, and I did not care for drugs or identity hallucinations. At least, not in the way it was described. Perhaps another book could ease me into it, but this one did not do the job!

The City We Became/The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin
Similar to my experience with A Scanner Darkly, I had high expectations for this duology following my adventure with Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy. Well, turns out that trying an author's most recent work in a genre different from the one you were introduced to her through will not produce ideal results. The Great Cities duology is urban fantasy, set in New York City. It was awful. To begin with, the descriptions are very nothing-burger. I actually had a problem with this while reading the Broken Earth trilogy, and it was only saved by the fact that the fantasy/magic system is based in geology and I know my rocks semi-well. For the rocks I was not familiar with, I could just search them up! Here, I am thrown mathematical equations and explained that the character will somehow just ~use~ it to harness power and create something. What? Bullshit. What am I even supposed to be imagining here? Unfortunately, as interesting as the premise sounded, the plot did not work out, and the characters seemed to be built off caricatures of NYC's boroughs, and when I ran the descriptions and names through my friends who have lived in NYC for more than half their lives, no one seemed to be impressed. Awful experience, do not recommend. I do still recommend the Broken Earth trilogy, but this duology is a waste of time!

Stars and Smoke/Icon and Inferno by Marie Lu
Full Review
I don't really touch YA just because I realize I am not the target audience AND there are too many things I can't seem to look past for the sake of my enjoyment but here I was! Tribute to my favorite author in middle school, Marie Lu. To keep it simple, I liked the duology. I bought into the plot setup (I actually have been drafting a spy x idolverse au longfic since 2020 so this sparked something in me), and I cried where she probably wanted me to. A fun read, so if anyone wants a change of pace from their usual, why not give an interesting premise a try?

Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Full Review
Here, with Foundation, we get the opposite effect from what I had with PKD and Jemisin. Last year, I read I, Robot as part of my research into 20th-century hard science fiction, and I found it vastly uninteresting. No interesting characters, except for Susan Calvin. Fast forward to 2025 and I am here to give the other brand of Asimov a chance, and well, surprise, I liked Foundation. I was invested in the story, the characters, the founding and evolution of an entire civilization. Pretty sick if you ask me. I've yet to read the subsequent books in the series, but I'll try to tackle that in 2026.

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
The short: I hated it.
The long: I felt like I was reading a shitty machine translation because the prose kept giving me a stroke, the author seems to be bad at Chinese and keeps translating things literally in places that do not make sense, and the author has so little knowledge of Chinese culture it is embarrassing that this is a work getting praised for the "amount of research done" when it is just WRONG! WRONG!! WRONG!!!
I've been trying to write a full review of this since August and I'm almost done with it so you'll get to see it soon hopefully. I'm also surprised that this is one of the top sapphic fantasy books, but we are (I am) currently 0/2 and perhaps I simply do not understand lesbians' taste in media.

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu
Ken Liu has long been praised as an exceptional translator, but this does not mean this translates well into original writing. And well, look at that, The Dandelion Dynasty is a series meant to introduce what Ken Liu has coined as silkpunk, except it's less original than Ning Yuan's historical cyberpunk To Embers We Return (currently being translated here by Douqi) and the plot is essentially the Chu-Han contention rehashed. Actually, beat for beat, with steampunk sprinkled into the first book (I heard the second book does more with the fantasy aspects). It's doing less than priest's Stars of Chaos, which actually started serializing the same year The Grace of Kings got published. If you want to try this for the world building and historical mix, you might as well go try Stars of Chaos, and I am saying this as someone who did not even rate it that highly.

Heated Rivalry/The Long Game by Rachel Reid
I wish I could tell you how I started watching the show, but I cannot pinpoint where exactly. Probably when I was texting to Daph and joked about making my friend uncomfortable in the car by having a conversation about the gay sex in the series. What started off as innocent soon spiraled into me being absolutely ill and sick over a series, so of course, the natural thing is to read the books the series is based on. I cannot say it was what helped me get over my reading slump despite me finishing them in a week, but I think it was what I needed to finish off the year. The prose writing is not great, and it's no surprise when you are presented with the fact that Rachel Reid wrote six books for the series within three years. I think her strength lies in dialogue, which is what really characterizes the people she's created in this universe. I will say it was hard for me to trust a white woman to give me intersectional struggles for a character she created, but I should not have been shocked that the Wasian doesn't seem to have any struggles because he "has" everything. Of course, this is but a fantasy of sorts, but leaves you wondering why white people cannot seem to fathom the complexity of POC's struggles. Worth the read on its own? No, not at all. As a supplement and support for fans of the show? Yes.

Some Are Always Hungry by Jihyun Yun
Full Review
I think I learned the hard way that I am not the biggest fan of poetry, but Some Are Always Hungry nonetheless presented evocative imagery, sometimes almost too evocative. The poetry speaks of food, culture, occupation trauma, misogyny, the immigrant experience, and so much more, and I do find it worth giving this a try in terms of understanding those topics in relation to Korean diaspora, their background, and their histories.

English/Wish You Were Here by Sanaz Toossi
If I ever read a play, 95% of my recommendations are coming from Alice, whom I have been friends with since the Idol Producer days. Always hit, never miss. English focuses on language learning, what you do with language, and your relationship with the languages you have been speaking since the days you could drool to the languages you learn to get yourself into a school across the globe. English was a piece that hit hard for me, and harder than I could imagine because even though I never had the typical diaspora identity struggle growing up, the highlight on one's relationship with language in particular had a grip on me because that was when I realized, "Oh, I do have a weird relationship with Mandarin and English and the way I use it, especially since one of my parents is from Taiwan while the other is from Mainland China." Wish You Were Here is very different, the setting being in Iran, following the escalation of the Iranian Revolution. Tonally, it is depressing despite all the jokes weaved into the story, and it is the sort of story that makes me feel I am simultaneously so close yet so far to those terrors. I would have loved to see both of these performed live, but I will cope with the fact that I do not live in New York City.

Reminiscing In the Clouds 白雲千載 by Po Po Po 破破破
Hm, I wish I had read this under better circumstances, but I started reading this because my uncle had dropped me off at a Mos Burger after picking me up from the airport, and this was the only page I had open and functioning with my shitty WiFi. What a ride. I don't regret it, but it's also just really short, so even if I didn't like it, I don't think it would have been a major waste of time. It's novella length by Chinese webnovel standards and tells of an emperor who has reincarnated into the contemporary world, bewildered at what the world has become. The story weaves her present-day interactions with Xu Jianyou and her complicated past with Xu Qingchu to give us a romance story. It is tightly written, and though I wish we had spent more time in the past, I think the author did what she set out to do and put a lot of work into pacing and plotting to give us a well-crafted story.

The Kindly One 催命娘 by Tang Jiuqing 唐酒卿
English title workshopped with douqi, who had to listen to me rave about this work of T97's that no one else was talking about. It comes from Greek mythology and refers to the fates, which I thought to be fitting since the title refers to a character that instills fear and death but also saves lives. The work itself is about a fallen general that loses her army, who must find her purpose to keep on living after the loss of her thousands of comrades. She gets entangled in a case concerning the cleaver she's been searching for, which peels back the layers of secrets and schemes behind her loss. Now, T97 primarily writes danmei, so I was pleasantly surprised when she launched a non-romance story on me out of the blue. I had been waiting for her baihe, but a novel on the shorter side centered around woman made me just as happy. I love her prose, and I love her characters. She writes memorable women, no matter how big or small their role, and really knows how to bring every one of them to life. The Kindly One speaks of loss and struggles of power, but also the trials and tribulations that women must face, and it really spoke to me. She also writes some crazy scene changes in the text, which are cinematic. In fact, at some point, I did wonder if she wrote this with bagging an adaptation in mind because a story like this would play out well on TV (and can actually get licensed and hopefully broadcast). Highly recommend if you want to read good writing centered around women!!

At Her Mercy 我為魚肉 by Ning Yuan 寧遠
I'll try to keep this one short because I've been trying to write a full-blown review for it (not working well because I've been at it since MAY), but At Her Mercy being 1.2 million words in Chinese makes it very hard for me to keep it brief. It is a story of revenge and hidden identities, power and systems, love and hate…cliché but Ning Yuan really does pack so much in here. If I were to split the story into three sections, I would paraphrase as—personal revenge, the path to overturning patriarchy, and the grand revenge, with the latter two largely overlapping. The personal revenge takes up about 40% of the story, and is the part I believe to be the most well-written. The best villain is born here, and the plot progression made my stomach churn because it felt like Zhen Wenjun, the main character, was going to die at any time despite me knowing we still had a long way to go. That is what you call effective writing! Toward the 70%-90% mark, I felt myself detach from the story a little, and I think I only have myself to blame because at this point, I was regularly reading chapter comments on JJWXC and posts on my XHS were curated to what I was reading. I could not bring myself to feel bad for or even like Wei Tingxu, the love interest, despite how many shooters she had. I felt like I was watching people build a K-pop fan legion for a character that wasn't even 2D. My favorite character ended up being the first major villain. None of the other characters were likable enough for me, and I felt their self-righteous and morality acts very grating. Despite that, I still recommend At Her Mercy to everyone who might want to get into historical baihe because this is probably the best you can get. The plot is still solid and Wei Tingxu is a little Mary Sue, but since when has that been a problem?

Cover Her Face 遮面 by Qing Tang Shuan Xiang Cai 清湯涮香菜
A cute and horny story, which is within expectations when it comes to Qing Tang Shuan Xiang Cai's works. A watered down summary is: noble lady x bodyguard romance. Ensue fluff and minimal angst. QTSXC's writing is enjoyable in the sense that her work tends to lean light—at least that's the impression I get from what I've read of hers and what I hear about her—but she delivers and knows this is her strength. I'm not the target audience because I enjoy torturous angst, but Cover Her Face is nonetheless a nice read.

Books I'm reading:

Mysterious Lotus Casebook 蓮花樓 by Teng Ping 藤萍
I have not finished this simply because I keep going to the library and borrowing other things or reading on my tablet, so the physical books I own remain untouched. I have also been away from home for four months, so it's not like I had it on hand with me. I will continue because I need to read it, then tell Seven Seas to license it.

Books I started and haven't finished:

Miss Forensics 我親愛的法醫小姐 by Jiu Nuan Chun Shen 酒暖春深
Started this back in June in an attempt to do a read-along, but that hasn't worked out well. I will probably get to it after I tackle some other books in my reading challenge for 2026. I do like it and am dying less from the prose than I did the first time I gave it a try, and am obsessed with the banter dialogue, so trust me, I really am not trying to purposely abandon it.

Time-Limited Hunt 限時狩獵 by Tang Jiuqing 唐酒卿
TLH, the first of T97's Rhapsody trilogy, is a dystopian danmei novel. Unfortunately, I am still stuck on chapter … 15? This time, because I couldn't stomach the sexual assault and domestic abuse descriptions, so I will have to come back to this when my brain can process that without wanting to vomit.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
I got a physical copy of this book for free when my campus was holding an event in collaboration with the local library. I am giving it a try but it's not really working out because I keep getting bored. The newspaper excerpts are interesting, but the other stuff? Not so much. I have opted to bring this around as my "book to read when I take a break between study sessions" copy, so let's see how far we get next year.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Tired of getting disappointed by popular sapphic fiction, I had to turn to Sarah Waters. I got Fingersmith from my campus library, but I did not take it home with me because it is such a thick book. I am two sections in, I believe, and am so far liking it. Mostly for the prose, but it is such a breath of fresh air to read something actually good and not subject my eyes to something that is overhyped but in reality mediocre.

Highlights:

Top 3: My Year of Rest and Relaxation, We Do Not Part, The Kindly One

Didn't Think I Would Like This But Ended Up Enjoying: Foundation

Worst Read: She Who Became the Sun

Biggest Disappointment: The City We Became

May my 2026 be a better and more prosperous reading year for me :)