douqi: (gong qing 2)
[personal profile] douqi
I read 19 baihe novels and two baihe novellas this year. Here's the full list in order of when I read them, with links to my reviews where available.

Read more; spoilers have been kept to a minimum )

If I were giving out awards:

Best reads: To Embers We Return, Ravenous, The Little Alpaca.
Compact and compelling: Scrapped, A Broken Bough.
Fun and mostly light: Hunger. Lust.
Biggest letdowns: Above the Fates, The Wayward Disciple.
LET ME EDIT YOU: In Love with a Substitute.
douqi: (fayi)
[personal profile] douqi
Fanjiao, the specialist platform for baihe audio content, celebrated its sixth anniversary a couple of weeks ago with a video featuring congratulatory messages from 49 baihe voice actresses. As I did with last year's video, here's a quick rundown of the voice actresses and their notable roles (I'll link back to the post about the fifth anniversary video for those voice actresses who were also featured in that).

I've uploaded the video to YouTube for ease of embedding; the original video can be viewed here on Weibo. Again, there are currently no English subtitles, but if anyone is interested in subtitling it, I'm happy to provide support!



Read more... )
douqi: (fayi)
[personal profile] douqi
Having enjoyed Si Bai Ba Shi Si's food-themed contemporary novel A Taste of You (食局, pinyin: shi ju), I turned with some anticipation to this earlier novel of hers, Above the Fates (万丈红尘之轻, pinyin: wanzhang hongchen zhi qing) which was billed as a smart, corporate thriller with very intelligent leads. However, I found it a bit of a letdown, despite being overall relatively competently written, and with some interesting features which comes from the author being a first-generation immigrant from China to the US.

Read more; spoilers, brief discussion of abortion and miscarriage )

In short, if you fancy trying your first Si Bai Ba Shi Si novel, go for A Taste of You. In that one, the POV character has a wry, funny narrative voice, you will read about a lot of delicious food written in interesting ways that tell you why a particular dish is tasty and/or meaningful (which is different from a lot of Western-published genre novels which people go 'omg all the food!' about, and which turn out on closer inspection merely to contain a list of foods served at feasts and so on), it's grounded in the big-city lesbian scene, and has actual real stakes. Also features Yorkshire, always a win in my book.

I read the Taiwanese print edition of the novel (traditional Chinese, uncensored). The web version of the novel can be found here on JJWXC.
douqi: (fayi 2)
[personal profile] douqi
Pre-orders for the Chinese mainland print edition of Above the Fates (万丈红尘之轻, pinyin: wanzhang hongchen zhi qing) by Si Bai Ba Shi Si (四百八十寺) will be opening today at 1900 China Standard Time. This is a corporate thriller, and both of the leads seem to be hyper-competent CEO types (in the best romance novel tradition, they also make a cameo appearance in the author's subsequent novel, A Taste of You (食局, pinyin: shi ju). This edition is in simplified Chinese, and censored. An uncensored print edition in traditional Chinese was previously released by Taiwanese publisher morefate.

3,000 signed copies in total will be available on the market, distributed among a number of bookshops participating in the pre-sale, and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis (with an upper limit of two signed copies per purchaser). These bookshops include:

The web version of the novel can be read here on JJWXC.

As an aside, I feel the author should be commended for providing English versions of her novel titles that actually make sense as titles to an English-first reader. A Taste of You also mentions (i) Schengen visas; (ii) Cheltenham Ladies' College; (iii) Yorkshire (!!!) (I used to live in Yorkshire, so this was especially exciting, and I've headcanoned that the section set in Yorkshire takes place in Hebden Bridge), and part of it is set in Aalberg, which is treated as a specific and real place rather than a nebulous and nameless 'foreign' country.

Profile

baihe_media: (Default)
Chinese GL

June 2025

S M T W T F S
12 3 4567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 20th, 2025 02:10 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios