Reading List 2025-02-01

This is what I'm reading the week of 2025-02-01. I only included the ones I've added to my bookshelf to continuous reading.

You can see my previous reading lists Here: www.chaosdrifter.cc
 
I'm native Chinese speaker so I read the raw from Qidian. you can try finding the English translation on NovelUpdate, LnCrawl or try places like ReadOMNI where Advanced LLM models are used for MTL that should be more understandable and consistent than google translate. OR you can use Chatgpt/QWEN/deepseek/Groq with the chrome plugin immersive translate (just sign up and get your own API key for the cloud LLMs)

当明星哪有飞升香 (When Stardom Pales Next to Ascension )
 (modern, Chinese entertainment, high EQ MC, slice of life, no harem)
MC is an extrovert with high EQ and savvy social skills. He'll succeed even without a cheat as he knows how to handle any social situation. read to be enlightened on how to handle conflicts, say the right things to defuse accusations, and dealing with unpleasant folks.
MC's grandpa turned into the Deity Literary Star, and will grant him incense points when people offers burning incense sticks to his painting. MC can then use the incense point to draw powerful artifacts, ability points, and other goodies. MC can also see the ability ranking of other people, so then he can be the best scout and trainer as he knows who is good at what. He later also gain an artifact that can be used to obliterate psychological demons like depression, ADHD, Schizophrenia. So he use it to help his students and other pop stars to gain money and influence.

人在2024，系统1979？ (I'm in 2024, but the system is in 1979)
 (slice of life, harem, modern world)
 If you have a system and it'll take you back to 1979 in two days, what'll you do ? What'll you bring ? What stupid and crazy acts will you do ? the MC sold his house, got rid of all his belongings, kissed three separate women, and sent risqué pictures to another 10 girls from his WeChat account. Imagine his shock and immense embarrassment when only the system itself traveled back to 1979 and he is still in 2024, thus the title. The system thinks he is in 1979, so gives him missions like "graduate from college, be the first to open private businesses, fly in a commercial airplane". Those can be hard to do in 1979 China but easily done in 2024. The rewards are also hit and misses, like 500 RMB can seem a lot in 1979, but isn't much in 2024. But due to nostalgia factors, many ordinary items from 1979 are now worth a lot more as collector's items. Just imagine getting a first edition Pokémon card in 2024. Especially since the MC can specify the exact specification of the rewards. Of course the first thing MC needs to do is do apologize to the three woman and avoid jail time. yes, the novel is haremish, but I think some of the female characters are more developed and not purely two dimensional dolls, unlike another book I've read where the MC is a bulldozer and pretty anything that's female and moves, he'll do it.
 
 亡灵法师：从领主开始超神 (Necromancer: Ascending to Divinity from Lordship)
 (medieval, kingdom building, science, no harem, no system)
 Yes, yet another novel where fantasy magic mix with modern science. MC is a necromancer that's using zombies as factory workers to make soap. The web of magic is also the internet + amazon, allowing wizards to communicate with each other and trade. It has a bit LoTM feel as MC starts as a lowly level one necromancer, but on the magic web, people think he is a legendary wizard.

成影帝了，系统才加载完 (Already won the Best Actor, then system finished loading)
 (Chinese entertainment, system, no harem, yet)
 yes, yet another system mixup novel. at 16 MC got a system that's suppose to help him become the best actor. But it took ten years to load. the MC is already a famous actor and considered as one of the Reel Emperors(an actor who has won Best Actor in a big film festival, like Cannes or Venice). Once system finished loading, it starts giving out missions fit for an aspiring actor, like getting a speaking role in a film, or star in a small time snack commercial, etc. etc. These would be embarrassing for MC since it is a big time actor, but he does it anyway, because the punishment for failing the mission is electrical shock. The rewards are mostly songs, films, and abilities like +1 to singing, or +2 to appearance. Fortunately, the missions still helps the MC's career and life , not to mention many actresses, although so far nothing has happened.

不！这个昏君也太难当了！ (No! Being a Useless Emperor Is Way Too Hard!)
 (kingdom building, scheming, system, harem, cultivation)
 MC is the emperor of most likely the ming dynasty. He has a system that'll grant him cultivation experiences and techniques when he make the nation go into disarray. Things like appointing an eunuch to be head of intelligence agency, or enacting non-sense policies. These will reduce the providence of the nation and thus make MC cultivate better. Of course most of his attempts seems to be bad at first, and then turned out to be good for the country. you know the tropes if you've read such kind of reversal novels before. The writing isn't bad, keep reading if you like these kind of things and ancient china.

I have so much backlog of novels to keep up (as one can see from my weekly post) so I won't be adding too many new books.

Thank you for everyone who participated in the 2024 LLM translation survey, here is the results.
https://www.chaosdrifter.cc/2024-llm-novel-translation-survey-results/

stay tuned for 2025.