Friday, November 25, 2022

Weekly Haul 152

Happy Black Friday! I ordered from RightStuf one time... Suddenly they have deals for all of my favorite series! I've spent too much money on this site for the past month lol. No more birthday presents to myself!

A Man & His Cat vol. 7 by Umi Sakurai

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Familia Chronicle Novel vol. 1-2 by Fujino Omori

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? vol. 17 by Fujino Omori

Sasaki & Miyano vol. 3-4 by Shou Harusono

Cheeky Brat vol. 1-4 by Mitsubachi Miyuki

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

Cover Lover 57

This has been in the drafts for over two years. Thought I'd share some book covers I really liked a while ago!







Thursday, November 17, 2022

DNF Reviews: Yao Yu in The End of The World, Really Rich Husband is a Full-Level Boss

Title: Yao Yu in The End of The World
Author: 知夏
Chapters: 44 chapters 
Publication: 2013
Summary from jjwxc:

Yao Yu is a college student with an indifferent personality. She grew up in an orphanage. A few days before the end of the world, she obtained a portable space and began her journey of the end of the world. Not a novice, not a virgin, 1V1, the pit product should be fine. . . .

MY REVIEW: 

Since this book was pretty short at 44 chapters, I thought that the plot would be a quick and intense zombie apocalypse. Unfortunately, I only read up to 8 chapters before deciding to quit because I didn't like the writing style or the protagonist. The writing style was very simple. Yao Yu did this. Because of this, Yao Yu did that. There's hints and foreshadowing, but it's written so plainly and boringly because the author explains it almost immediately afterwards.

It also seems like the author wants to make Yao Yu into some indifferent edgelord who doesn't care about the world. Now, I don't mind reading about an asshole main character, but only if she's written WELL. There's backstory, there's charisma, there's hinted events and situations that make the characters fleshed out and understandable. Yao Yu doesn't have any of that. There's a one paragraph explanation about why she couldn't be soft-hearted while living in an orphanage. That's not enough context for a reader to like a character. 

Anyway, this book was NOT my cup of tea lol.



Title: Really Rich Husband is a Full-Level Boss
Author: Lin Mianmian
Chapters: 98 chapters
Publication: N/A
Summary from Wattpad:

Ruan Su is the true daughter who was taken wrong, and when he returned to his biological parents, he wanted to marry a vegetable instead of the fake daughter. After the fake daughter came back from the rebirth, she knew that the previous life Ji Mingchong had not woken up, and that the Ji family would go bankrupt soon, so she designed to push the marriage contract with the Ji family to Ruan Su. She waited for Ruan Su to be tortured by the evil mother-in-law, and the result was that the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law were as close as mother and daughter. She waited for Ruan Sushou to live a widow life, but Ji Ming Chong woke up. She waited for Ruan Su to be impoverished and rushed for life, but Ji Mingchong Xianyu turned over and became the boss everyone looked up to. What is going wrong? ! 

** 

No one knows that in the past five years when Ji Mingchong was in a coma in a car accident, he almost passed through countless worlds, fighting in the cruel apocalypse, and getting ahead in the rigorous ancient times. He finally acquired a skill. After he retired, he returned to the original world. He was told that he had a wife. At first, his mother said: "Susu is a good girl, you have to treat her better." He said: "We didn't get the certificate, I can treat her as a sister." Later, his mother said: "Your friend, I Seeing that she is a good match for Su Su, or... Um?" 

Ruan Su married Ji Mingchong at first to repay his favor. When he woke up and watched him get stronger and stronger, she felt it was time to leave. As a result, on the night when Ji Mingchong found her, he humbly caught her and kept his voice hoarse: "...Don't leave me." 

MY REVIEW: 

I read more than halfway way, up to chapter 65, before deciding to quit because I was bored. Originally, it was pretty interesting reading about Raun Su adapting to life with her husband's family while he's in a coma. However, after he woke up, the plot got pretty boring. There's not much suspense as he slowly, but unknowingly, falls for her and runs into the dilemma of how to tell her his feelings when she obviously only treats him like a brother. 

Even the villainous character wasn't that interesting to read about. She was as dumb as you could ask for in a vicious female partner, and it was obvious that her bad deeds were going to come to light eventually. 

It's just unfortunate the plot had to slow down so much in the middle that I didn't care enough to slug through to finish the book.

Monday, November 14, 2022

OCT: Haircut, Parents Annoyance, Scrapbooking Addiction, Cousin Visit, Halloween

October ended really quickly. I don’t know why I’m always surprised by how quickly time flies by lol.

However, I finally got to cut my hair near the beginning of October! I’ve been tired of my long hair for the past couple of months. I planned to donate most of it right before my trip to SF, but my new hairstylist ran into car issues the morning of and had to cancel all of her appointments that day. Then, I had Covid when we came back, so it was pushed back a few more weeks lol. 

But it finally happened! I donated around 14 inches to Wigs for Kids! I think this was a little shorter than the last time I donated my hair last year. 

The parents visited twice this month. They seem to want to visit at least every other week to see Luna, which is starting to annoy me. No one gets on your nerves more than your family. 

We used to see each other once or twice a month before Luna was born, but it was a lot less stressful and annoying because I think the ball was in our court before. Previously, we would drive down and visit the parents, so that was on our own terms. We could plan around visiting and not go if other things happen to occur.

Now, it’s the parents who come up every week and plan to cook for us for the weekend and ask us to do stuff for them all the time. The problem is that dad CAN’T sit still. He needs to go around and do projects, which is fine when we visit them at their home; he can still go outside and fix the garden or yard or something. At our house, he doesn’t have anything to do after sweeping our garage, so he’ll have us help him with something online or something his friends recommended him to do/use or have a long diatribe with advice we didn’t ask for. Once in a while is fine, but when it happens every time we see each other, I get so annoyed with him and don’t want to see him. 

Mom is slightly easier to deal with because I was used to living with her while in college. We get together for meals and have occasional chats, but we usually leave each other alone when and do our own things. The only time I get annoyed with is her over-enthusiasm towards Luna, which also translates to her super loud cooing and grabbing Luna as soon as she’s awake. Texting to ask to see if she’s awake to have video calls all time also got super annoying. 

The conflicting parenting advice doesn’t help either. Like, they’ll say, “let her sleep”, but they’ll be the first ones to pick her up as soon as she makes one noise. They wanted us to shave her head after she was a month old because it’s tradition to do so to help make their hair grow faster, but Shelle and Kyle didn’t want to do it because it’s not true and unnecessary. Your hair grows at its own steady rate. It just looks like it grows faster when you start off bald because you can see the growth easier. 

I think combined with Kyle’s mom and stepdad visiting almost every two weeks, too, is also wearing down on us all. It’s tiring having to entertain or do stuff for your family so often, especially if you’re not used to seeing them so much. 

Another topic that we’ve talked about before is that it probably rubs us the wrong way because growing up, our parents were never involved in our lives this much. Granted, they were busy with work and trying to give us a better life, but it seems like they’re trying to make up for their past mistakes now that they’re retired and have nothing else to do. But just because they’re retired doesn’t mean that Luna is their next project to work on because they have nothing else going on!

I’ve also really gotten addicted to scrapbooking the past few months. I’ve bought too much washi tape and printing paper for all of my printers lol. It takes up a lot of space spreading everything out, so I usually use the dining room table since we never use it for its intended purpose lol. However, with all of the parents coming over, I always have to clean it up and put it away because they’re fucking nosy and intrusive, and I hate it when people touch my stuff without my permission. So it gets annoying when they come over all the time. 

This was all of my scrapbooking stuff when I first bought everything. Did realize that I would need a second container to fit everything. Now, I need a THIRD container after getting more stuff for my birthday lol.

My cousin Mei Mei came to visit since she had another long vacation, and tickets to Atlanta were super cheap on Frontier (less than $80!). She only stayed for a few days during the week to play with Luna and go out to try new food lol. Since we were working during the day, she took my car and went on food adventures by herself during the day. At night, we ordered takeout or went out to eat with her. 

She left a few days before Halloween, so she didn’t see Luna in her cute astronaut suit! It was a little big on her, but she was freakin ADORABLE. We all bought matching outfits, but Alec wasn’t there to take pics with us (we thought our neighborhood would do trick-or-treating on the weekend, not Monday, the actual day), so I stayed home and passed out candy while Shelle, Kyle, and Luna went out with our neighbors. 

But yeah, October flew by with lots of annoyances and laughter (because Luna is unintentionally cute and hilarious every day lmao).

Friday, November 11, 2022

Webnovel Review: The World of Comprehension Needs Talents Like You by Yan Baibai

Title: The World of Comprehension Needs Talents Like You
Author: Yan Baibai
Chapters: 175 chapters + 2 extras
Publication: 2021
Summary from jjwxc:

Chen Qingyao went from the end of the world to the realm of self-cultivation, and she wanted to lie down and live forever.


On the first day of her journey of self-cultivation, she found a boy under a cliff.

The young man is a talented young man with excellent aptitude.

——This is a proper face-slapping male protagonist!


Not long after, another girl was picked up.

The girl's biological mother died early, the scum father was partial, her reputation was smeared, her marriage was stolen, and she sought death in despair.

——This is the heroine of the revenge abuse scumbag!


Chen Qingyao put the male and female protagonists together, and secretly observed the chemical reaction between them.

However, later the actor said, "I only trust Ayao in the world." The heroine said, "All men go away, Ayao's sister is mine!" The two fought for favor.


Chen Qingyao felt as if she had become a scumbag caught between a sweet wife and a concubine, and she was in a dilemma.


Who can eat this?

In order to hide from the purity, she had to pretend that she had no worldly desires and was obsessed with cultivation.


Later, Chen Qingyao became the master of the four ways of pills, talismans, formations, and implements that shocked the cultivation world, and countless bigwigs asked her to refine pills.


Someone asked how she did it.

Chen Qingyao glanced at the male protagonist beside her, with a deep expression: "I owe it to me for a while and pick up someone to talk about..."


Reading guide:

1. There is a male protagonist, and the male protagonist is on the copywriting

2. Female Main all-round talent, both men and women love her

3. Cultivation and farming writing, upgrades and long-form novels, there is a private

5 STARS - I LOVED IT

MY REVIEW: 

This was such a fun cultivation novel! This novel focused on Chen Qingyao's slow growth into becoming a 4 way cultivator and her adventures with her friends. 

She spent the past 10 years surviving as a weak human during a zombie apocalypse before dying and being reborn in a cultivation world, so all she wants to do is to live a long life by ascending as a cultivator. She meets a lot of great people along the way and awakens her money grubbing ways trying to survive at first, which was hilarious. Even though she eventually became rich, she still felt poor because everything she does cost money lol. 

This is a slice of life cultivation novel. There's fights and excitement sprinkled throughout, but it's really about Chen Qingyao's accidental adventures in cultivation lol. 

The romance is SUPER slow and gradual, but the main lead's duality was also hilarious, and you can feel his gradual cherishment of her, which was sweet. 

Highly recommend this novel if you want to read a shorter, entertaining cultivation novel that's less than 200 chapters.

Tuesday, November 8, 2022

Weekly Haul 151

I started following Jayessart on IG because of her mermaid comic snippets. When I found out that she was selling preorders of that comic and her other finished series, of course I had to support and buy them all lol.

The rest are from my order from RightStuf! 




A Man & His Cat vol. 5 by Umi Sakurai

A Man & His Cat vol. 6 by Umi Sakurai

Yona of the Dawn vol. 31-32, 34-37 by Mizuho Kusanagi

Friday, November 4, 2022

Books I Want to Read This Month

I managed to read FIVE books off this list last month! That's probably my best record lol. I bought the latest volumes of the two series I read last month, so I'm planning on catching up this month!

  1. Scum Villain's Self-Saving System vol. 1 Mo Xiang Tong Xiu
  2. All of Us Villains by Amanda Foody & Christine Lynn Herman
  3. Scythe by Neal Shusterman
  4. A Man & His Cat vol. 5 by Umi Sakurai
  5. A Man & His Cat vol. 6 by Umi Sakurai
  6. A Man & His Cat vol. 7 by Umi Sakurai
  7. Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? vol. 15 by Fujino Omori
  8. Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Familia Chronicle Novel vol. 1 by Fujino Omori
  9. Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Familia Chronicle Novel vol. 2 by Fujino Omori 
  10. The Rising of the Shield Hero vol. 1 by Aneko Yusagi
  11. Graceling the Graphic Novel by Kristin Cashore & Gareth Hinds
  12. Women Writers: Collected Works and Poems 
  13. The Anatomy of Being by Shinji Moon
  14. Home Body by Rupi Kaur
  15. The Sun Will Rise & So Will We by Jennae Cecelia

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

October in Retrospect

I spent a lot of my time this month playing with my niece and reading physical books. I'm so happy! :D

I read: 

  • A Man & His Cat vol. 3 by Umi Sakurai
  • Wen Qiao in My Arms by 请叫我山大王 
  • A Man & His Cat vol. 4 by Umi Sakurai
  • I Was Reincarnated as the Villainess in an Otome Game but the Boys Love Me Anyway! vol. 1 by Sou Inaida, Ataka, Hachipisu Wan
  • I Was Reincarnated as the Villainess in an Otome Game but the Boys Love Me Anyway! vol. 2 by Sou Inaida, Ataka, Hachipisu Wan
  • I Was Reincarnated as the Villainess in an Otome Game but the Boys Love Me Anyway! vol. 3 by Sou Inaida, Ataka, Hachipisu Wan
  • Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? vol. 11 by Fujino Omori
  • The Little Milk Dog I Picked Up is a Doomsday Boss by 日月庆
  • Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? vol. 12 by Fujino Omori 
  • Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? vol. 13 by Fujino Omori 
  • Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? vol. 14 by Fujino Omori 
  • Pulling Together a Villain Reformation Strategy by 醉又何妨


I watched: 

  • Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? III (2020)
  • Run-On (2020)
  • Skeleton Knight in Another World (2022)
  • The Greatest Demon Lord Is Reborn as a Typical Nobody (2022)