Reading progress!

[soc_puppet]

With the power of (unauthorized, shhh) audiobooks, I have successfully made it through the first volume of SVSSS again, and to the end of the Jinlan City arc!

Which is both farther than I got reading on my own, and right on time for me to need a pick-me-up fic as a chaser. I'm thinking there was a reason I stalled out in the non-audio book. Thankfully, having paged through the second volume in paperback format, the Water Prison arc is much shorter than I would have guessed based on the amount of fic that both it and the Jinlan City arc get. It's important turning point after important turning point, I fully agree, but it is packed into such a short time frame!

Anyway. Further progress to be made, because I am damn well going to read this entire series. I'll have to take a look at the audio file lengths and make some decisions that way.

Comments

[kitewithfish]

Oh wow, there's audiobooks!

The whump is strong in that section of the books, I think it summons a strongly motivated corner of fandom.

I have only read these books once - I'm glad you're enjoying them!

[soc_puppet]

Well, there's not official audiobooks; these are a fan production made to bridge the gap until 7S gets around to it (as I assume they will eventually). But they do exist, as do fan made audiobooks for MXTX's other two series! (...Want links? 👀)

Yeah, whump is not typically my cuppa, and coupled with the angst is... I've talked about it before, but part of how my ADHD/executive dysfunction manifests is with emotional states being "clingy". If I get into a specific emotional state from reading a book (etc), it takes work for me to shake it off; this is all fine and dandy when I'm reading something funny, but something angsty? Yikes. Silly fanfic chaser time, please! (I may have to line up some silly podfic to listen to after the next chapter or two...)

So far, so good 😂 I expect I'll actively enjoy them more once I'm on the other side of this massive angst pile, but I'm also really enjoying the fandom, and knowing the canon background helps with that 😅

[kitewithfish]

Oh, I would love links!

I do sometimes need to handle a 'book hangover,' as I have called it. Certain concepts or characters are a bit close to home!

[soc_puppet]

Links ahoy!

The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System as read by raitala

MDZS and TGCF as read by redoftheturks


Oof, that also sounds like it can be exhausting! For me personally, I'll get into whatever the mood of the story is/the mood that the characters are in, and then just... carry that mood with me for a few hours. Great for comedy and uplifting stuff! Considerably less great for depression, suicidal ideation, stressful stuff (etc). Which sucks, because there's some darker stuff out there that I would in fact be interested in reading! But I have to consider whether I have the spoons to deal with the afterwards. Being in a fandom for a thing can give me extra motivation for it, but outside of that... I've put books and fics down because I didn't like the person I was after reading them.


(Six hours later, I come back to this comment and realize I never hit post. Whoops! Anyway, here's links, enjoy!)

[jesse_the_k]

Audiobooks can be so much more accessible!

[soc_puppet]

So much so, and not just for the 'obvious' reasons! Sometimes, 'reading' a book via audio will work better for me than reading on the page/screen, and sometimes it's the other way around. I don't always know which one it'll be until I start, though.

[jesse_the_k]

For me, when I’m reading work in translation or that’s set in another culture, audiobooks help my brain climb the hill of unfamiliar names and places.

[soc_puppet]

There's a Tumblr post I really like that breaks down the difference between sight reading books and listening to audiobooks in a way I very much relate to. It's something along the lines of, "With sightreading, you don't know how to pronounce names; with audiobooks, you don't know how to spell names." I relate to that so, so much, especially now that I'm side-stepping into Chinese novels. Very different pronunciation from Japanese! (And English, but I figured that was a given.)