Update: I'm still reading 大林和小林, I'm on chapter 14 out of 19 I think. If I push it I can finish today, if not then I can finish tomorrow.
The story's stats from Readibu are below, still confirming my sweet spot for extended reading seems to be HSK 4 comprehension over 83% and HSK 5 comprehension over 93% (or hsk 4 80% hsk 5 90% probably at minimum if I'm just browsing stories to give a try).
This story is, again, a really easy read if you read 秃秃大王 first. The author writes a specific style and favors specific verbs and adjectives so vocabulary learned from the author's other story transfers to this one.
Thus week I have made SO much reading progress. Once this is finished, I will have read 5 chinese stories in a week! (And 5.5 if you count dmbj 1 which I'm halfway through now).
This is by far the fastest I've ever been reading through chinese stories. Which I guess means 1. It was clearly time for me to drop the reading difficulty and up the extensive reading Amount.
And 2. That I Highly Recommend Heavenly Path's site and specifically reading recommendations. They were particularly perfect for me right now, because I'm probably in their intermediate-upper intermediate level so Ive got All of the recommendations within that to pick from and read quickly while still learning some new words. If you know a bit less words than me, it might be a little rougher going to begin, but overall I think their recommendations list is really good. I think the 2 first novels they recommend are Eons better for beginners than 小王子 (and priest lol) were for me as my earliest reading attempts.
These first 2 novels 秃秃大王 and 大林和小林 teach so many nice basic common adjectives and nouns and verbs, which i promise do carry over to help later reading both if you plan to just read modern daily life things or fantasy genre etc. I am seeing so many hanzi that I've already learned as part of much bigger words/phrases in priest novels, but seeing them used individually in these easier stories makes their core meaning way clearer to me and I'll probably remember it much better now (which will make later guessing of longer words with the hanzi much easier in the future than it used to be). I'm seeing core parts of words I've seen in daily life stuff, in stuff I'm also seeing regularly in dmbj right now, that I've seen part of 镇魂 and palace stuff I've tried to read before. So yes these first 2 stories are kids fairy tales, but they also use a lot of useful words you'll likely see in a ton of other stuff and be happy you learned. They're also written in a way that helps explain what new words are, explaining to the main characters at times, and in a way where words get REPEATED so if you do look up a word you'll keep SEEING it and therefore actually manage to remember what it means. Absolutely I recommend these 2 stories directly after some Mandarin Companion, some Pleco Graded readers (up to maybe 1000 hanzi or whatever ur comfortable with), and/or after free graded reader content that covers a similar basis.
I'm very inclined to just continue directly following Heavenly Paths recommended list for beginners found here: https://heavenlypath.notion.site/Comprehensive-Reading-Guide-from-Beginner-to-Native-Novels-b3d6abd583a944a397b4fbbb81e0c38c (scroll to see their graded reader recommendations, followed by chinese story recommendations in order of difficulty).
So the next few recommendations are:
“下次开船“港 (I may tire of children's stories though so may skip this one)
公主想做龙骑士 (baihe, if it clicks I may read this)
我的狼妈妈 (it's highly recommended, I fear I may cry, will probably check this out)
做树真的好难 (danmei, from the pov of a tree spirit which sounds fun to read)
当你走进图书馆而书里夹了一枚书签 (danmei, I read this and it was great! A short read which is motivating to finish, surprisingly had supernatural elements which almost made me cry, and ends happy!)
我家二爷 (this being a simple historical very much tempts me to read this, its also a short read and should take only a couple hours, and I could use probably more familiarity with historical words)
第十二封情书 (danmei, this looks short and unique)
谁动了我的骨灰坛 (supernatural, baihe, sounds intense and up my alley, the length scared me though at 50k characters until I realized... 大林和小林 is 40k... so I can probably handle 50k in 2-3 days now. Wow! Also fun fact dmbj 1 七星鲁王 is 80k... which is why I consider it doable now...meanwhile 天涯客 is 292k.... ;-; ultimate goal is to be able to read THAT in a week. I guess on the upside that's only 3 or 4 times longer than dmbj 1 ... so at current rate, I could read 天涯客 in a month. Probably 2 months if you account for it being harder to read difficulty wise, which is still better than the 6 month estimate of how long 镇魂 was taking me last year when I was extensively reading it and 100 pages took me a month. How about I just... keep reading dmbj novels haha. And when I can read them easy as pie and fast, maybe then I can consider tackling the harder reading material in a reasonable time frame lol. Someone also mentioned to me today and reminded me: sticking to one author often makes reading easier since they prefer the same word choice mostly, so dmbj would remain generally easy once I pick up npss's preferred words. And its already at my sweet spot easier level than tianyake ahh ;-; )
Then there's Heavenly Paths Upper Intermediate ranked stuff, of which some is likely my extensive reading level since they rank 笑猫日记 as Upper Intermediate and I can read one of those stories in a few hours extensively. But also, I notice (or at least think) when I read Intermediate like I have this week I actually pick up more words because my comprehension hinges on the few unknown words and the limited vocabulary means unknown words get repeated more. Whereas when I read Upper Intermediate (and above), I can already usually follow the main plot and there is enough additional description padding to figure out unknown words which are critical to meaning, meanwhile that critical word gets no repetition so even if I figure out its meaning I'll rarely see it much again to remember it, and a lot of the description padding words I can get by not understanding or vaguely guess but then... they won't repeat much either so I don't remember much. Which means rereading stuff like 寒舍 and 半夜衣寒 sound more appealing to me, because as case stories I KNOW they'll repeat vocabulary enough for me to remember it even though they're a higher reading level. I KNOW I'll pick up a majority of the new words I figure out. Whereas with some other Upper Intermediate stuff, if it doesn't regularly reuse words like dmbj does, then I don't think it will hammer in reminding me of words I may still need to learn. After all, I dived into Intermediate (so "easier") stories this week specifically because I noticed when there's Few Words Used I don't always know those critical words for understanding. It's rarely a problem in more detailed writing, but reveals a weak spot in my vocab when given easier curter writing. Which is why I've been working on it: hammer in the basic words, so I stop running into critical unknowns in curter writing. Mmm...
And then like... there's my pingxie fanfic backlog to read too... I am desperately missing 寒舍... it's like fucking 375k characters (rip) but I read fucking 60 chapters in a month, like several months ago! When my reading skill was worse! Like yes it's a beast (and apparently longer than tianyake wowza), but I already read 60 chapters of it 2 times ToT I already know a lot of its words and plot and my god do I wanna finish it. Idk if it's too over my level and I should Calm Down and continue the Actual dmbj novels which are easier (and shorter at 50k ish a piece). But wow... do I miss them. So when I'm done with dmbj 1 I'm gonna be. Tempted. I'm tempted now.
In other news. Like I mentioned, I made a parallel text of sha po lang recently. And I started reading chinese chapter 1 today. And I needed to stop myself cause yeah totally, reading about a general hill/mound thing and mech suits is Definitely Not Gonna confuse me and Melt My Fucking Brain. Zhenhuns doable specifically because I love that story and know so much of it by heart by now ToT. I do not have nearly that advantage in SPL and SPL is historical au with mechs and palace words and I feel like it might even melt my brain more than can ci pin. (Oh but what a world when I CAN read can ci pin ;-; I bought all the print volumes so they sit on my shelf with their super pretty covers and remind me one day I wanna be able to read more than just their chapter titles ;-;).
Tldr back to the POINT: anyway go check out Heavely Path's site, they did such a good job with their reading recommendations and levels! If you want to ultimately read chinese webnovels, their recommendations are both super well suited to break you into reading real stuff, and to gradually increase your reading skill without too much strain and struggle. I think their recommendations are quite fair overall and all their easier stuff I can confirm is easier with small increases in difficulty to make it easier to improve. (And then as a learner who did whatever-the-fuck on my own for years first, I'd also say some of their higher level recommendations are totally doable at lower reading levels if you Want to do them... like priest is "hard" but I was reading 镇魂 and 默读 extensively in print version with no translation aids at about 1.5-2 years into learning Chinese. So if you want to read something a lot, even if its above your level, it may well be doable - and there's easier ways to do it than I did, like comparing with edanglarstranslations lovely priest translations of modu, like reading digitally with a click translation tool like Kindle, Pleco, Readibu, which I have Also done with Guardian and did make the experience very easy - I just am a lazy person and wanted to read my print book and not use tech sometimes ToT. So basically if you love 魔道祖师 or 镇魂 or fuck even 破云, read it early if it'll make you happy and you'll enjoy it. I literally was reading 天涯客 like 10 fucking months into learning Chinese, after 2 mandarin companion books and 10 chapters of the much easier 他们的故事, because Word of Honor was gonna be out soon and I wanted to read priest Badly. I read with Plecos Reader tool, and chapters took 2 hours then 1.5 then 1 then finally 40 minutes eventually to get through, until by chapter 27 I was real tired of slogging through and the show came out so I switched to watching it ToT. But I did Manage to read it 10 months in. So if you've got something you want to read, if you want to then don't let difficulty keep you from it.)
Also uh... extensive reading was really a good choice this week, I already feel I'm seeing a noticeable speed and comprehension improvement. I've read like... 20k+12k+25k+40k+20k=117k characters this week at least. Wow!
