🦇 Good Fortune Book Review 🦇

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

❝ But meeting him now felt like meeting him for the first time, glimpsing a new side of the person she want once imagined she knew. It unsettled her, how little she could trust that her impression of him would stay true to the versions she met later. ❞

❓ QOTD What's your favorite Austen adaptation?

🦇 Elizabeth "LB" Chen's mother is all too excited when she sells the neighborhood's beloved yet derelict community center to two Chinese men from Hong Kong, but LB isn't convinced these investors have the community's best interests at heart. With stubborn albeit good intentions, she fights for the community, too often butting heads with uptight, arrogant Darcy Wong in the process. The two are forced to spend time together, each venturing into the other's world longer than they're comfortable with. Can they see from one another's perspective, or will pride and prejudice get in the way?

💜 It's a truth universally acknowledged that many book lovers adore a good retelling—emphasis on "good." There are many that fail to hit the mark, neglecting the qualities that led readers to fall in love with the original story in the first place.

🧧Good Fortune hits every mark...and then some.

💜 The first 25 pages feature language so unique and enthralling that, for a moment, you'll forget this was a retelling in the first place. The writing is full of sass and quick wit without compromising the charm or formality of Austen's original works. Modernized, the language is moving, thought-provoking, and refreshing. Once it ensnares you, you'll find the sun has long set—or perhaps, just beginning to rise—as the story makes you forget all sense of time. Despite the familiar characters and plot, Chau does stunning work of making the story her own. The smallest of details—like LB's photography, the issue of gentrification, and Darcy's community outreach—to foundational changes—like setting the story in New York's Chinatown and making the sisters children of Chinese immigrants—all play a part in the story's progression. Chau never abandons the themes that make Pride and Prejudice such a monumental story, instead using them to bring attention to the same problems that still exist today: cultural identity, class divides, the burdens and responsibilities of family. Culture is infused in every page, granting this story a unique authenticity that other retellings lack. Infusing this story with the Chinese-American children-of-immigrants perspective only makes the classical class divide AND family values all the more poignant.

🦇 I think most readers will feel conflicted about the minor adjustments made to some of the supporting characters (namely, Jade and Lydia, who are a little more frustrating than usual). However, the frustrations both cause give LB the push she needs to adjust her perspective. Lydia's scandal and brattish behavior made me set my Kindle aside more than once, but I've never been a fan of Lydia Bennet.

🦇 Though I don't think the book needs to be longer, I do wish we got a little more of LB and Darcy together at the end. However, the original Pride and Prejudice story, along with most retellings, stop at the point they're together, so I understand it. The playful, rather than abrasive version of their banter is so entertaining that it only left me starved for more.

🦇 Recommended for fans of the original Pride and Prejudice, readers eager for diverse stories, and lovers of Sonali Dev's The Rajes series (another great retelling you NEED to read if you haven't already). Book bats, you've gotta grab this one!

✨ The Vibes ✨ ㊗️ Debut Novel 🎩 Contemporary Pride and Prejudice 🏮 Enemies to Lovers 🥠 Class Consciousness 🥟 Family is Everything 👠 Stubborn Integrity

🦇 Major thanks to the author and publisher for providing an ARC of this book via Netgalley. 🥰 This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

Jane Austen: and here we have the love interest. He might have some issues, but once you get to know him, he's a great guy. Good looking, heart of gold, the works.

Charlotte Brontë: get ready for the weirdest man you have ever met.

this one was pitched to me as “if The Summer I Turned Pretty grew up” - and somehow it’s totally true and I still ended up loving it ?

I know it is not that deep, but every single time I see or hear someone say “translation is a betrayal of the original source” or “translation means I can never truly grasp what was meant” and mean it, I die a little inside. Do you know how much time, effort, countless nights spent agonising over context, meaning, intention, historical context, research etc. goes into a translation? Do you know about the concept of translation loyalty, how we are taught that it is one of the golden rules? Our loyalty to readers and author alike? How much understanding of a topic does not only go into translation but into interpreting as well? How much determination, frustration and love it all takes? How informed you have to be about hot words, cultural peculiarities, language-specific concepts and the like?

Do you know how much adoration goes into providing another human’s words - one whom you may have never met but by all that is holy and damned, their voice exists and it is worth being heard by all, no matter if they have access to the original language or not -, their thoughts and dreams and hopes and whatever else there is, for all eyes and ears and fingers?

It is demanding work. It makes you doubt and doubt and want to pull your own teeth out sometimes. I have spent minutes analysing a sentence simply to find the correct translation for the word “as”. I have checked sources, researched novels and plays long forgotten, hours before I would actually get to translate. I have spent nights researching, swallowing tears and cries of anger older than me, for interpreting jobs. I have felt unbridled joy upon delivering a valuable translation, could have jumped in exhilaration when elderly people came to me, smiling and thanking me profusely because they are interested in working for a good cause but they would not have been able to understand this conference without my friend and I because the conference was held in English, not German.

My state exams are coming up. I am this close to being a state certified and court-sworn translator and interpreter. Something I’ve been training for for 3 years. I would have never discovered Neil Gaiman as an author without the translation of “Norse Gods”, which I needed as reference material back in school. I would not be able to teach my mum English if not for my Scottish teacher during my time becoming a commercial correspondent and then starting to train as a translator. Without translation, nobody would ever be able to learn another language, or even get to know a different culture.

Translation is an act of love.

It’s in the smile of the Ukrainian kid whom I’ve interpreted for at a gaming conference, who did not speak a lick of German. It’s in the eyes of the Canadian Paralympics delegation stopping in Munich, whom we’re interpreting a sports event, a state dinner and a welcome speech for. It’s in the laughter of refugees who have been here for months to years, shunned by the government and left to be unheard until the multiple conferences, projects, organisation meetings held to help them, to make sure they are not forgotten. Who joke around with us in bits of English and Farsi - through another interpreter -, forge connections with others attending the meeting, quipping and teasing in broken German and my mother tongue rings as sweet as bells. It’s in the hands of elderly people attending a talk about the banning of uranium weapons, shaking but full of strength, as they thank us for our help. It’s my mother’s smile as I translate medical articles for her, as she never learned English, growing up in the GDR.

Translation is an act of loyalty and love. Of adoration for those who were, who are and who will be, and all the echoes of ourselves.

if i ever were to flirt i would just show em my comfort book shelf and wait for the reaction

been some insane times in my fandoms

why do authors come up with banger names for the first book but then the LAST book in the series the name just doesn't hit right like what are you doing you messed up the soup 🧌

I remember talking to a friend last week and saying that if I'm reading obsessively it either means I'm extremely happy or extremely in need of help. alas goodreads my good pal you have GOT to be kidding me

Hope isn't about predicting the future; it's about how you approach it.

Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

imaginary book: “The Ruined Idylls of Calomar”, low fantasy (quite obscure, authorship disputed; philologists suspect the first draft was written in a Celtic or Semitic language in the late 19th or early 20th century.)

The Ruined Idylls of Calomar by A.E. Mann

This haunting work of fantasy claims to be the journals of an unnamed scholar living in exile after the fall of the hidden lands of Calomar. Once a thriving, peaceful, highly civilized culture, its glory was brought low by the pride, greed, and wrath of kings, scholars, explorers and warriors who fought for glory, power, and honor, until its final destruction by a dark, nameless weapon left only a scant handful of survivors to escape and tell the tale. In haunting language, the narrator writes of Calomar's glory and intrigue, its final fall, and his irresistible yet doomed attempts to return to his lost homeland and learn what, if anything, has survived.

"If the same object from two different times touches itself, one of two things will happen. Either the Universe will cease to exist. Or three remarkable dwarfs will dance through the streets with flowerpots on their heads."

Small victory for me!

I recently finished "Fortunately the milk" by Neil Gaiman.

It's not much you'll tell me, and you're probably right, but it should be noted that I'm french, and it was the very first book I read in english.

So I checked a dream off my bucket list: to read an entire book in english.

I must therefore thank Neil Gaiman, and especially the recent discovery of Good Omens (that I adore), which made me want to get back to english and take lessons again, almost 25 years after my last lessons in high school.

And as I want to continue discovering Neil's other books, I bought a few, still in english, and I'm going to build on my momentum.

one thing about me is that i can connect any song ever to the book i’m hyperfixating on

About Kimmuriel

So don’t get me wrong, his reputation is well-earned and he is by no means a tragic misunderstood good guy.

BUT

Does anyone else just feel really bad for him in the newer books? Like... he is just now starting to really open up and try to connect with other people in ways he hasn’t allowed himself to since Rai’gy/Rai-guy and be openly vulnerable in ways he has probably never willingly allowed himself to be (well... except that one time with the hivemind) and damn near everyone talks about him behind his back about what a weird illithid lover he is.

I mean, I get it.

But I also feel bad for him.

Still think Ajin really had something going by making Kai an outcast for very human reasons (people just avoid him) while Kei’s an outcast for supernatural reasons

ah yes, the thrilling sequel to my Haynes Civic book