Comments on: 25 books I’ve read in Chinese, with reviews and difficulty ratings

By: 7 ways of learning to write Chinese characters | Hacking Chinese

7 ways of learning to write Chinese characters | Hacking Chinese — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 04:19:16 +0000

[…] back when I studied Chinese full time and read 25 books in Chinese and typed a few hundred pages of text, I still spent around 20 minutes per day maintaining and […]

By: 3 things I wish I had known as an advanced student of Chinese | Hacking Chinese

Mon, 14 Oct 2024 08:01:57 +0000

[…] And what about the thousand books I mentioned? Well, I certainly didn’t read or listen to them for language-learning purposes, except for a few dozen I read in school. If you want some recommendations for Chinese books, I wrote about everything I read for a year here: 25 books I’ve read in Chinese, with reviews and difficulty ratings […]

By: How I learnt Chinese, part 7: Teaching, writing, learning | Hacking Chinese | Hacking Chinese

Sat, 01 Jul 2023 17:36:04 +0000

[…] to music from your own culture, you listen to Chinese music. Instead of reading books in English, you read everything in Chinese. You might also move to China, but this isn’t strictly speaking necessary. With a moderately […]

By: Dennis

Dennis — Fri, 26 Feb 2021 17:02:55 +0000

I want to recommend 围城 by 钱锺书. It is not easy, not quite as hard as 张爱玲 in my perception, but substantially more difficult than most works on your list I think. But it is very interesting and fun to read with a lot of humor and sarcasm.

By: Ainhize

Ainhize — Fri, 10 Jul 2020 05:58:43 +0000

Good Morning!

I have been studying chinese for 7 years and I’m at level HSK4, I guess I have a long way to reach your level, as I saw that you can read Wheel of Time in chinese and you said it’s “Average” and Hunger Games “Easy”… jajaja
I want to start improving my chinese, I’ve started watching tv shows to get my ears used to it, and I want to start reading more chinese (apart from the textbooks from class), but I don’t know where to start and I don’t know where to buy books or read online works. BTW, I love fantasy! (I learned that there exists some places where authors write online fantasy works, but I only found english translations and I don’t know how to find them in chinese).

Could you give me some tips?

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Mon, 06 May 2019 11:03:20 +0000

In reply to SwellGuy. No idea, really, but with some effort, I think you can convert Kindle to PDF.

By: SwellGuy

SwellGuy — Mon, 06 May 2019 00:07:45 +0000

I’d like to read the hunger games in simplified Chinese, and am even willing to pay for it, but only if I can get a PDF so I can open it in pleco. Kindle’s dictionary is not convenient. Any recommendations on where I can buy something usable in pleco?

By: Olle Linge

Olle Linge — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 07:26:32 +0000

In reply to Raphael. At lower levels, I'd dare say it's almost impossible! I think I have Brothers, but I haven't read it yet. I will bump it on my priority list; thank you for the recommendation!

By: Raphael

Raphael — Tue, 05 Mar 2019 01:26:27 +0000

Interesting post.
It’s hard to find chinese books that are interesting enough and suit your level.

I recommend Brothers by Yuhua. It’s fairly easy to read and the story is interesting.

More challenging: 白先勇-台北人

By: Zeb

Zeb — Sat, 05 Aug 2017 13:41:50 +0000

Hi, Do u have any recommendations for Chinese detective/thriller and horror books?