Book reviews

Readmoo 2026 reading challenge

I often talk about it here, but Readmoo is the biggest e-book service in Taiwan. I’m buying most of my books there as far as reading in Chinese is concerned. And this year for the first time, I joined the 2026 Readmoo reading challenge!

Illustration of a cow in human form, shaking a shaker in a bar with shelves behind it and a counter in front. A title says in Traditional Chinese: Readmoo 2026 Reading Challenge

I don’t often look at Readmoo events, but I saw this one when I bought my last book, and I thought it’d be fun to join!

The goal is to select 5 books in each of three different categories: easy, normal and hard. As far as I can tell, the “difficulty” level is determined by the length of the book only. We have to choose among a selection of books, and I don’t know if it’s a fixed selection for everybody, or if it’s automatically customised for each user based on their previous purchases. I lean towards the second option, because there were a lot of books that I wanted to read anyway in the “normal” and “hard” sections, so I didn’t have any problem picking 5 books in each of these categories. I also added a lot of other featured books to my wish list.

The problem was for the “easy” category, because there were not a lot of crime fiction. I also don’t want to read in translation if I can read the original language (mostly Japanese and English), so it reduces the range of choices.

Once you choose your books, you have the year to read them, and you get a badge when you reach a milestone: 5, 10 and the whole 15 books. My goal is to aim for the 10 books badge, because I don’t think I can nor want to read all 15 books this year (I mean, I do want to read all these books in my life, but I also want to read authors from Mainland China this year, so I won’t have time for everything). My guess is that I’m going to read all the “normal” books, 3 from the “hard” category, and only 2 from the “easy” one. And I already know which ones ☺️.

Here’s the progress page, I still haven’t finished any yet lol:

Screenshot showing three rows of 4 empty slots each with a badge at the end of each row. The slots say “finished reading” + a number from 1 to 15 (the badges count as number).
Screenshot

And here is my list! I’ll have to double check, but I think most of the authors are Taiwanese except maybe one or two from Hong Kong?

A grid of book covers classified into three categories: easy, normal and difficult. There is a row of five covers for each category, with their title and the number of characters/pages, as well as a button to add to cart.
Screenshot

Books that I wanted to read anyway and were already on my wish list are:

  • 不可知論偵探2 and 魚眼, both by 薛西斯 (Xerses). I read the first volume of the manga 不可知論偵探 and wanted to read the second one. I also read a short story by this author and loved it, so I also added the novel 魚眼, which is by far the longest book on this list.
  • 殺人是件嚴肅的事 by 馬卡. The other book I read by this author is 關於殺人這件事……請勿對號入座, and I absolutely loved it, so when I saw that 殺人是件嚴肅的事 was on the challenge list, I did not hesitate. I also plan to read 直播主密室死亡之謎 in the future.
  • FIX 2 and 我從前認識的某個人 by 臥斧 (Wolf Hsu). FIX 1 is one of my favourite books read on Readmoo so far, so FIX 2 has been on my wish list since I finished the first volume. And 我從前認識的某個人 was on the list I gave to my husband when he went to Taiwan and brought me some physical books back. Unfortunately, this one was out of stock in the bookshop he went to, so I still haven’t read it.
  • 套條子 by 顏瑜 (Yen Yu). I already said several times on this blog how much I love this author, and that I plan on reading all the police novels. So obviously, 套條子 was on my list. Now, I found a recommended reading order for Yen Yu’s books, and 套條子 was the last of 9 books… 😭 I already read 2, so it means that I either, somehow, read 6 books before starting 套條子 and still finish it before December 31th, or I don’t read them in order, or I just don’t read this book for the challenge. I don’t think the order matters that much to be honest, because it’s not a series… We’ll see!

I’m currently reading 異人山 by 高雲章 (Kao Yunchang), the only book noted as “already bought” on the list (while the others have an option to buy them). By the way, once you select the 15 books, they all go directly to your cart, so you really want to pay attention during checkout! 😱

When you’re reading a book from the challenge, it appears on your homepage, but I rarely look at this page, so it’s not that useful for me. Still neat to have a progress bar! (I’m actually a little farther in the book now compared to when I took the screenshot)

Screenshot showing a book cover and a progression bar at about 50%. A text in Traditional Chinese says “2026 reading challenge” with the indication that there are 330 days remaining in the event.
Screenshot

So now, all I need to do is speed up my reading pace a bit lol. I can’t believe we’re already in February… I learnt about this challenge a bit late in January, but still, one month gone and still no progress 🤣. I don’t really care if I completely fail this challenge, but now that I’ve written all this blog post, I feel committed to at least get that 5 books badge. As usual, I’ll update my reading progress on Mastodon (on the new account of course!).

About

Drawing of a black salamander, head towards the top right corner of the page. White background.

I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read mystery novels and play video games in these languages.

Learning languages has always been one of my favourite hobbies, but I’m not a social person, I don’t like to meet new people and make friends, this is just not me. I keep hearing that languages are meant for communication, that we have to actively use them, talk with natives, etc. and for a long time, I thought it was weird to learn languages just to read books, with zero interest in communication.

Now I don’t really care what people think, and this blog helped me a lot to stop doubting myself and just do what I enjoy doing.