Alexander Chiang > Recent Status Updates

The audiobook is SO unbelievably good.

My man pulled out a damn book at a function without consideration. This man is sooooo cooked.

I could not stop shrieking and cackling listening to 9 full mins of erotica in the greenhouse scene. It’s one thing for me to read the filthiest smut of my life in exact details unfazed and unbothered. It’s another having the narrator read it for your listening pleasure with all the tonal changes between character switches, gasping and awing each other to climax. I don’t know it felt… cheesy for me?

The sharing one bed trope! The love confession with innocent intimacy! The “I love you.” Fuck yeah, romance is back on the menu for me, baby!!!

Onizuka’s backstory is so sad 😭

Oh, cmon!!!! They were about to lock lips, dammit!!! 😭

The pacing of the chapter was terrible, but the message was clear. Koichi was supposed to break the cycle of hardship that Kazu had endured. It’s evident that Kazu is deeply affected by his death, knowing he was as absent father figure hearing firsthand stories of his child growing up. It’s sad knowing that Kazu will now think of Koichi when it rains now in Ueno Park…

I relate a lot to how the book says that many people give up on their personal legends because they believe they’re not in control of their destiny. It’s an existential perspective to hear the opposite from the author as a reader that we instead ARE in control. That not choosing our own paths leads to our unhappiness. I feel like many of us have been at that point in our lives to understand what that means.

Guys, the book is SO much better with the audiobook. Having Jeremy Irons narrate gives the story a more folk tale expereince. It’s like you’re being to read to as a child, all snugged in your bed for a bedtime story. Maybe the audiobook will elevate the material, we’ll see…

Somewhat interesting premise. Two college students, from the same high school with the same name “Lion”, reconnect. Except they become distant friends to possible lovers? And a dark backstory? Not entirely groundbreaking for the genre, but I’m seated…

“Until then I’d made an effort at work, but the effort I made now was to live. It wasn’t that I wanted to die; it was just that I was tired of trying.”

This is literally how I feel right now in 2026, man…

“You think I’m so wrong to say so? That I’m cold hearted? Well, I dare say I am- but I tell you this: Babbington will be a better place without her-for all of us.”

I honestly don’t care if Marcella is overprotective of her son. It’s still a shitty thing to express contempt and disdain for someone whose life is currently hanging by a thread.