Choose how I kick off winter reading this weekend

I have a decent backlog of things that don't particularly interest me should be read so you can look down on people who haven't read them and scoff at how they aren't even familiar with the classics. It's time to start ticking more off of that list and none of them sound particularly enjoyable, so I'm crowdsourcing this to !bookworms and other homosexuals.

What first? This is by no means an exhaustive list but I've narrowed it down to what seems least unappealing.


https://i.rdrama.net/images/17235685217415228.webp

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Okay so I just skimmed the wiki for the Chinese story and learned that

desire for male camaraderie" is "far from a mere plotline," for it is a basic theme of this and other classic novels. She places the novel's male characters in a tradition of men's culture of mutual trust and reciprocal obligation, such as figures known as the Chinese knight-errant. Sima Qian, the Han dynasty historian, devoted a section to biographies: "Their words were always sincere and trustworthy, and their actions always quick and decisive. They were always true to what they promised, and without regard to their own persons, they would rush into dangers threatening others." She finds such figures in this and other novels, such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West, all of which dramatized the "empathic emotional attraction between men who appreciate and play off against one another's complementary qualities."[16]

Licentious and treacherous women are another recurring theme. Modern critics have debated whether Water Margin is misogynistic.[17][18][19] Most beautiful women in the novel are depicted as immoral and cruel, and they are often involved in schemes against the protagonists. Among them is Pan Jinlian, the sister-in-law of Wu Song, who has later become an archetypal femme fatale and one of the most notorious villainesses of classical Chinese culture. On the other hand, the few "good" women in the story, like Sun Erniang and Gu Dasao, are not particularly noted for their beauty, or are even described as being plain or ugly. The leader of the outlaws, Song Jiang admonishes: "Any outlaw that meddles with women is contemptible."

Surely this is the rdrama choice, especially considering, uh, recent events.

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