Having watched Chinese-learning apps for a long time, a common failure mode is treating traditional characters as an afterthought, when it’s actually a lot cleaner to use them as a base. simplified variants were made so that readers of traditional characters could easily make the switch, but the reverse is not true. If your db treats “face” and “noodle” or “wind” and “typhoon” as the same character from the beginning, it’s a lot harder to separate later.
This has been my issue. There's a really small set of novels I enjoy. The better (but not good) recommendations have been to re-read something I've already read as a translation. I have never re-read a novel in my life and I'm not sure it being a frustrating experience would make it more appealing.
There's probably a market for something that helps connect people to books/stories/media they would actually like in other languages, ideally that isn't already commonly available translated.
After a few books, just the excitement of being able to read novels in Chinese is probably not enough though. At that point, it needs to be a book you genuinely like. I'm lucky that the 三体 books are interesting to me, they will keep me busy for a while.
Connecting people to media they like in other languages is a good idea though. Maybe I'll try sharing more about the best novels to read in Chinese as some point.
The book is called 《许三观卖血记》, and its author is 余华.
许三观 is not the author's name.