I've started to read 活着 "To live", by 余华, a really famous novel in mainland China.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Live

It's my first novel in chinese so I'm really excited, there's a total of 180 pages which I wish I could finish before 3 months.
My current pace is around 1page/day.

I will be adding the words I find difficult in the following list ==>
http://www.skritter.cn/vocab/list?list=348462098

Please feel free to join to read & discuss the novel and it's vocabulary.!

**The movie adaptation by 张艺谋 (Zhang Yimou) is really worth watching as well.

"我爹(爸爸)是很有身份的人，可他拉屎时就像个穷人了..."

湖安马林, good luck with your project! 活着 was also the first original Chinese novel I read and I enjoyed it a lot. I must "warn" you, however, that the (nice) movie is a very very loose adaptation of the novel.

The novel is also available online.
(Wrong link removed. See links in subsequent posts.)

In seems that the novel at http://vip.book.sina.com.cn/chapter/232026/404289.html is written by someone called 小小农女 but not 余华.

Found a different one at http://book.kanunu.org/book3/7193/index.html .

Found another online edition at http://www.haodoo.net/?M=u&P=A471:0&F=-1 . This one uses traditional characters (there are some mistakes in the conversion from simplify to traditional) and is set in columns instead of rows. Since chapter one (which I've just finished reading) at hanunu contains some 乱码 (mojibake 文字化け), this one can serve as a supplement for those incomprehensible characters.

@swimming
Thanks!, it's the favourite book of a chinese friend of mine, some months ago he gave it to me as a present but I didn't dare to start it, till now.

@pts
Great that you started reading it as well, I will add you to the list's editors just in case you want to add some words.

The link I gave in my first post was indeed wrong, so I removed it. Sorry. @pts, thanks for pointing out my mistake and for posting correct links.

This was also my first (and so far only) novel I've read in Chinese; I finished it about a month ago. I loved it, and definitely found it got easier as I became more familiar with the vocabulary used. Like swimming said though, there are some pretty big differences between the book and the movie. The book is much more tragic, if you can believe that.

@swimming no worries!

@junglegirl, wow, I can't imagine being the book more tragic than the movie, I'm eager to see what happens next.