Quick heads up that we are currently planning to read きらきらひかる soon, so I’ve set up a reading thread for it. Please don’t be surprised as the thread is being hosted on Natively instead of WK due to people over there being interested in reading it as well. I’d be happy to see some of you over there!
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New club thread! 
正欲 💦 Informal Book Club 🦆
I admit I already read quite a bit (18% done) but I’m taking a bit of a pause to read some other things and then will come back as I’m rather invested in how the story is unfolding 
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Possible nomination? I came across 真夜中乙女戦争 on Bookmeter while snooping profiles of my 相性 matches and I found the reviews intriguing.
Examples:
and my favorite begins with 少し変わり者の友人（27歳）に薦められて手に取りました。 and ends 読んだ後全くスッキリしませんでしたが、出会ったことない作品に出会えた気がしました。
What’s unclear is whether the people in the book are weird (and trying desperately to be normal), or if just the book itself is weird.
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Looks interesting, but who is this “F”? 
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The answer seems to be ‘no idea, but they’re a dude based on their voice from an Instagram live video’. Also they were 31 in 2020 so turning 34 this year. And they live in Shinjuku.
None of which are probably what you’re asking about 
It seems they’ve written 3 books, and at least the one I linked was well received enough that it was made into a movie.
Edit: Here is the trailer. I can see why one of the reviewers compared it to Fight Club 
Also after watching that I’m not sure it’s a fit for the club. It feels kind somewhere in the ‘self destructing youth’ / ‘coming of age love story’ genres.
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Currently gauging interest for a reading club for むらさきのスカートの女 over at Natively:
See you there if you’re interested!
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This looks like my kind of club 
. I broke the table trying to add my username, however, and can’t seem to fix it…
EDIT: All good now, found the source editing from a different view.
EDIT2: Except the table decided to duplicate itself, no idea what happened. Ghost rows don’t even show up in the table editor. Help. Really need a revert button here.
EDIT3: Okay I think I know what happened. I guess using the table editor instead of editing the raw source tried to do some linting/automatic formatting, that somehow messed the whole thing up 
. Should be fixed now; copied the raw of an older version.
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In the spirit of spreading the word about our favourite genre, I made a list of our books at Natively:
Hopefully at some point there will be an option for a list to be edited by multiple people, but until then I’ll be maintaining it.
Which reminds me, we really need to find more books to add to our list! 
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I added タイムマシンに乗れないぼくたち | L32 to the list; it’s a short story collection but most fit the theme of ‘profoundly weird people trying desperately to be normal’, and all are rather unusual characters/stories. As a note, Discourse’s table editor was a mistake to use for that table…it somehow ended up duplicating multiple rows and breaking formatting and I had to spend ~15 minutes fixing it back to how it was 
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I just added @phryne, @pocketcat and @NicoleIsEnough as collaborators to the Natively list, so you can edit it directly if you like. If someone else also would like collaborator rights, please say so! 
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I’m about 32% through with むらさきのスカートの女 and thinking about DNF:ing it 
. Maybe it’s just a bit too mundane for me…
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It gets weird. I recommend sticking it out. Something of a slow burn and then suddenly a “wait what”
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Hi everyone!
I set up a thread for reading and discussing ハサミの男 on the Natively forums. You’re all welcome to join if you like!
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Added 木になった亜沙 to the table. A very worthy member of the ‘Profoundly Weird’ genre, both the characters and the stories are as profoundly weird as they come
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Been a while since I finished this (didn’t read the essays at the end, though) but…
Was the bigh thing really just that the “stalker” was one of the managers? That was quite a twist, but after that I felt it kind of ended suddenly and without a satisying closure 
Woman in purple just disappears like an ass and just leaves the manager hanging without anything to fall back on. I may have rushed the end so could have missed something, though.
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I mean the stalker being the yellow cardigan woman (on levels that weren’t initially revealed) who then is like ‘oh you killed someone, don’t worry I planned for exactly this!’ and then after her obsession runs off is like ‘well I guess I’ll just pressure my manager with info I gleaned while stalking’ and the sense that she’s going to do this again with another woman eventually. It just felt creepy and mad to me.
I also skipped the essays though, I rarely read those.
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Spoilers for むらさきのスカートの女:
While the fact that the narrator was working at the hotel was revealed quite late, I wouldn’t call it a twist. And it wasn’t the point of the story. You say that the “woman in purple just disappears like an ass” but why? She owed the narrator nothing, and wasn’t even aware of her presence most of the time. She has been seen throwing someone to his death (she thinks), is given money and a way to escape, she takes it. She has no reason to follow the instructions of some random person who just happened (for all she knows) to be there with a plan. If I were purple skirt woman, the narrator appearing like that and claiming she had a carefully thought out plan would definitely freak me out.
Then the major twist for me, was the ending. The narrator seems to entirely take purple skirt woman’s place, sits on the same bench, behaves in the same way. Maybe it’s a cycle? Maybe she will get stalked now? Were they even ever two different women? And if she was quite as crazy as she seems at the end, how much of what she told us can we really trust?
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Yeah I guess when you put it like that
Still, I thought because it wasn’t just some random person but your manager, you’d just take the help. Someone lending a hand after you think you just killed someone would definitely be welcome. I guess I just got a bit mad seeing how much effort the cardigan lady put for purple and it all went to waste…
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I find it pretty amazing how everyone seems to have a slightly (or even completely) different interpretation of むらさきのスカートの女. It’s what makes it one of my favourite books. I plan to reread it after a few years, and see if and how my impressions change.
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I don’t usually like to read the essays, but in this book I really enjoyed them, mainly because (if I remember correctly) all but one were written by the author herself and I love the way she writes and the way she perceives things 
I found them very entertaining just for that.
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