One of the cons of reading before watching, hehe
It’s a scene from volume 6, but I don’t think it spoils much past volume 3, and basically nothing past volume 5 (since you can’t tell what’s going on)
Where did you see the comments, by the way? I just can’t find anything on their page orz
Anyway, I’m guessing like @seanblue that they would adapt only volume 6/7 for maximum impact, but I can see the beginning of volume 8 being inserted as a succession of stills (is that what they are called?) during the credits of the last episode.
I finished to watch Season 1 and 2 of the anime! And It was a delight.
A big part come from the fact that I didn’t need to look up any words after reading the LN, so watching the anime was just pure relaxation and enjoyment. But still the anime by itself hold really well. It doesn’t have amazing production value or anything, (the animation can be even quite rough at some point), but it’s competently done and the art is good.
It’s also really neat to finally have visuals. So many time in the LN I was lost when マイン describe some details about sewing or book making or else. She often draw things because people don’t understand her ideas, and very often reading I wished I could see them too. Well in the anime we can see everything 
Also the speed, my god. It’s funny because when I read comments online, everybody is talking about how it’s a nice, slow and comfy show, but to me it felt more like an insane rollercoaster, because in a mere 8 hours the story goes over stuff that took me 6 MONTHS to read. 
Also the anime cut a lot of side plot, business talk, errand, bureaucracy etc.
Ah, sorry for the confusion, I was just talking about some comments I saw on reddit about the news, so nothing authoritative, just people guessing.
Surprisingly, not at all! That’s something the anime does well, there is often little reaction scene in chibi style showing what マイン is thinking and it’s quite fun. The postcredit scenes are also in this style. Oh and btw, the endcard at the end of each episode is always beautiful, often draw by the official illustrator from what I read.
Don’t like her voice much either. It sounds like and adult overexaggerating kids voice… But it’s clearly a choice, because other girls like Frida or Tuly sound ok.
I got used to it after a while though.
I didn’t notice any scene taken from later books, except for the very first scene, so yeah, that’s probably it. That first scene is fairly clever btw, they did it so that the little recap at the beginning of each episode can be told by the 神官長, as he going through マイン’s memories. Not sure if it was worth spoiling that event though.
I didn’t follow all of the conversation, so hopefully I am not repeating things 
Aside from the first scene in season one, they also put the prologue of book 6 at the end of the second season (where Ferdinand asks Karstedt, if he would adopt Myne)
So much this. Entire characters are being reduced to individual frames, while Myne is summing up how her business is progressing.
The whole subplot about Myne starting a restaurant also never happens, if I remember right.
Interesting you thought that!
I watched the anime before reading the LN, and I was often frustrated at how she seemed to never critically think about the things around her (especially the orphans in the temple).
But to my surprise, everything I complained about with the anime was addressed in internal monologue in the novels.
I recently found out that there is a junior version of this. The first pages looks the same as the original just with furigana.
Can someone tell me how difficult the words/grammar are in this series?
I guess a lot of business/printing speech is used, right?
I really love reading this series in english, but the english translation is soooo slow! 
I think it’s on the easier side for a light novel, in terms of both word usage and grammar. Yes, business and printing words come up, and it’s just something to deal with. You get used to some of it over time, and others (specifically some printing terms) you might need to look up on Wikipedia or Google images or YouTube if you’re not already familiar with the process. Starting with volume 4, there’s also a lot of very formal language. I was familiar with this already, so it didn’t really make it any harder for me. But keep that in mind if you’re not that familiar with formal language.
Looks like we are in the same boat! I started reading volume 15 recently, because I got tired of waiting for the translations
Correct me if I am wrong, but the junior version is not up to date, right? I think they are in the middle of part 2? So If you want to continue after the latest english release, those wouldn’t exactly work.
When I read some of the earlier volumes in japanese, I was surprised by how easy it was… but as the setting got more formal I really struggled. This was the first time I was exposed to humble speech so much, so some characters might as well have spoken a different language altogether.
I got used to it though, and now I don’t find it any more difficult than the rest 
I thought so too, but since the discussions are mostly about improving specific products, the names for those are being repeated a lot throughout the book. Even if you struggle with “what exactly is done”, if you understand 印刷機 is printing press, and you know they are talking about 改良 (= improvement), you will have enough context to get the gist of everything.
Yeah the junior version right now sadly is only available until somewhere in part 2, but I was hoping they might be releasing the junior version faster than the english one. 
Also I don’t know if I can survive without the furigana. 
I know there are programs like Kanji Tomo and picture hooker etc. but so far nothing seemed very nice to me. Can you tell me how you look the kanji up you don’t know? Or are you using a kindle/amazon reader? (I think kindle can look up kanji automatically, right?)
Formal/Humble speech seems manageable (although I’m not exposed to it a lot either), but the kanji seem to be a problem.
I use kindle, though I am not the biggest fan of the dictionary it has. I tend to use it to check readings and then look the word up on jisho.
But I also don’t look up every word If I know the Kanji, I will look it up and maybe add it to an SRS.
If I don’t know the Kanji, I only look it up if it seems important to understand the sentence, or if it comes up so often that I recognize it anyway and only don´t know reading/ meaning.
One thing I did for a while was get the ebook and also the audio book. That meant I didn’t need to know the readings of any Kanji to look up the vocab, and the narrator gave a lot of characterization that I wouldn’t have gotten from the text alone.
I found it also useful for improving on listening. I had the audio book on 0.7 speed initially, but by the end I had it on 0.9.
It seems like the last audio book that got released was volume 12 (end of part 3), and the speed of release doesn’t seem much faster than the english release though ^^
I believe you get 2 audio books for free during the trial period of audible? That’s how I got into it. (And that the ebooks were free/ for sale)
Nowadays the only times I want to look up vocab from a “not ebook”-book always include furigana, so I don’t have any suggestions on tools for that, sadly 
I remember looking up Kanji using the radicals with a physical dictionary before, but I am definitely not patient enough for that now 
Thanks for your explanation, the audiobook idea actually sounds good! Maybe I can just start with one of the earlier volumes (where I already know what’s going on) and an audio book to ease into reading the later/more difficult volumes!
For kanji I don’t know I usually use the google translate app on my phone. Just take a picture and google will show the translation + romanji. So afterwards I can look it up on jisho. But if there are a lot of kanjis to look up, it’s a bit of a hassle.
On jisho there is also the option to look up kanjis with radicals or just draw the kanji. (but drawing is a bit difficult, because you need to draw the strokes in the right order…)
Edit:
I actually just realised the 本好きの下剋上 ebooks are available on amazon outside of japan, at least where I live, (as are the audio books), so this might also be an option. I just never get the japanese ebooks on amazon, because registering a japanese account seems too much of a hassle.
I think you can just log into Japanese Amazon with your regular Amazon account.
Unless they changed it, you need a new account and also a japanese address (maybe even a VPN for the first purchase? I don’t remember), or else they don’t let you purchase ebooks from there.
@sakuchu If you end up buying the audiobooks, then I hope you like them! There were a few characters that I envisioned with different voices, but I really liked them overall 
Ah, I actually never bought any ebooks from Amazon, just regular physical ones, so that might explain it. I read all my ebooks on Bookwalker. Well, except from the ones that find their way onto my Kobo Aura H2O somehow.
This has always been the case for me. I had to register a separate login with a Japanese address, though I only use the VPN as a precaution since I’ve heard of many people having their Kindle purchasing ability removed once Amazon JP realized it was a foreign account.
However, you can also buy the Japanese ebook version of 本好き from Bookwalker as well with none of the hassle required for Amazon JP. This is how I’ve been reading it - and for the most part, I prefer Bookwalker’s built-in dictionary to Kindle’s (though I still end up using Jisho quite a bit).
I’m about 60% through Volume 2 now. I wish I had read the 3 first volumes with this club last year, but at that point I had never read a novel in Japanese and probably wasn’t prepared to do so. My reading level has drastically improved in that year though. I read the first book in about a month, and it looks like I should finish book 2 in about 3 weeks (I do a chapter per day with few exceptions). I could certainly do more than a chapter per day, but I’ve been using Koohi to SRS new words (I bought a custom list for vol. 2) and I don’t want to overload the SRS. Starting with book 3, I may throw all of this to the wind and just read for pure enjoyment as I could probably get through a volume every 2 weeks or so (maybe faster?) if I did. I’m really obsessive about getting every last word I can into SRS, but I have so many volumes to catch up on in this series, and I absolutely love it so far, so I’m tempted to just dive in and read as quickly as I can. 
A middle road might be to read for fun and only add words that seem particularly useful.
Also, the book club might be done, but you can still post in the existing threads. I’d certainly be happy to read any impressions or answer questions.
I’ll probably end up going for that sort of middle road solution. An easy thing to do would be to simply highlight new words as I come across them and then go back little by little and add them to Anki while reading as much or as little as I feel like on a particular day. The only annoying thing is that for some reason, Bookwalker limits you to 40 or so highlights per book, so I’d be forced to stop at certain points to clean up the words. So, as you suggested, perhaps I’ll only add words that seem common, or that are at least relevant to the series (簀桁 for instance, while not a particularly useful word in everyday conversation, is a must for volume 2 ).
Also, I would definitely love to post in the old club threads as each time I finish a chapter, I always wish I had somewhere to send my thoughts. I may just do that!
If I can meddle in - which dictionary are you using?
I also don’t like default ones, and I recommend trying something custom.
(My-personal-recommendation-is JMdict Japanese-English Dictionary for 99 yen)
Warning: custom dictionaries work best with physical e-reader (i.e. Paperwhite, Oasis) and might not be compatible with smartphone/pc apps.
Of course your mileage may vary! but in my case I basically don’t feel the need to switch devices during reading at all, which makes reading much more comfortable. I’m still thankful to the person who showed me that I can buy more dictionaries, so I’m trying to spread the knowledge from time to time
The default seems to be Daijisen Japanese Dictionary (monolingual dictionary).
I use an Ipad, and it seems like I can’t change the dictionary aside from choosing different languages 
(Actually I can change it to the Shogakukan Progressive Japanese-English Dictionary apparently? I haven’t tried that one before)
Since I add the words to an SRS on my PC, I would use several devices either way - but I will keep it in mind, in case I want to read while on the go someday.
Thanks for telling me about it! I had briefly looked into it month ago, but just gave up, since apple is the worst when it comes to allowing customization for some reason 
JMdict is basically what all the free dictionaries, including Jisho.org, use. It should be good enough most of the time, but as I moved away from intermediate to upper intermediate reading materials, I found myself needing other dictionaries more and more.
One of the better JP-EN ones (if not the best) is the Kenkyuusha’s New Japanese English Dictionary (5th ed). Compared to JMdict with its one word definitions, it also has a fair number of useful example sentences to clarify the meaning and it does a fairly good job (at least for a dictionary its size) for when the words are not used in their usual meaning.
From the monolingual ones, 日本国語大辞典 (Nikkoku) is probably the Japanese dictionary that stands above them all. Often times when there’s some more obscure word I can’t find anywhere else, Nikkoku has the answer. The downside is that it’s pretty old by now and lacks some more modern vocabulary and meanings.
I’ve also used 大辞林 (Daijirin, 3rd ed), and 広辞苑 (Koujien 5th ed) to some success. I like the first one best, because it puts the more contemporary meanings first and I feel it has better definitions sometimes that are more concise and easier to understand, but Koujien is pretty good as well and fairly thorough.
On the web, probably the most helpful for me have been Weblio’s dictionaries: https://www.weblio.jp/ for monolingual definitions and https://ejje.weblio.jp/ for English example sentences. Also there is Eijirou https://eowf.alc.co.jp/ that’s made by translators and has by default lots of example sentences, because it treats translations as entries on par with definitions. On the other hand, the quality also varies a bit as a result. It used to be freely available, but now you have to make an account to use it and you have to pay 330 yen monthly for the more advanced features. Lastly, The Jaded Network Japanese-to-English SFX Sound Effects Translations @ The JADED Network has a lot of onomatopoeia that aren’t covered elsewhere. Oh, and while Google Translate https://translate.google.com/?sl=ja&tl=en&op=translate is hot garbage, their handdrawing recognition tool (in the lower right corner of the box) is pure wizardry.
Basically, what I did for my setup was to buy a used electronic dictionary that had most of the dictionaries I wanted. I use it extensively when playing games or reading paper books and it comes handy even for online reading sometimes. It’s more convenient than a phone, as it’s easier to use, it can search in multiple dictionaries at once and it has a “jump” feature that allows you to look up words in definitions. And it has a stylus for drawing kanji you don’t know.
Do you know if this is available to buy on Kindle Paperwhite?