[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

That’s actually one of my favorite parts :laughing:

Now I’m curious what did you hear about the book before buying it, if the setup is not your thing.
Meanwhile, I liked the first half more than the second half. :stuck_out_tongue:

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And we are on! I actually read かくりよの宿飯 9 first, but anyway, I’m basically following the plan. (This is all in the first 20 pages, so no spoilers)
First thought: okay, 17 yo main protagonist, smack in the middle of the readership target range. That make sense.
Second thought:

あまいような灰紫アッシュモーブの瞳で困惑させた。

haha of course. At least, the setup justifies the gratuitous English.

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Last night I finished パノラマ島綺譚 to put myself at 40 novels for the year. :tada: I liked the book fairly well, though I enjoyed my previous 江戸川乱歩 more.

Before that I finished 伯爵と妖精 21, which was a particularly good volume of short stories. It’s always exciting to get back to the main story after a short story volume, so while I’m dipping a toe into かがみの古城 right now to see if I want to join the book club, I probably won’t be able to resist 伯爵と妖精 22.

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What was the book about? I’ve been reading a lot of Edogawa stuff lately and I really like his detective stories and novelas.

Ah, I just read the synopsis on Wikipedia. Definitely sounds like something I’d enjoy :smiley:

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Well, we are currently reading it with the advanced book club, so you can just come along :slight_smile:

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What @Naphthalene said! It’s definitely not a detective story, but I hope it does turn out to be your kind of thing. :relaxed:

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Nafu, do you happen to know who this? SquareFairy-san :eyes: ?

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I have no idea. They read stuff like yotsuba and nyanya detectives, so they are probably interacting with the AB book club?

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Well, that’s it! After I don’t know how long, I finally got to read 伯爵と妖精 1.
Somehow, I felt a lot of nostalgia from it, as the writing style felt very similar to books I was reading as a teenager (well, except for the language). At the same time, it made me a bit self conscious (“wait, am I reading a book aimed at middle schoolers?”)
At the end of the day, though, it was still a much better time than some stuff I persisted reading for 14 volumes or something. So what the hell, it’s free, I’m getting volume 2. Hopefully we get more actual 妖精, since that was the most interesting part as far as I am concerned.
Random future plot guesses:

(I guess they will be going though all the places that now belong to Edgar? Possibly including in Faery land? Maybe the real heir will appear?)

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Soon, I shall be able to read this post.

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Oh nice, Hyouka was your first novel too?

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I finished another Harta! The September issue, so I’m not that far behind…
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There’s a couple of new serializations:
クラスのアイドルは今日も推せない, which is about (the way the taglines puts it), 「クラスのみんなの推し」の「推し」、推し推しコメディ (so, a popular girl trying to get everyone to notice the girl she likes, basically). Seemed pretty fun!
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ナッちゃんはテンションで水深が変わる, which is about the quiet every day life of a girl who, for some reason, manifests ethereal fish that float around her head and reflect her inner mood. That’s an odd enough concept I feel like you could go a lot of directions with it, so I’m curious to see where it goes, and if it’s just “hanging out with these characters, but also fish are always in the panel” that’s fine with me too.
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Among the existing series that especially stood out to me this issue (the hotel one, the zombie one, etc.), the second installment of 希釈王 makes it clearer just how weird and interesting it’s going to be.
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The biggest highlight for me though was the one-shot 海はいかない by 田沼朝, about two women meeting and spending an uneventful summer together. I actually liked this so much (and it seemed like something a particular friend would really like) that I translated it to share with a couple of friends. I was surprised just how fun and easy it was to do - I could take screenshots on the tablet and then just write erase the words and write new ones in by hand with the pen tool, and it felt super casual and fun since it’s not like I would have to worry about getting the translations exactly right since it was just to share with friends who can’t read Japanese.
So I’m grateful to the story for giving me the idea to do that. Might be fun to make and translate a little personal best of Harta one-shots over time…

ビンタ屋さん by 矢村かすみ is another one-shot worth mentioning, on the complete opposite end of the relationship healthiness spectrum. It’s about a girl who figures out a classmate makes fetish videos of slapping people, and that spiraling into an abusive relationship between the two.
I thought it ended abruptly, but otherwise I could totally see the author making a graphic novel I’d like to read.
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It’s been a while since I’ve updated the post, whoops – since last time I’ve finished seven volumes of manga and one novel (南の子供が夜いくところ). I’ve been chronicling my progress on my blog and sometimes I forget to update everything else (bookmeter, this post, my calibre library, and my goal-tracking app).

Anyway I’m up to 11/12 novels complete for the year which means I can take it the heck easy for the last book (青春ブタ野郎 vol. 2). I fully expect to finish it ahead of schedule since the first one flew by, but SMT5 is coming out in a few days so I might be a little preoccupied for a while.

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Yep! :slight_smile: I think I was reading SAO 1 at the same time at some point, but because it was more difficult and had many more pages and was something I was reading on my own (not with a scheduled book club), it took me much longer time to finish.

Cool that both of us read Hyouka as our first novel! :durtle_noice: I remember being surprised at how smol the size of the book was after receiving it in the mail.

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I started to play the visual novel Island yesterday. This one seems to be pretty easy compared to the other ones I played. Maybe I will actually finish it.

Of course there may be a year end sale on visual novels, where I pick some new ones, which will go into my backlog right away.

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I’m thinking of playing Island next time I can get it on sale. I’m not much into visual novels (only played Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 in English, and didn’t love them), but Island is available on Steam with Japanese text, so I might check it out. Unfortunately the other two VNs I want to try - Summer Pockets and Kindred Spirits on the Roof - don’t have Japanese text on the Steam version, and I’m not sure how else to get them.

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Hello there, I’m Squarefairy; that’s my account on Bookmeter. I have a different username on WaniKani.

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:face_with_hand_over_mouth: :grin: And yay, I’m glad you liked it enough to try the next one! :black_heart:

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It’s getting a bit tight because of work (also I started reading Pluto yesterday and boy that manga series is amazing… but doesn’t count toward my goal), however, it turns out I can use a massive cheat code.
I can get Konosuba until volume 20 at a very discounted price right now. Since I can finish a volume of that in 1~2 days, I can more than make that goal.
The cons is that I hate that series. So maybe not. But I could.

…Why isn’t there an extra 15 volumes or so of 本好き to buy instead?

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:sweat_smile:
You maybe shouldn’t keep doing this to yourself.

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