Thanks for your reports so far! Sounds like I might really enjoy it. And it sounds like I should maybe see about seeing the anime too. Not that I’ll get to any of that anytime soon. I’m once again packing stuff up to move. But maybe after this move I can build myself a good reading spot with good lighting and really get back to reading all my physical books/manga. 
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Uh, no, this is a pressing matter. It requires immediate attention.
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@valkow
すべてがｆになるwas great 5/5. it has aged surprisingly well for a book written in 1998.
The writing was tasteful, the language was fluid. the characters were unique. the plot was interesting. the mystery was solved magnificently. also there was no english scenes. it was a bit long. the philosophical talks were a bit hard to follow and my reading was SLOW.
i didn’t see the solution to the mystery and really enjoyed 犀川&萌絵. at first i thought that they were a copy of sherlock and homles but boy was i proven wrong. i think i’ll read doctors in isolated rooms but not this month. the last chapter was really enjoyable. the names were hard. i kept looking back for the reading of the names. i don’t think i’ve read a japanese book with this many japanese names. i really took katakana names (in LN) for granted. also why does it have so many katakana words?
the last two chapter was really fun, with the fake tailing.
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I now own all published volumes.
I did not want to buy more stuff, but eh.
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I just finished the epilogue for 本好き book 7. Haven’t read any of the extra chapters yet.
本好き book 7 SPOILERS
I sort of knew the direction the story was going, because I accidentally saw the subtitle of the third arc when reading book 4 or 5. I tried hard to convince myself that it was something related but different, but it didn’t quite work.
I did still really like the ending though. I thought it came together really well, especially the family relationships of all the 貴族 that had been previously introduced. Also, why am I so emotional about the ending? I know Main’s not actually dead. But I guess that shows how good the author is at writing the characters and scenarios.
Tomorrow I will probably take a break from 本好き to read this week’s 狐笛 chapter. Then I’ll wrap up this book over the rest of the week. After that it’s back to Night Market to read the second story, and then we’ll see. Despite the poll I put up, I’m still not sure what to read next. I’m leaning towards 魔法少女育成計画 book 2 though, mostly because it’s the shortest of the ones I was considering.
I expect to get back to 本好き in May or so. I think another book in the series is coming out in April, so if I’m lucky some of arc 3 will go on sale. If not, I’ll just buy them one at a time as I get to them.
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Nice! I now look forward to reading this with the book club even more.
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Tiny bits of 本好き book 7 spoilers
I know! I was crying a lot while reading it. マイン finally found something she cared about more than books…
The end of the epilogue, when ルッツ goes to マイン’s place and remembers that she’s gone too…
Anyway, I’m glad you liked it too
I saw the subtitle of the fifth arc (volume 21+) while I was reading volume 8 or 9. Boy did that suck. Do not look.
Yes! I’m really excited for it too. I’ve noticed improvement in the writing between the webnovel and light novel editions, and I really like the storyline that starts from that volume.
Hm, the last sale was related to the anime, I think. When the last volume came out, they just made the first volume free to keep (again).
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Well, I read "ポーション頼みで生き延びます!"1 in the end.
It was okay, very different from what I expected though. I thought it would involve her actually making and selling potions but instead she is going for the religion route 
The main character is completely overpowered, which is fun, but also very inconsistent with the use of her powers. Sometimes, she would restrain herself from doing something simple, thinking “no, that’s too much”, and the next moment she summons a carpet bombing out of thin air. Like, how is that not too much?
Also, she is supposed to be extremely knowledgeable about many things because she is a 本好き. But no, that’s forbidden. There can be only one 本好き. I feel that and some of the other lampshade hanging is not really working for me.
With all that said, I still think she is a very fun character and it’s neat to see some steamrolling going on. The world building is also okay-ish, but it’s more on the level of ハメフラ than on the level of 本好き. Still a 8/10 for me, although I feel like that could get old very fast. Why did I buy 6 volumes of that series without even checking?
Anyway, it is short and the writing is pretty easy too, so I feel it would definitely be a good pick for the intermediate book club… too bad it’s not more popular.
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Not to vicariously read through others, ahem, but what are you going to read next?
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I’m absolutely vicariously reading through others, so that’s okay 
The forum is my number 1 resource for book recommendations (number 2 is the weekly ranking from BookLive at this point).
I’m considering:
- 鹿の王 volume 2
- かくりよの宿飯 1
- ポーション頼みで生き延びます! 2
I really liked 狐笛のかなた, hence 鹿の王 (same author). At the same time, romance + 妖怪 sounds good too, hence かくりよの宿飯 1 (I have no idea if it will be good or not, but it got good reviews apparently). Finally, ポーション頼みで生き延びます! 2 because that’s probably the simplest in terms of flow (especially since volume 1 is not self contained).
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lol, i just started listening to this the other day. it’s honestly enjoyable.
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I hadn’t heard of this one, but it seems interesting! It seems like it has quite the cooking focus, which I wouldn’t have expected you to pick.
It seems like you could probably blow through all of the ones you have pretty quickly, at least. How old is the main character? Is there romance? (Not a dealbreaker either way, just curious as to the tone of the book.)
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The staff review got me at
天涯孤独だけど明るい主人公と、ツンデレな大旦那様のやりとりが微笑ましい。
(emphasis mine)
I kinda overlooked the mention that it involves cooking. Uh, well, we’ll see how it goes.
The main character is 22, reincarnated into a body that is 15 but looks 12. There’s no proper romance so far. Some male characters are predicting that she will become even more beautiful once she gets older (sadly for them, she is almost done with her growth) and are trying to get her as their 婚約者 but so far she hasn’t shown any interest. She does want a relationship but she is not impressed by what she has seen so far. It’s hard to guess if proper romance will ever happen.
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Finished 蜘蛛ですが、なにか 4! While I didn’t love all the pictures, as a person sensitive to various things and not looking to become less so (when it comes to these particular things–there are plenty of things I’d love to be less sensitive to, lol), there was only one thing in the text itself that pissed me off, and it was brief, so… fine! I enjoyed every bit of the 蜘蛛子 parts, including full-on love for several sections (I’m always here for 蜘蛛子 battle tactics, long-term strategy, and general tenacity–actually everything about 蜘蛛子 so far, including her faults). My favorite part this time might’ve been her defeating a bunch of 人形蜘蛛 at once, any one of whom would beat her in one-on-one straight-up battle, because she’s wily and makes good plans (USUALLY). Even the non-蜘蛛子 parts were a little more interesting to me this time. (Faint praise, but not praise I expected to give, so.)
I was thinking to read book 5 right away, speculating that maybe it was the last in a story arc. However, it turns out there are two more in my current arc (thank you to the friend who googled this for me so I didn’t spoil myself accidentally), so I will not jump in right away.
Plans:
- Push on with 私の推しは悪役令嬢
- Tomorrow is book club day, so read the next novel sections and continue pushing on manga
- Start 伯爵と妖精 3
I’ll probably get 伯爵と妖精 3 ready tonight, so we’ll see if that order is maintained or if I dive straight into #3.
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I finished 引きこもりでポンコツだった私が女子プロレスのアイコンになるまで !
A surprisingly large number of thoughts about it
This ended up being an interesting read. The wrestling magazines I’ve been reading give bits of context, but it’s pretty scattered across lots of different subjects, so spending a much longer time focusing on one person felt compelling in a different kind of way.
I don’t think I’ve read an autobiography of someone roughly my age before, and it’s interesting seeing the things I relate a lot to (grew up in the middle of nowhere, parents divorced, had a rough middle school) and the things I… don’t (dropped out of high school, didn’t go outside “except briefly 3 times to look at the sky in the backyard” for two years, decided to become a wrestler and moved to Tokyo from Yamaguchi with 3000 yen, wrestled at Madison Square Garden and the Tokyo Dome…). It goes to show how long a period of time 10 years it is and how short it is at the same time – she’s really still very young, but athlete’s career spans being what they are, and especially women’s wrestling careers tending towards young starts and early retirements, it comes across as an exceptionally storied career in print. I had to remind myself a lot that the whole thing pretty much takes place entirely in the 2010s, that Stardom didn’t exist before that, and even though it feels like I’ve been following it for longer, I only actually started watching Stardom more than halfway through last year!
Following an entertainment industry, especially one in a language and culture you don’t really know, and especially one as frequently shady as professional wrestling, you often think “boy, I sure hope this isn’t super exploitative,” without the ability to really know one way or another. And I gotta admit, the part where she talks about how she moved across the country as a teenager with nothing to her name and ended up staying with the old man founder of the wrestling company who hired her because the dorms weren’t built yet did draw some concern from me on that front. But she speaks positively about him throughout the book and she legitimately did become a pro wrestling icon, so I’ll try to take it at face value as a strange but innocent story that worked out well.
The book, like the weekly magazines I’ve been reading, is written in a sort of half-kayfabe (to people who don’t follow wrestling, kayfabe is wrestling jargon for in-fiction) where she’s clearly being very frank but stops just short of talking about booking decisions and that kind of thing. Like there’s a transcribed talk with her retired rival Kagetsu that’s a lot of fun because they’re clearly friends and talk about putting on good matches and getting the best out of each other – as rivals. Whereas I assume when it was going on the relationship would have been portrayed as outright enemies. You can get away with that “not quite mentioning the elephant in the room but taking care of it anyway” tone surprisingly well without feeling unnatural, because in pro wrestling, a big win for example is still a genuine accomplishment that shows how far a wrestler has come! Like, even though it’s a storyline, it still has weight, and the protagonist mirrors the actors’ own ups and downs so to speak. So you can talk about all that honestly without being “insidery.” It helps too that the dominant style in Japanese wrestling in general (and Stardom in particular here) tends to be (relatively) straight-laced athletics with the drama and zaniness dialed up, as opposed to WWE’s endless violent soap opera. So anyway I guess what I mean is, she can talk about being especially good at 受身, and you can know why that’s especially important in pro wrestling without her explicitly connecting the dots.
The biggest thing I’ll take away from the book is context – seeing how different people slotted into Mayu’s story and how she thought of them adds a lot of valuable context for me as a fan watching the show. I’m used to thinking of wrestlers as isolated characters (and factions), so the deeper implications of how two opponents have bounced off of each other for years is usually lost on me, and this felt like a good primer at least for some Stardom history. It would probably come across as quite shallow to someone who has actually kept up with all that stuff as it was happening, but for me even a limited perspective on stuff like the Yoshiko/Act Yasukawa incident is enlightening.
It’s unfortunate that because of when it’s published, the book ends just after Hana Kimura’s horrifically untimely passing and with wrestling as a whole just barely starting to figure out how to continue putting on matches amid the pandemic… To be honest, a lot of the reason I’ve renewed that magazine subscription is it would mean a lot to see a return to a happier time where fans can actually cheer again!
I’ll admit while I was reading this book I kind of wanted to churn through it to get to fiction again, but I still enjoyed my time with it. It probably wouldn’t be at all interesting to someone not already into wrestling who doesn’t know who Mayu Iwatani is.
… Which I assume is anyone actually reading this deep into this post!
All you really need to about her deal is she’s nicknamed ゾンビレスラー because she always gets back up no matter how much damage she takes.
Here’s a semi-random free clip if you’d like to put some images to what I’m talking about:
【We are STARDOM!!】#10 岩谷vsSareee消滅!!からの→長与千種の弟子・彩羽匠が緊急参戦!!超激闘のノンタイトルシングルマッチ～世界が注目！女子プロレス～ - YouTube
I’ll be in non-fiction world a bit longer because the next thing I drew is 超ビジュアル！日本の歴史大事典 !
I think I got this from Kinokuniya what feels like a looong time ago, and for a while I was trying to slowly flip through it, before I eventually drifted to a more “focus on one thing and move on” system. Now it should be much less intimidating!
I’m actually really looking forward to it - I don’t really honestly know my Sengokus from my Kamakuras, so to speak, so it’s high time I got things in order a bit better in my head, and this seems like a fun way to do it. I’m planning to add some to my anki deck as I go for a little bit of retention and a slight studying vibe.
週刊プロレス Talk
Geez, they should take more pictures of SANADA in glasses
Hey so uh, do people who don’t follow wrestling know how incredibly weird wrestling is?
Misc. other statuses
Digital Devil Story is intimidating! A much more grim and inaccessible Wizardry-style vibe than what I’m used to from classic JRPGs, and it sounds like it might be quite long. I’ll give it a shot though, and there’s definitely plenty I’m intrigued by!
Wandering Son arrived a lot faster than I expected (maybe things are recovering slightly after all…) so I might start it soon or try to slot in a couple more manga odds and ends.
I bought my first Japanese e-books recently! Directly this thread’s fault for making me realize I could do that. I feel kind of silly for not having ever considered it seriously before - I think I was just surprised enough to realize how easy shipping is that I didn’t really even try to look for alternatives.
But I gotta admit, even just flipping through a little, it turns out there’s a looooot of stuff I’d have a hard time finding or justifying getting via import that I’d still love to have access to…
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By the way, that’s a game that I have tried playing a few years ago (well, the famicom one, on an emulator) and I was not ready for it. Now might be the time though… 
Also, I have learned that the game is inspired by a series of novels, so I might go for that instead 
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That’s cool! (and yeah, same version here)
I’ve played a few different JRPGs from the era by now, as well as the original Wizardry, so I think I should be prepared (fingers crossed) from a language and gameplay perspective, it’s just always chancy how much endurance I’ll drum up to press through a long way into a game like that vs. deciding I’ve had my fill and watching the ending on youtube… and it’s definitely the kind of game that seems both intriguing enough to want to try in earnest and intimidating enough to end up backing out and trying again later.
Maybe I’ll be able to tell you if it’s worth revisiting at least!
And don’t worry! I actually have the novels in the shelf next to me, they’re just in a different queue…
(I might not be sure if I have the patience for a lengthy oldschool dungeon crawl but I’ll always have time for “oh no my computer program summoned a bunch of demons” in principle)
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Thanks for your detailed review! You convinced me to get 幻影異聞録♯FE (Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore)
Will let you know how I get on once I get round to playing it. I have the rest of the 魔女の宅急便 series to get though first. 
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Well, that’s the one I ended up reading. It was quite fun, actually. The issue has become that the main character wants to blend in as a “regular girl” rather than being taken as some sort of goddess. That’s an issue when she can just reduce armies to ashes and is an unaging immortal. So… well, there were a few time skips and we are a few years past the beginning but she is still 15 looking like she is 12.
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New oreshura book during the climax…
Looks over at the other books I was planning on reading
Is this how @Naphthalene feels at all times?
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