I see, thanks for the recommendation. I read コンビニ人間 last year and enjoyed it.
I heard it’s hard (maybe from you?) before. I definitely want something that’s not too difficult. I think at this stage reading more volume is more effective for me than reading more complex things. I started 雪国 with the book club but I had to “decode” so many things that there was no fun in it, so I dropped it.
Definitely hold off on 魔法少女育成計画 then! And yeah, you probably heard that from me. 
Eventually I need to get more variety in my reading as well, but I want to finish arc 3 (books 8-12) of 本好き and book 3 of 魔法少女育成計画 first. Those will probably take the entire rest of the year for me (at least), so I guess I’ll start something new next year.
In that case, have you had a look at the Murata book club? We just started another of her books (it contains a few short stories so you can even mix and match if you don’t like to read them all).
We are planning a new intermediate level book club. We are aiming to start sometime between September 25th and November 6th.
I come back from the shadows to report that I’ve just finished reading the first volume of Sekai Game (この世界がゲームだと俺だけが知っている) after a long time reading mostly visual novels and no light novels. It was pretty good, better than I expected, and I recommend it.
The main character is a college student that spends most of his free time playing a VR game called “New Communicate Online,” or as it is usually called, Nekomimineko. The thing is, it’s the definition of a クソゲー: it’s full of bugs, and if that wasn’t enough, the developers are a bunch of sadists, so a lot of the events and quests in the game are designed to maximize player psychological trauma.
One day, he gets thrown into the world of the game (basically isekaied), loses the ability to save/load and has to make good use of all his knowledge of the game and its bugs to survive. I found the comedy to be on point, and it was an exciting read from start to finish.
I actually just read this because I’m taking over the fan translation (currently revising the existing translation of the first two volumes before I start on the third), but I’m not sure if I can post links here as fan translations are probably gray zone.
I totally stopped keeping track here. 
On the plus side, I’ve been reading Murakami’s 色彩を持たない多崎つくると、彼の巡礼の年. Is all Murakami this readable? It’s my first “real book” in paper, and I’m surprised at this aspect. I find it to be easier than some light novels I’ve tried (though there is a very obvious increase in complicated kanji without furigana).
Other “real books” I’ve done on Kindle and relied pretty heavily on how easy it is to look up words there and I’ve come away feeling like it would be impossible to have done it in paper. There’s probably some bias because each thing should seem easier than the previous just because of the increase in reading experience.
Murakami has a pretty straightforward style, so it’s pretty readable. Most LN have been harder than the “real” books I’ve read, but that could partly be because I gravitate toward fantasy/sci-fi in LN’s. Though I found Higashino Keigo simpler than some school setting LN’s. Maybe because real books have more “normal” situations.
Two weeks since my last post and I’m very happy to report that I’m finally (two days early) caught back up to my novel goal for the year! That meandering orange line is back where it belongs 
(Just like last time, the “page count” on my ereader is about 1/2 of what it would be if I was reading the print version, so it’s more like 22 pages per day)
It’s been almost two months since I banned myself from reading manga so I’m excited to get back to it. Not sure what I want to pick for my next novel though. I was thinking about 本好きの下剋上 vol. 4 but I’ve recently been possessed by the desire to read the 青春ブタ野郎 series.
Finished 天才王子の赤字国家再生術~そうだ、売国しよう~. Meh. I saw the good ratings and liked the art, so I bought the first three volumes on sale. Didn’t really know what it was going to be about, but did not expect it to be 90% of depicting large scale battles and tactics. Character building was kind of nonexistent, and the world buiding slim, as well. I was expecting more character interactions. Maybe just not for me, then. Missing a lot of the character inner monologs I usually dread… Language wise, it used a lot of old-style speaking and wasn’t often that easy. All the military tactics and monarch terminology didn’t really help.
In other news, started reading よう実. So far the writing is pretty straightforward and a nice change into a more familiar environment. Highschool life, but with an interesting twist.
Definitely gonna get around to this one after my other 4fun reads “妹さえ” and お隣の天使" are finished since I already bought those and I don’t wanna slowly become one of those people with a buncha unread books >_>.
If you end up getting to the third volume (since that’s when it is supposed to start getting good), lemme know whatcha think of it. I’ve yet to actually hear a not extremely positive review of it I think.
I haven’t posted in this thread in a while, because the past few weeks my usual habits were disrupted heavily by an unexpected (but voluntary) house move, so most of the time I wasn’t spending a lot of time reading, with some periods of waiting sprinkled in where I only spent time reading…
Now it’s mostly quieting down so maybe I’ll get back to it!
Some stuff that I have been up to:
There was a point in there where I got frustrated that I wasted the catch-up opportunity of the gap month of ハルタ magazine and tried to make up for it by reading through the next issue. I enjoyed that a lot, and the issue opening with a full rundown (weirdly not in the preview) of all of the currently running ongoing series made me want to make some kind of a post or twitter thread or something introducing each of them myself… So then I probably bit off a lot more than I could try and started trying to catch up on (or at least get to a point where I could talk about) all the remaining series that I started in the middle of and don’t know very well.
I didn’t get close to really pulling that off before moving flared up again, but suffice to say for now Harta’s really fun and at some point I’ll probably try to talk more about various series therein!
I joined my first book club! But never was actually on schedule… I started 人間失格 which the advanced club is reading because I was already familiar with (albeit not especially high on) the book from the Junji Ito adaptation, so I was browsing the threads idly, and someone posted a passage with a question that I had fun reading and answering and it turned out after the mystery novels I was very hungry for something capital L Literary with not just detail but like, insinuations and meanderings and metaphors and stuff.
Now I’ve finished the book, and while I’ll try to save thoughts for when the club actually ends, in general I enjoyed the writing and think the original is much better than the adaptation (through no real fault of Ito - it just benefits from prose), but was (as expected) not especially into the large middle parts of the book that could be reductively described as “sad jerk tells us about his ex-girlfriends.” I’d be curious to read other Dazai at some point down the line.
I nominated something that got picked second, and want to read the next book too, so I guess I’m pretty locked into the club now! It’s been surprisingly fun. I’ll probably never manage to stick to the schedules…
The other book I was reading, No. 6, I thought was fine, but didn’t really grab me. I’m not a huge YA novel person, and I feel like even despite that I’ve read several different dystopian YA sci-fi novels and have maybe had my fill of them without a strong hook, and this reminds me a lot of those. The hook that does develop - it’s very gay - surprised me (not knowing really anything about the book beforehand) but, along with some body horror-ish elements I thought were intriguing, may have been too little too late. I probably won’t seek out the next volume any time soon, but I should at least skim through the old book club thread about it!
I use a weighted random draw to pick the next thing to read, and the roll after No.6 didn’t go great… I balked at the second Dirty Pair volume (feeling like a sci-fi lightish novel I wasn’t 100% sold on from the first novel might feel too similar to No. 6) and then balked again at 吾輩は猫である (feeling like an early 20th-century literary giant about a peculiar narrator might feel too similar to 人間失格) and then I got 獄門島, the next Yokomizo mystery novel I wanted to read, at which point I felt kind of silly for waffling.
I figured I’d play it by ear, and what ended up happening is I started flipping through 獄門島 just because it happens to be the one of those 3 that I own as a physical edition, and I was instantly hooked.
I don’t really know what it says about me that apparently “here’s a detailed explanation of some possible ways this island in the Seto strait may have gotten its unusual name” is a gripping opener where “I’m gonna perform emergency surgery on this mysterious boy even though it may jeopardize the entire course of my life” apparently isn’t, but it is what it is I guess!
Lastly, I haven’t given up on reading through 週刊プロレス but I’ve… certainly slowed down, sorry @fallynleaf. It’s the only goal I listed above that’s really at all in jeopardy, so at some point I’ll try to push through, but for now I finished No. 2123 (the one with Maika on the cover - good for her) a while back and forgot to talk about it, but I only have a little:
I remember Suwama impressing me in his interview talking about the Triple Crown Title, really making the weight of its history feel important in the lead-up to his match with Jake Lee (this was… a while ago). Made me a little wistful in the context of the new New Japan belt, and reminded me I’d like to reassess Suwama knowing his presence a bit better than I did when I watched the Champion Carnival where he lost a lot.
I didn’t know Izanagi had a Tiger Mask parody gimmick in Osaka called Tigers Mask, themed around the Hanshin Tigers. That’s a very good bit.
The theme for Giulia’s column is “なぜジュリアは口が悪いのか？” and from what I remember the answer involves her standing out and being bullied for being mixed race at school and developing a more aggressive personality in response.
Did I not post about かくりよの宿飯 6? 'Cause I could swear I wrote about it.
Did I forget to actually press the button, and then the draft eventually got erased??
Who knows!
Anyway, I have finished 7 just in time for the end of August.
About volume 6
And I have to say that the thing was a bit hectic.
Other things happened, but as far as I am concerned, the main thing was 葵 confessing to 大旦那様 and then they kissed. And I thought “BOOM DONE THE STORY IS OVER GOOD JOB EVERYONE” Then book 7 happened and 大旦那様 is arrested and thrown in jail because politics. Of course. And 葵 thought wait, how can I do anything about this situation, it’s not food related. And I thought, wow, for once there’s going to be non-cooking plot? Next chapter 葵: I’m going to cook all the way through this problem.
Me: what.
Like, literally, the last chapter is titled 勝負めし. Gotta admire the guts of the author.
Yay, welcome to the club!
私の推しは悪役令嬢, which was mentioned a few times in this topic, is on sale now (Kindle version*):
* actually does 限定特典あり mean it has only Kindle version?
** it’s also included in Kindle Unlimited, though, which might be better option for some
No, just that the kindle edition has an exclusive bonus story.
My experience so far with such exclusive stories has been that they are all garbage.
I was wondering because I wanted to compare the price with Bookwalker (I usually try to check if the sale is exclusive to one store or not when I post about it) and I couldn’t find it there 
manga version, yes, but not the light novel version. 
I checked a while ago and I think there’s only Kindle as digital edition for that series, yes.
There’s a paper edition as well, though.
Today I finished 乳と卵, which is one of my few not-light novels this year and probably the most difficult. I definitely didn’t understand everything (and decided to go with it, for the most part, rather than sitting down and trying to puzzle things out), but I enjoyed it. I’m hoping people in the coming book club have many questions so that I can retroactively understand some of the confusing things. 
well WELL WELL
The author must be wrong. All Japanese girlfriends or co-workers know that that word doesn’t exist.
