Nafu, do you happen to know who this? SquareFairy-san 
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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…
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!
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.
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.
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! 
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! 
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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And yay, I’m glad you liked it enough to try the next one! 
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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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You maybe shouldn’t keep doing this to yourself.
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This is why I don’t set goals. While they can be motivating, they can also create bad habits (not unlike leveling up in WaniKani). I think it’s better if you miss your goal by a bit and read more books you enjoy and/or more books that challenge you. There’s no reason to suffer through KonoSuba just to meet an arbitrary goal.
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Yeah, keep reading Pluto instead! It’s only a few volumes and I assure you the quality doesn’t drop!
I started reading 夜のピクニック after a small reading break. It’s a novel of 450 pages set during a single day of high school (I think) – a yearly 80km walk on the last day of the school year that’s become a school tradition. It’s told from the perspective of two characters, a boy and a girl.
So far I enjoy it. I’ve only read about 60 pages, but it’s very easy to read and the characters are likable. And it already doesn’t quite venture into the direction I expected from the first few pages.
It’s also my first Riku Onda novel.
It’ll probably take me a while to finish it since reading is not a priority for me right now. But I’ll try to read at least a bit every day so as not to break the flow.
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Oh I’ve read that one too earlier this year! I wrote a few words about it here. I enjoyed it too although it’s a bit slow.
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I definitely agree with you both, which is why I’ve been reading a few more volumes of Pluto today, since I’m enjoying it a lot, rather than forcing myself to read a book.
I already read 100 books over a period of 365 days anyway, it’s not even like it would be a new record or anything. Also, it’s not even qualitatively different to read a few books more or less (and I would say that Pluto contains harder text than some light novels I have read this year; especially looking at you Kuma^4)
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I played some visual novels in english including Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0. In my opinion Steins;Gate was okay Steins;Gate 0 a waste of time.
Some visual novels are way too long or have some pacing issues sometimes nothing happens for hours. The problem with visual novels is you either like or hate them.
However I personally really love to play visual novels in japanese. Often they are very challenging full of hard to understand sentences
I’m not a fan of services like Steam, I usually buy visual novels from japanese download sites. They do have Summer Pockets for around 9000円 tax included.
seanblue do you mind if I follow you on natively?
It’s funny, I felt the opposite. I found Steins;Gate pretty boring and too linear, but Steins;Gate 0 was a little more interesting. That’s as someone who’d seen (and enjoyed) both anime adaptions. But I’d seen Steins;Gate three times and Steins;Gate 0 only once, so that might have influenced my view as well.
I don’t really like Steam either, it’s just (sometimes) convenient. At least they have sales though. 9000 yen is way more than I’d be willing to pay. 
Sure, I don’t mind. Not that I could stop you anyway! 
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