[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

one or two books

:see_no_evil:

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Nice.

Also now my neck hurts.

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Is the second half of Crossfire lurking underneath or was it one of those “second hand bookshop has a partial set” moments?

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I‘m sorriii! :face_with_spiral_eyes: My phone shows the pics in the correct orientation but on upload they somehow get rotated :woman_facepalming:

Could have done with two or five others :sweat_smile: Also three of them are in French so they should probably not count here :wink:

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Nice I know at least 5 of the Japanese books there (not read -.-). Good selection!
If I see the prices correctly most of them are really well priced as well

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Ooh nice, I also own 火車 and might be picking it after I finish 硝子の塔の殺人 and 本好き vol 1 (~a month from now?)

I also own 幻夜! And read ロクヨン (loved it), plan to read 告白 at some point, although I don’t yet have a copy since my 積読 pile is quite large as is…

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I admittedly bought that thanks to your reviews! 告白 as well was inspired by someone mentioning it here on the WK forums.

Yeah, I really love that about used books, haha. Which ones do you own, btw? :eyes:

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Ohhh, I just saw 告白 in your pile! Just started reading it today :grin:
And a lot of 東野圭吾! Did you buy all of their stock? And I see 小川洋子 in there as well :slight_smile:

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… Almost? I left a couple books behind. But there was definitely a hole where books used to be. :see_no_evil:

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Pretty much :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I already have way too many manga in my 積読 list, but when I see something on sale I can’t help myself. :sweat_smile: One more thing onto the “I’ll get to it eventually” pile!

For anyone else interested, 70% off on both Amazon and Bookwalker:

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Whoa, with such a discount I can pay entirely with the few coins I have accumulated. Thanks for sharing!

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me?

Great book, hope you guys like it.

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I tracked my reading time for the first time today, which turned out to be one hour of uninterrupted 告白. I actually don’t find her writing style that straightforward, neither in 告白 nor in ユートピア. There are other authors that I can read with much less brainpower. (ok, according to Natively reviews apparently the first chapter of 告白 is kind of special in that regard)
But I still managed about 25 pages! Having that timer running also really helps to stay focused, because I don’t want my statistics to get skewed! Might do this more often.

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I read it this May as part of the Spring Read Every Day Challenge . The first chapter is a challenge for sure. Walls of text with no break, and it’s not even absolutely clear who’s talking and in what setting. It gets much easier later on. In fact I’ve never seen difficulty fluctuate so much in a single book, but with multiple narrators, it kind of makes sense.

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Murakami can do that as well. So far I know two books written by him that have two parallel stories with different protags (1Q84 and Kafka), and especially the former told the two stories in very different styles (which had dramatically different difficulty levels for me)…

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I’ve seen it fluctuate within a short story! But also with different narrators. On mobile so no pretty link but 葉山嘉樹 セメント樽の中の手紙 has a very, very different writing style for the end caps compared to the middle bulk of the story.

Edit: oh neat it formatted for me

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Yesterday, I finished 聖女の魔力は万能です 1, plus a good chunk of volume 2 (about 25%).
I had a real blast reading volume 1, getting somehow the same enjoyment I had from reading 本好き (which is extremely rare for me; plus, there are 8 volumes available right now!). In many ways, it does feel “cheaper” than 本好き, though (in terms of world building and character interactions, mostly, but also the fact that 聖女 uses game concepts like level, HP, etc, which really damages my suspension of disbelief). On the other hand, I really liked that the main character is older (late twenties? I don’t think it’s made explicit) and has proper romance.
I also really liked the love interest (for once) and the development was both fast and entertaining. That’s (for me) a lot better than what we get in 本好き.
BUT THEN towards the end of the first volume,
said love interests just poofs out of existence. There are mentions here and there that they still meet once in a while, but that’s at the level of just bumping into each other. You are telling me they went from being basically one step away from 婚約者 to basically square one for no particular reason?
Well, the only reason I can think of is that the author wanted to add more characters to the reverse harem. There’s one I like, but he is basically a color swap of the main love interest (like, literally; they are brothers and look a lot like each other, including there personality, but he has glasses and a different hair color). The other is one of those 腹黒 always (fake) smiling type. And for some reason the story is really focusing on interactions with him right now :confused:
Not so random out of context quote from that guy:

「私ではご不満でしょうか?」

YES GO AWAY.

Anyway, the story is still fun, and plot is still going on in the meantime. I just hope that, once they all got their short (I hope) introductory arc, we get back to the main love interest.
Odds are that I will finish volume 2 today anyway, so I’ll know for sure.

Edit: we had the main love interest pop back to ask to be her escort for the 社交 season, then (mostly) disappear again in exchange for more plot.

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Well, volume 3 was fun as well ALTHOUGH I have to say I was a bit annoyed by the cooking section.
AGAIN cooking. Every isekai book seems to be reinventing the (cooking) wheel (or, pasta in this case).
… She is holding a cooking pot on the cover of volume 4. I’m a bit worried :sweat_smile:

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Recurring themes I have noticed in my (not yet very extensive) Japanese reading: schoolchildren, funerals, insects (cicadas especially), cooking. :grin:

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