Is there a way to find out if certain books are permanently out of print? I think I mentioned before, but 青い花 volume 1 hasn’t been in stock on CD Japan or Amazon for as long as I’ve checked, even though volumes 2-8 are still available. I feel like at this point I need to just read volume 1 some other way and buy the rest before they go out of print too. (The Kindle digital quality isn’t good, so I don’t want to read it that way.) But I’m still partly holding out hope that it’ll be available to buy new again at some point, so I wanted to see if there was a way to check.
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You can get it from BookOff if a used copy would be okay for you:
BookOff won’t ship it directly to you, but there are forwarding services that will handle the international shipping. (I haven’t used such a service yet but there is some information on the forums, and if you can’t find anything, just ping me and I can dig through my pile of bookmarks)
I don’t know, but I would guess not. In theory the publisher might decide to do another print run any time they feel like it, but in a case like this where the manga’s been out for nearly 20 years they might not think it worth doing. I guess in theory you could try to ask the publisher :-/
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I wouldn’t even ask if the entire series was out of print. I just find it so odd that only the first volume is out of print. Makes me wonder if they lost the original scans and literally can’t print it anymore…
(Also, I don’t feel confident enough in my Japanese to ask something like this. 
)
It’s also possible to get the whole series used on ebay or just the first volume on Amazon US. What I might do towards end of year is read the first volume digitally, then if I enjoy it buy volumes 2-8 new, and then later buy a used copy of the first volume to complete the set. Used is fine if necessary, but I’d prefer to buy new if possible. I like the mangaka and I already bought her 15 volume series 放浪息子 used, so I’d prefer to support her by buying 青い花 new if possible.
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Well, at some point they stop doing print runs, and then there’s some largish quantity of each book in warehouses (publisher, distributor, amazon) and on bookstore shelves. Eventually those books all get sold, but they’ll do so at different points in time, so for a while you’ll be able to find leftover copies of some but not others. At the moment amazon is claiming to be ‘out of stock’ for vols 1-3 and ‘ships in 1 to 2 months’ on 4 and 5… hon.to don’t ship internationally any more, but are in stock on 2-8 and claim 7-21 days for vol 1 (which I think means “if you order this we’ll ask the publisher for it, and they might then say they’re out of copies”). Rakuten straight up say “not available to order”. Now this might just mean the publisher is really behind on getting a new print run out of the door; the effects would look similar.
Incidentally I really liked the manga (I have all 8 volumes…)
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I finished Red Data Girl vol.1, and I liked it a lot too.
I mostly chose that series because of your and @seanblue’s recommendations.
Have you finished the series yet?
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I got some new manga.
Here’s what I got:
- Volumes 2 and 3 of ぼっちざろっく. Not sure if I mentioned already, but I loved the first volume, so I’m excited to read more. It’s already one of my favorite manga series just from that first volume.
- Volumes 1 and 2 of 紡ぐ乙女と大正の月. The premise is that a girl time slips back to the Taishou era. Seemed like a cool premise which is why I bought two volumes.
- Volume 1 of 棺担ぎのクロ。~懐中旅話~. This is a really popular Kirara series which is why I’m trying it out. But it might be similar to Kino’s Journey, so there’s a chance I won’t like it.
- Volume 1 of ばっどがーる. Girls pretending to be “bad” girls to get attention. Could be good. Could be garbage. Guess I’ll see.
- Volume 1 of ぎんしお少々. Might be a bit generic, but we’ll see. It’s only two volumes long, so unless I hate it I’ll probably buy the second volume later.
- Volume 1 of はなまるスキップ. I expect this one will be be over the top kind of comedy, in the style of Asobi Asobase (hopefully not that much though!), but I’m not really sure.
- Volume 7 of おとなになっても (still haven’t read volume 6)
- Volume 1 of 神さまがまちガえる. No idea what this is about, but it’s by the same mangaka as やがて君になる, which is all I need to know.
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I dunno if I’d be able to tolerate the title having a different font on every volume…
I absolutely loved that, but was kinda meh over Kino’s Journey, so I suspect you’ll be fine. 
Though I still need to sit down and read the whole series in one sitting so I can try to get the main storyline straight. Kiyuzuki-sensei really does like to… imply a lot of stuff rather than show it.
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I thought that was kind of cool actually. 
Good to know, thanks!
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I just finished chapter 3 (about 75% done the book).
And...
It went from 0 to 100 very quickly in the latter parts of chapter 3. I think I know the scene you were talking about with the scenery (describing the view in Tokyo from high up), and I got to the ritual chanting stuff which was 
. It puts the ritual stuff from うらら迷路帖 and 本好き to shame. (I basically just skipped it entirely since it was so ridiculous.)
I still wouldn’t describe anything that happened so far as a twist. Just actual plot progression… I will say that I found a lot of this part really confusing. Specifically, it wasn’t clear to me if something actually was pursuing them when they were trying to meet the mom. They seemed to conclude that maybe it was 雪政 the whole time, but that seems kind of silly to me and would really undercut what 泉水子 was feeling while they were being pursued. The stuff at the house with the possession was equally confusing. I’m not sure how much of what 雪政 says I should take as fact versus take as his views (possibly wrong) as a believer. Also, the whole “the goddess is actually from the future” thing is an interesting take on ancient deities I suppose…
I am enjoying the book overall, though the amount of words I don’t know is killing me. And the style of not using kanji in the second part of compound verbs is the worst because then my kindle dictionary can’t find the word. I’ve dealt with that before, but it’s worse in this book, probably just because there are more unknown words in total. For example, despite being 15-20% shorter than 獣の奏者 book 1, RDG has 6% more unique words and 21% more words that are only used once, according to jpdb.
Once I finish the first book, this series will have to move to the “I’ll get back to it at some point” pile. It has too many slow parts and too many difficult parts for me to want to continue right away.
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RDG
I mean, both of those are real prayers, while the stuff in 本好き is made up. I’ve been to a few funerals in Japan and you typically have to chant along (you are given a booklet with the text, furigana, and intonation). So it’s not like a Japanese person would be thrown off.
There are a bunch of stuff pursuing her and 雪政 is just one of them. For me, the twist was that I expected him to be kinda bad (it is strongly implied that he is the one who broke his son’s arm), but not “we have to run as far as possible” bad. Although, in hindsight, not a surprise that he would be a complete sociopath. I also wonder if he would have been able to pass the ward if he wasn’t with them. That being said, the goddess was just disappointed to see him here, so it might not be that bad (yet).
Yes, I thought it was fun. It’s also interesting to know that there are no more girls in the bloodline until her coming.
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I know there are not many people here who like visual novels, but…
Looking for more VNs to play has me looking at VN reviews, and man I forgot how wild this shit is. I actually just feel my soul leaving my body reading some of this stuff lol. I can’t tell where the irony starts and stops. I’m really tempted to share some of the reviews here, but even if I spoiler tag it I feel like I might get my post flagged lol.
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Hit a milestone yesterday – 250 books read in Japanese. This has taken 17 years, so it’s more of a monument to persistence than anything else… Book 250 was ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖II ~扉子と空白の時~ which I liked a lot more than the slightly more patchy-feeling book before that in the series.
If you’re curious what they all were, they’re listed on my booklog.
I should decide whether I want to set some kind of goal in reading, or in something else. In 2017 I had a “book a week” goal, which I did hit (and that remains my high point for consistency and quantity of reading). Not sure whether to do that again, or not. I do find that without a specific goal or the tadoku contests I end up just not putting in enough hours to get through a lot of books.
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Been playing a bit of Fatal Twelve. It was available for mac, fully voiced and had mystery as a genre so it seemed promising. The plot is pretty cool, but some of the characters really annoy me .
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Congrats! 
You can take or leave this, but at your numbers what I can see myself doing is rotating genres. Each book must be different - sci-fi, fantasy, romance, horror, mystery, slice of life, self help, historical (fic), historical (nonfic), essays, classic lit, medical nonfic, etc. I’m only somewhere in the 30s for books myself (with a solid helping of short stories because I love them) so perhaps my thoughts on this will change after 200 more books, but in English at least if I’m in a reading slump I start picking random genres to explore.
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Congrats!
When you did that in 2017 did it start to feel like a chore or was it still enjoyable? Personally, I’m very particular when it comes to reading, so if I read a book a week I’d probably run out of books I wanted to read within the year. (putting aside the fact that I can’t read quickly enough yet to do that)
I don’t like to set goals generally, but to your point it can lead to not reading consistently. I’ve been really slacking this year… In fact, I think I’ll read fewer books this year than last year. 
In your case, what does “not having a goal” look like? Will you still read 20+ books this year? If so I’d say not to worry about setting a goal and just have fun. Or do what pocketcat suggested and focus on variety instead of quantity. Obviously up to you, just figured I’d share my thoughts.
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It was definitely effort. The way I thought about it was that an average book is 350 pages, so 50 pages a day, which at my reading pace is two hours, which is manageable by reading over breakfast and lunch plus a bit in the evening and then an hour in bed at night. I tended to fall behind that pace and then catch up again in tadoku months and by reading “easy” books. I didn’t have trouble with running out of interesting books, it was more a matter of needing to make a habit of picking up the book instead of, say, chatting on web forums , plus putting in the hours on a consistent basis. 50 pages a day is “find the time” territory; 100 a day (which I managed in July tadoku this year) is an absolute slog and I can’t keep it up for long.
In booklog’s non-mobile view, there’s graphs of previous years, and I’m very inconsistent:
| year | books | notes |
|---|---|---|
| pre-2011 | a few a year | graph stats seem a bit flaky this far back |
| 2011 | 17 | first year I started reading regularly |
| 2012 | 13 | |
| 2013 | 8 | |
| 2014 | 7 | |
| 2015 | 16 | |
| 2016 | 22 | |
| 2017 | 52 | challenge year |
| 2018 | 24 | |
| 2019 | 4 | Yes, four… |
| 2020 | 25 | |
| 2021 | 15 | |
| 2022 | 14 | so far; 10 of these were in July tadoku! |
So a “normal” year where I’m reading regularly I ought to hit 20 books, and I guess I expect to do that this year; but it’s easy for me to just fall out of the habit of reading entirely, and if I hadn’t done tadoku in July my stats for this year would be looking a lot worse…
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Honestly looks pretty cool. It looks like it has a pretty cool plot, but I was more looking for something with plot, if you know what I mean. I got Oneyuu and Chiganai yesterday, so once I finish those I might play something more respectable. When you finish it, @ me and let me know what you thought of it.
I want to play sakura no uta too honestly, but I don’t know if I can justify it when I’m trying to keep reading to a minimum. All endings is the length of over 12 average light novels, so its not exactly a light read. Same for gin’iro haruka at ~17 light novels worth of text. Too much good stuff to read honestly.
EDIT: Turning this post into a place to keep track of the things I want to read and maybe make an estimate for time it will take. Stuff I want to read is piling up again and I might have to take a break from forums for a couple weeks like I did a few months ago to knock some stuff out.
Boring stuff for my reference
OneYuu: ~150k(??)
Chiganai: ~100k(??)
NGNL (2-11): ~1m(??)
LS Rin: 111,480
LS Iinchou: 127,249
KSKKKGKM: 107,237
Hikikomari: 746,512
- Vol 4: 170,493
- Vol 5: 163,314
- Vol 6: 137,241
- Vol 7: 165,484
- Vol 8 109,980
Teikyou: 105,241
Tsukikana (面食い): 777,252
- Common+Touka: 290,979
- Uguisu: 226,577
- Kiriko: 84,198
- Kanna: 175,498
Gin’Haru(面食い): 824,200
- Common: 126,404
- Mizuha: 425,114 (what the fuck?)
- Yuzuki(God forgive me): 272,682
Total: 4,049,171 chars. 
Well, fuck. This is why I need faster reading speed lol.
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Just randomly checked amazon…and…
Welp, thats an immediate dropeverythingyouredoing for me.
EDIT: Oh man, this volume is off to a great start already. Shits just as degenerate as I remember. Hayasaka is slowly plummeting into insanity, just how god intended
EDIT2: ಠ_ಠ “泣きながら、お漏らししちゃった” ಠ_ಠ
EDIT3: I was wrong, the plummet to insanity was anything but slow. Hayasaka 45 pages later:
Man, I love hayasaka, but be careful what you wish for because you just might get it lol
「冷たくされて、傷つけられて、私もうダメだ～、ってなってるときに、
桐 島 くんにちょっと優しくされると、すごく愛されてるって感じるんだ。それでね、脳みそ溶けちゃいそうになるくらい桐 島 くんのこと好きになるんだよ」
早 坂 さんはとても幸せそうな顔でいう。
「だからこれからも私のこといっぱい傷つけてね。裏切って、ぼろぼろにしてね。私、全然平気だからね。桐 島 くんのためならなんでもするからね」
EDIT4: Well the next chapter right after that picture is called 早坂炎上, so I guess I’ll read one more chapter before bed. I mean, how bad can it be right
EDIT5:
どれだけきれいな言葉をならべても、エモーショナルで詩的な表現を口にしても、なんの説得力もなければ、他人に褒められる資格もない。なぜなら、俺は制服の下に女子のスクール水着を着ているからだ。
ಠ_ಠ
EDIT6: Oh god man please not the little sister
EDIT6.5 "
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Anyone who read 獣の奏者, 鹿の王, or other books by this author, her latest two-part novel is half points back on Amazon (I think there are points back on Bookwalker as well). Granted, the book is relatively expensive at full price (1700 yen each part), so it’s more like paying normal price for a book than getting half off. It’s also really long (800-900 pages total), so you’d have to be prepared to read a lot!
@KazeTachinu Did you ever finish the second part? Seems like you last posted about it back in July when you were about halfway through. I’m curious if you enjoying it to the end.
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