pst I already bought the book but I’ll hold off on reading it in hopes that the book club chooses it someday
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You could even nominate it for Intermediate Book Club yourself. 
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I’m pretty sure it’s already a nomination, under the series title (not the anime title): Classical Literature Club
Edit: looks like it was archived, maybe we could bring it back to life with the name Hyouka and hope it gets more votes next time
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How is it even possible that one of the characters from your manga reflects almost exactly my situation, down to the last name 
???!!! Mei is transgender, un-transitioned, and closeted. For her, acting out the role of an otoko no ko is an important coping mechanism, which she genuinely fears losing. That’s almost scary, I need to pick this book up, asap! Also I learned that 男の子 can carry a very different meaning than just “boy”, so imma have to be more careful when using this word 
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Is your username a reference to this? 
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It’s as far as I’m aware written with different Kanji though(at least it is in this manga), so the risk of someone misunderstanding in writing is probably pretty low, at least
I mean it’s a reference to Kawauso (river otters, I love them so much) at first, also because as I’ve said in my intro post I used to go by Curryboy before I took my transition seriously, or at least I’ve come out to most but my grandma. But I didn’t think about the uso part until I changed it, but I guess it’s a lucky coincidence as well 
but i’m not lying, i’m female in my mind (or NB, not truly set on that) and male in my body. The only people I could be lying to with my identity could be others, but thankfully now it’s not the case. There’s also official papers etc where i’m, from my point of view, lying about my true identity but this will be fixed within a year or so. Thankfully French law got changed for the best
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While the second book mostly has felt easier than the first so far and reading it is going pretty smoothly for the most part…
this thing kind of confused me for a moment(slight spoilers if you read anything else than the third row from the left)
While it isn’t visible in the picture, there were also a bunch more kanji in the first part of the sentence, for a total of 30 or so in a row.
That said, it became a lot less confusing when I actually read the rest of the sentence and realised it just seems to be a huge list of examples of stuff. Seeing the really huge string of kanji kind of made me stop thinking for a moment at first though 
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I’ve definitely had this happen. If it’s a kana-only sentence, I lament the lack of kanji. If I encounter a whole bunch of kanji in a row, my brain wants to nope out right away.
Never yet encountered that many kanji in a row though. O:
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I finished reading もう一つの「バルセ」 宮崎駿と『天空の城ラピュタ』の時代 (Another Balse) about the production of The Castle in the Sky at the newly established Studio Ghibli, written by former production assistant Hirokatsu Kihara. This was the second full non-fiction book I’ve read in Japanese so far.
After reading half of it, I felt like the book went into so much detail about certain scenes that I decided to rewatch Laputa after 11 years, and I really loved it. Rewatching it after having learned so much about Miyazaki and Ghibli in the past years was eye-opening. In many ways, the movie is like the culmination of Miyazaki’s ideals – personal, aesthetic and romantic ideals.
The book itself was mostly easy to read (as long as you are familiar with basic roles and terms of anime production) and the personal nature and Kihara’s honest and humorous writing style made it fun to read.
He wrote about many scenes that didn’t make it into the final version, about concepts that got changed, amusing and fascinating conversations with Miyazaki and other anecdotes of the production process. It has definitely increased my appreciation of the movie and the work of everyone involved even more!
I’ll definitely read the follow-up book about the production of Totoro – already bought it, in fact.
But I’ve also other Ghibli books lined up: エンピツ戦記 - 誰も知らなかったスタジオジブリ by Ghibli animator / animation checker Hitomi Tateno who worked on most of the Ghibli movies, and the ジブリの教科書１９：かぐや姫の物語. I’ve translated about 20 pages of the latter one a couple of months ago and the language is definitely a bit more on the sophisticated side, but I think the high density of text on every page is actually what makes me feel I’m only progressing slowly. Despite the small bunkobon format, lot of characters are crammed into every page.
If started reading both of them and am not sure yet which one I’ll read first.
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I’ve read the second one now, and the main thing I noticed is that it felt a lot easier(aside from a few really long sentences and a string of 25 Kanji) than the first one. I don’t know if it’s actually easier or if it just felt that way since I already had read the first book and gotten used to the style though.
As for the actual story, it felt a bit more like a complement to the manga and a bit less like its own thing compared to the first book - it spoils stuff up to the end of volume 7 of the manga (and beyond, technically). It’s mostly the first part of the book that definitely feels like it’s aimed at people who already read the manga, since it’s basically (I don’t know how much of a spoiler this really is, but I’m tagging it just to make sure) some of the events from the manga from Sayaka’s perspective.
The rest of the book felt a bit more similar to the first one though, and is about Sayaka and Touko’s
first year , aside from a third pretty short part at the end.
On another note, I find it somewhat amusing that the first chapter of a book about Sayaka is called “Love and Koito”.
Overall, I liked it, even if it felt a bit weirdly structured.
(Actual larger story spoilers and my thoughts about them below this point)
The main thing I got from the first part is that Yuu really made more of an impression on Sayaka than I would have thought from the manga. If I recall correctly, Sayaka even pretty much lists her as “one of the people she’ll never forget” at the start of the book a list which otherwise consists entirely of people she fell in love with
The second part was mostly just everyday stuff, so there’s not really that much to comment on, but it had some fun scenes and it was cool to see a bit more about how Sayaka thinks about stuff
The third part is just clearly setting things up for the sequel
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Laputa is my partner’s favourite Ghibli film 
sounds like a very interesting read - might try it as my first non-fiction book when I’m ready!
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I finished the last volume of 少女終末旅行 today. This marks my first finished manga series (even if it’s a short one), so that is a good feeling.
But, do I have a lot of feels right now.
a lot of words, not much content
I actually ended up buying all 6 volumes as a set when the book club started volume 1. At the end of volume 1 I wasn’t really feeling this manga, so I probably wouldn’t have continued the series if I hadn’t already bought it.
I ended up really loving it, so boy am I ever glad I did. The art style is weird, I didn’t really have any opinion about the characters at first, but they really grew on me.
In the end I felt the art style is perfect for this story. The mangaka really created an atmosphere fitting to the setting.
Anyway, I just have a lot of feels I want to share and not a lot of people to share them with. xD Since the series thread is going chapterly, it feels ‘wrong’ to put there, so.
I ended up not talking about my feelings at all, but I’m feeling a bit lighter anyway.
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I just finished reading 万能鑑定士Qの事件簿1.
The main reason I picked that book is that the series it belongs too is fairly long, making it fairly obvious on my local library’s shelves.
It wasn’t bad. This is another Sherlock Holmes-lite, like the previous book I read. I have to say I liked the previous one better, though.
One of my main grip with the book comes from the structure. The book randomly jumps from the “present” to flashbacks explaining how the Sherlock Holmes-like character got their deduction skills to the future.
Now, the flashbacks are taking a whooping 50% of the book and the flashforwards aren’t bringing anything and the story takes a random turn in the middle anyway.
I did like the SH-like character. The Watson-like character was especially useless, though.
Overall, I’d give it a 6/10. I’ll probably read the second volume at least, since it’s free. I don’t know if I’ll go further than that, though.
On that topic, considering I am already planning to read/reading 3 more books with various book clubs, I’m now going to have 14 books read this year if I don’t read anything else this year. That’s already past my goal of reading 12 books this year, so time for stretch goals. We are near half the year, so going for twice that might be possible. A more reasonable goal might be 18, though.
Or I could clear my 700+ reviews on floflo and start using that again.
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I decided to go with ジブリの教科書１９：かぐや姫の物語 (Ghibli Textbook #19: The Tale of Princess Kaguya) and finished the first third.
Now let me talk about why this book is more challenging to read than Kihara’s もう一つの「バルセ」: So far, every article in the book had a rather literary style and the writers are pretty eloquent. Suzuki and Takahata, for example, sound very scholarly at times, use many 四字熟語 and idioms and at the same time their thoughts are not always easy to comprehend, even if there is no language barrier. But this also makes it very compelling. I think I understand mostly everything without major problems, but the densely packed pages and comparatively large amount of unknown vocabulary mean that it takes me an average of 5-6 minutes per page, a lot more than on other books I read so far.
I can give you an example of a long sentence that took me a couple of rereading to completely grasp. In fact, I reread a lot of passages in this book.
僕は、田辺君のもっているもののうち、自分にとってのイイことだけをいただいて、後は監督の権限でスケジュールを進行のために却下するというのはイヤで、彼の全体をできるだけ尊敬するという方針を制作に明らかにしつつ歩みました。
This sentence is probably even harder to understand without context, but I think you can see why it took me many rereadings even while knowing the context.
But reading this book actually makes me feel more confident. It shows me I have come a long way since the last time I attempted to read Takahata’s writings a bit more than a year ago, and though it still takes time, I think I’m now in a position to handle his style without getting burned out every two pages.
The book is also quite excellent in describing the 8-year long production of this unique movie and all the thoughts and feelings that went into adapting the oldest recorded Japanese story into an animated movie. It’s is super fascinating and makes me want to rewatch the movie.
I also ordered a bunch of the other ジブリの教科書.
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I haven’t decided yet what manga series to read after 放浪息子 (I don’t quite do 多読, but this is the closest I get). I’d like to read やがて君になる, but I’d rather wait for it to definitively be finished (hopefully later this year). Then my next option is 聲の形, which seems like a good choice since it’s nice and short. But I also kind of want to nominate that for beginner book club since I think it’ll match them well. Maybe I should just read the first volume to confirm that it would be a good fit, and just get a deeper understanding of it later if they pick it.
I don’t really have any other manga series I really want to read right now though…
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How about ご近所物語? 
Honestly, I really don’t like the exaggerated shoujo art style, which that seemed to be based on the previews you posted.
Suggestions are definitely welcome though. I’m hoping to find something else for my wishlist. I’m open to many genres, but generally I’d like:
- Not classic shounen stuff like Dragon Ball
- Little to no fan service
- Finished series
- Ideally less than 10-15 volumes
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That’s too bad. The series was fitting all your other criteria 
I read the first volumes of Blue Giant and Orange recently thanks to the on-board reader of ANA airplanes. Both were pretty good. (Obviously, I don’t know about anything beyond the first volume of each; I should probably check it out)
K-On? If you’re okay with 4-koma.
Actually I feel odd recommending the manga because the anime is so good.