yeaaaaaaah! 
Right?! I agree about the lack of kanji being frustrating, but it’s otherwise the only book I’ve read where I felt like I was actually tadoku’ing.
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Yeah, I read another chapter last night (shorter than the first, I think?) and it just zipped by. I don’t know if I’ll spend actual money on more books in the series, given how many other books I want to read, but I’m glad that the first one was free so I could try it like this! <3
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I don’t have a specific set reading goal at the moment, but I just finished volume 1 of Danmachi! It’s my second book after previously reading 銭天堂. (Thank goodness, my bookwalker was looking a bit too dusty!)
On to volume 2!
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Finished Kitchen! I was kind of not feeling it towards the end so I’m probably going to leave Moonlight Shadow for later, if at all. I found it a bit harder than Konbini Ningen, actually. The main characters internal monologue was sometimes quite hard to follow and I lost interest and track easily. All in all I found the book quite, boring? I feel like nothing happened… Although there were some fun moments. Maybe I’m also just not at that level where that kind of introspection gets through to me.
I bought Kino 2 on my phone and I’m surprised how easy it was to read on the phone. I think I read like fifth of the book in one day, never done that much before. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s so easy to pick up and the pages are short on the phone screen, so I feel like I’m progressing fast. I really like the simple narration as well, feels like actual Tadoku now 
I also started Konosuba (novel), as I have pre-learned all the freq 2+ words on floflo! I also got a tablet and found manga quite fun to read on it, maybe even better than paper. I thought I didn’t really care about manga in Japanese but I guess I was wrong.
All in all I’ve seen quite a bit of fast progress on my reading as I started to do it everyday now that WK is “over” 
Slowly the review workload is decreasing but I still have like 500 leeches lmao
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I’m still making progress on 空ろの箱と零のマリア, slowly but surely. I’m over 40% done now. If I continue at my current pace I’ll finish in about 25 days, which would be about twice as fast as my previous fastest book (魔法少女育成計画 in two months).
If it maintains the current writing quality (= meh) and interesting story elements (= good overall) I’ll probably continue reading the series, but not necessarily right away. It’ll just depend on my mood. I might want to switch over to something else, like 狼と香辛料, for a change of pace.
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Have you had a look at it yet? I’d be interested to hear how you would rate its difficulty level. I tried to read it last year but basically could not make sense of any sentences because of the grammar (I think that was before I seriously studied N3 grammar), so I had to give in after a page or so ^^. Early this year I had another look, but it was still somewhat difficult. So I might want to study some N2 grammar before seriously tackling it again. But definitely keen to read it at some point
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I’ll probably want to read a sample before deciding. I generally like and understand economics, so I don’t think the vocab will be that big of a hurdle for me, but can’t say about the grammar until I look.
I forgot that I also have 人類は衰退しました, so I could try that too. Unless I want to nominate that for intermediate book club. 
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That was exactly how I felt about おおかみのこども when I read it! I really didn’t know what I was getting into when I started it, but i ended up loving it anyway. And I’m actually starting 君の膵臓を食べたい today 
I just finished up the 4th 銭天堂 book (had to skip it and go back to it, I’ve now read volumes 1-6), and I think the final chapter beat out the たい焼き chapter for my favorite in the series! There have been lots that were close, but I just loved the level it went to for this one. Incredibly tense but exciting chapter with very little down time in the story, if any at all.
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Well, the library opened and… I’m 31st on the waiting list. The average rental time is 10 days. OMGWTFBBQ it’s going to take almost a year???
Edit: I’m talking about
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Have you considered buying it? 
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Well, I have a bunch of stuff to read in the meantime, so 
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Since this is the reading thread, umm.
Stats so far this year are pretty interesting. So far I’ve read almost as many books as manga, at 14 to 16. I was expecting rather more manga to be honest. Or less books, either way. I’m currently reading am interesting if hard to recommend book I’m going to want to write a bit about when I’m done, I think.
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About half done with 魔女の宅急便その５. I’ve chosen a hybrid approach this time: Listening to the audio book while also reading the book. I’m much faster this way and the content is so easy that I barely have to look up words. It works really well.
I’ve always thought that I’m not an audio book person because I tend to space out and miss parts. I like to read at my own pace. But this was a very positive experience, I even ended up not reading along and still retaining focus. I think I’ll use this approach for select other books in the future. (Japanese audio books are available on Audible Japan. If you do the trial month, you can choose one audio book for free and after that one audio book a month.)
Anyway, what I actually wanted to talk about (very mild spoilers):
One chapter in the book reminded me once again why I love these books so much.
Kiki was supposed to deliver a rusty old key a shopkeeper found to the address engraved in it. Turns out it’s for a box the great-grandfather of the family living there has left behind.
Everyone’s super excited to see what’s inside. The whole family has wondered about that for ages, even holding yearly competitions to see who can make up the most exciting story about the contents.
But after a bit of thinking, they start to hesitate. If they open the chest now, all of that will be gone. All the excitement of not knowing what’s inside. Their yearly competitions.
If they open the chest, their mysterious great-grandfather will just turn into a regular great-grandfather. And so they decide to leave it locked. They ask Kiki to return the key to the shopkeeper and invite her to join for their next story competition.
The Kiki’s Delivery Service books have always been about the “magic of the mundane”, all the things people seem to forget when they grow up. It’s philosophical in a very pure way, much like The Little Prince.
This one resonated with me for another reason. For a while now I’ve come to think that we don’t value the joy of looking forward to something and the excitement of not-knowing enough.
Recently I’ve become more aware of this. Because even if what you’ve been looking forward to never comes to be or ends up disappointing, that doesn’t take away all the weeks, months or even years of excitement and anticipation.
I think that’s important to realize because it makes for a much more positive outlook on life. It’s easy to forget, so this was a valuable reminder.
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Have you seen 千年女優? I think you’d enjoy it quite a bit.
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Oh yes, it’s actually one of my favorite movies!
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Manga report: two volume buffer on goal pace.
Novel report: finished 無人島に生きる十六人! It felt like I read it fast, but, as usual, it was just about three weeks. 
Somehow in normal circumstances (not on vacation, not really struggling with a certain book), it feels like I always end up within two days either way of three weeks. Given I read books of varying lengths and difficulties, I’m not sure how I manage this, but three weeks a book is acceptable so fine. Anyway, I enjoyed the book. It felt like a fairly easy read, but there are long information-heavy stretches on stuff from all the different kinds of creatures that can damage the hulls of boats and how to deter them to the ways of telling whales apart from a long way away by the different appearances of the water when they spout. Also just so many kinds of fish and birds and turtles and (again) fish. (I think there was only one kind of seal but I loved them so much so I have to say: seals!)
Next I’m starting the first ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖, mostly due to @Naphthalene’s posts here. I don’t know a single thing about it (having mostly skimmed even the mentioned posts due to my silly level of spoiler aversion), so we’ll see how it goes! <3
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Nice! I hope you’ll like it
I also started reading that series basically blind, only knowing that one of the main characters reads a lot… and indeed, she does.
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It feels like I’ve been reading so much the last few days. I got really into Studio Wasabi’s visual novel games and there’s just so much extra content. I think I dedicate at least two hours every day trying to slowly chip away at all the side stories and deplete my daily stamina with the main story. Since I’ve been reading all of it aloud, I’m also having a lot of fun with my (poor) attempts at character voices.
I also started 十二人の死にたい子どもたち recently, and am reading it on the side. The murder/mystery genre is just kind of engulfing me right now, which means I’ll probably pull out some of Arisugawa’s or Higashino’s works once I’m done with 十二人.
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I have a question about bookmeter, isnt 登録数 just the number of people who have read/registered the book? In the picture below, on the top it says 75 登録 for danmachi vol 1, but then on the bottom it says 3345 登録 for the same book. Does anyone know why? Also can I use this to find popular books from bookmeter? Thanks!
You are right, the number is about the users who read it (or maybe also those who are interested, I don’t know). But often there are multiple versions of “the same” book (different publisher, different edition, things like that), and they are usually listed as separate entries in Bookmeter. (so that you can pick the exact version of the book you are reading, I guess ) Looks to me that this is the case here? Please double-check by comparing the two entries, though.
To find popular books, they have rankings of all sorts which you can have a look at: In the rightmost menu (本をさがす) it is the topmost entry:
They are grouped in different categories, and you will also get emails with these rankings each month or so.
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