[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

It was just released a few months ago, so definitely not out of print. Maybe it’s just in high demand, so temporarily out of stock.

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Hm, looks like you’re right, CDJapan also doesn’t have it. But I bought it from Amazon just 2-3 weeks ago, so I guess they’ll probably restock it soon.

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If it’s a new release I might wait for the 文庫本 edition to come out anyway…

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I don’t think I’ve posted here since my first goals post, so here’s more than half a year update. I’ve finally finished 夜カフェ and can now knock off 1 of 8 books in my goal this year. It’s my first (light) novel, so it’s a great to finally reach that goal.

I’m surprised how many manga I managed to read through totaling 16 of the 10 I originally planned to read. The nice thing is most of them were free digital copies from Line Manga or Bookwalker or ones that I happened to already have lying around. I can justify buying books, but I can’t do manga because it would be endless. :sweat_smile:

Here's what I've read so far starting from the most recently completed:

極主夫道 2
極主夫道 1
夜カフェ 1
orange 1
絶叫学級 3
絶叫学級 転生 6
絶叫学級 転生 5
絶叫学級 転生 4
ハピネス 2
ハピネス 3
絶叫学級 転生 3
絶叫学級 2
絶叫学級 1
ハピネス 1
絶叫学級 転生 2
絶叫学級 転生 1
ポケットモンスタースペシャル 1

Here's what I'm planning to read/finish reading in the near future:

Books ~
佐賀のがばいばあちゃん
流れ行く者: 守り人短編集
ホラーバス第2期 暗黒の世界〈1〉
TUGUMI(つぐみ)
キノの旅 1
夜カフェ 2
狼と香辛料 1

Manga~
ポケットモンスタースペシャル 2
orange 2 (probably until vol 7)
暗殺教室 1 (maybe until vol 11 b/c they’re currently free)

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More books from amazon.jp. I actually ordered 10 books, but they split it into two deliveries, and then used a fairly floppy envelope so one or two of the books got a little bent about in transit :frowning: Still, I managed to flatten them out a bit. Fingers crossed that when the other half of the order arrives on Monday it’ll be in decent shape…

I’m hoping the book by 京極夏彦 will be good, as it’s part of a series of sorts with two more books. I really enjoyed his 巷説百物語 series (though IIRC they’re a comparatively tricky read) but wasn’t enthused enough by 姑獲鳥の夏 to buy the later books in that series.

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Tadoku week 3: another two books.

Not much new to say about these since they’re more of the same series from previous weeks – another Tokyo Bandwagon book, and the second half of the Twelve Kingdoms book. In the latter the different plot threads came together, and some not-too-likeable characters grew up a bit, so I liked it more than the first half.

Pages read this week: 718 (2284 over the whole month).

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For anyone looking for a loooong book to read there is currently a 55% off campaign on in Bookwalker for books over 750 pages. See here. I admit I only noticed because of the amazing ad copy:
image

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See, that’s why I stopped ordering from Amazon. They sent me damaged books too many times, so I finally switched to CDJapan, which has been much better.

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Mmm. The shipping fees are a lot higher, though :frowning:

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Interesting. The overall cost of CDJapan was slightly cheaper than Amazon when I switched over (Amazon’s book prices are slightly higher than those on CDJapan and the shipping costs were comparable), but that was before the yen crashed. As a result of the yen crash (I assume), in the last few months CDJapan has raised their shipping prices a lot, but I haven’t actually compared it to Amazon recently.

Depending on if the price difference is slight or significant, you can think of the extra cost as the cost of properly packaging your books. :smile:

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For me, the problem with CDJapan was that their slower/cheaper shipping options aren’t currently available to Sweden (I guess because Japan Post hasn’t opened up those to my country again although I haven’t checked). On my recent order, even with Amazon prices being higher, their shipping was cheaper enough that I think I saved 2000-3000 yen by buying from Amazon. And I got to pay import fees upfront so I didn’t get hit by the admin fee from my country’s postal service (for dealing with import) which is another 1000 yen.

And my books were packages well. But CDJapan’s cheaper shipping options might be available to other countries and when they become available to Sweden, I’ll gladly buy from CDJapan instead.

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Ah, yeah I never thought about the different shipping options. Amazon only offers DHL shipping to the US, and on CDJapan the DHL shipping is the cheapest option anyway. Also, there’s no import fees on packages less than $1000, so never thought about that either. Dealing with paying import fees separately does sound like a hassle. :sweat_smile:

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Do you mean the SAL Economy options? Those would certainly be handy if they are cheaper. The other slower options like Airmail are usually only like 500 yen cheaper than DHL, so I don’t really see point in using them.

Limit is 150 Euros here… And then there’s VAT which you also have to pay :sweat_smile:. Usually 24%, although if you only order books/magazines I think it’s only half.

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For UK delivery I found that for a single book cdjapan was cheaper, but above about 5 books amazon shipping was cheaper than even the cheapest cdjapan option, and at ten books the cost difference was a couple of thousand yen IIRC. Plus cdjapan didn’t have half the books I was looking for… Actual book prices seemed to be the same in both cases.

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Is the problem the fees CDJapan adds on top or the delivery costs? I can sort of imagine Amazon in general being cheaper, not sure about delivery fees.

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No, it was just the shipping cost.

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I went through and checked shipping costs to the UK for various quantities of a random light novel. Book cost identical in both cases at 640 yen. (Note that cdjapan shows the no-Japanese-sales-tax figure up front whereas Amazon shows the with-tax figure, so Amazon can look more expensive, but they only charge the without-tax price for shipping abroad, so they’re the same really.)

Qty Amazon cdjapan airmail cdjapan DHL
1 1584 990 2705
2 1719 1490 2940
3 1853 1920 2940
4 1987 2840 3623
5 2121 3130 3623
7 2390 3420 4305
10 2793 4300 5037

where airmail is the cheapest of the 5 shipping options in cdjapan’s shipping estimate calculator and DHL the most expensive (and the same service as Amazon uses).

So cdjapan is cheaper for 1 and 2 books, but beyond that amazon is better, and at 10 books it’s 1500 yen cheaper.

cdjapan do say their shipping calculator is an estimate only, so if it consistently guesses higher than you actually get charged that would reduce the difference.

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Well, I have finished the last published volume of 聖女の魔力は万能です and the series was okay. In terms of content, it oscillated between 6/10 and 8/10 as far as I am concerned. I had a lot of hopes based on the first volume, since it seemed to establish a lot of potential drama and romance… but none of it materialized.
Mostly, the main character is trying really hard to live an uneventful life and mostly succeeding at it, so not much is happening.
In terms of writing, things kinda jump around without proper closure. Many times the writing feels like a draft rather than the full fleshed out story, which is a bit frustrating. It also adds to the “not much is happening” feeling, since, even when something of note does happen, it will have no impact whatsoever on the next chapter. It may come up in a much later volume, but that just makes me wonder even more why it was ignored in the meantime.

Still, the series was fine (despite not living up to my expectations) and I’ll probably keep reading further volumes.

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Unrelated, but I also read the last volume of golden kamuy. Mostly action packed, but gives a good sense of how fricking terrifying it would feel to see 不死身の杉元 et al charge towards you. I guess it’s not easy ending a long running manga series, but it was okay, I think. I feel like the part where the author tries to justify that something like that could have happened at the end was a bit overdone, but why not.

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That hasn’t been the case when shipping to the US, for the last year or two at least. For example, Amazon gives a price of 935 yen, which includes a 10% tax. CD Japan gives a price of 850 yen, which excludes tax. But when I go to checkout on Amazon, it doesn’t reduce the 935 down to the tax-free 850. For some reason it ends up at 903, and I honestly have no idea how they get that number.

Also, for comparison, here’s what I get for shipping to the US:

Qty Amazon CDJapan Airmail CDJapan DHL
1 2159 1440 2719
2 2417 1780 2719
3 2679 2280 3415
4 2936 2620 3415
5 3193 2960 3722
7 3710 3630 4029
10 4485 4310 4611

So in my case, as long as I’m buying 5+ items, the shipping costs are similar. Especially when you account for the weird not-tax price increase that Amazon is doing, it’s pretty much a wash, in which case I’ll use CDJapan for more secure packaging. I do find it interesting how different the shipping rates are depending on the location.

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