How many times did you have to repeat 五十音順 in your head? 
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That’s pretty much it! It’s
Category (e.g. Shonen manga) > Publisher (e.g. 講談社) > Label (e.g. アフタヌーンKC) > Author name > Series name
Note that within a category, you have three sections: one for manga that are “damaged” (all 100 yen), one for those that are in better shape (sold at different prices, if multiple copies are available I always check the back and take the cheapest), and one for manga popular now. You can recognize them as they are put in plastic cases to prevent people from 立ち読み.
All the required informations except the category (which should be inferred from the label) are available on Wikipedia if the manga has a page, otherwise on the publisher’s page but that’s more annoying to look up.
If you are unsure about the category, Tsutaya has a convenient reference list: コミック レーベル別一覧
Examples:
That’s Seinen > 講談社 > アフタヌーンKC > 市川 （い）> 宝石（ほ）
At some point, it was in the “popular” section.
Seinen > マッグガーデン > ブレイドコミックス > 天野（あ!!）> アリア（あ）
One last thing: there’s a different category for wide manga and one for those big ones that are compilation of multiple volumes in one.
Ah, and you can also check the storage that’s below the shelves if the volume you want isn’t available. More than a couple of times I could find it there. I assume someone had just taken the one on the shelf and the staff hadn’t put more yet. You can also check the unsorted manga that they have just bought, but I was never lucky with those.
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Hahaha! Each time 
And luckily I had a hiragana app on my phone where I could look up the other sequence (a k s t …)
(In case you wonder about me using the app: I don’t have Internet access on my phone because I have enough wifi at school and at home, so sometimes I need to fall back to offline stuff if I did not prepare well enough)
@Naphthalene: Thank you very much for talking me through the manga ordering! I will try to apply this knowledge next time
Yes, that’s a valuable source of books as well 
At first I was a bit afraid to pull out the drawers, but in some Bookoffs they even have stickers encouraging customers to do so.
Haha, there had to be a word for it It’s a really interesting phenomenon. Especially when it comes to the middle-aged men in suits in the adult section
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A season of JP subtitles for Terrace House counts as a book right?
At first I hated it and now I’m in too deep.
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I’m getting into it now too! On ep 6 of the first one, and up to date with the new season.
If you watch with subtitels and pay sufficient attention to them, I guess you could argue that’s a book’s worth? 
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It’s funny because I had the first 3 episodes of Girls and Boys downloaded for months but I could never get past halfway through the first episode. I thought the judges were just too obnoxious and everyone seemed too nice to each other.
And then I said nah I’ll just use this as listening practice with no subtitles at all. I got to like episode 4 where I got to the point were I actually wanted to keep watching but I was frustrated by how little I understood. So then I switched back to Japanese Subtitles and binged like 15 episodes within the next few days, haha.
I haven’t gotten to the newest season yet. Still on Boys and Girls. Is there any reason I should go by air order? The judges make references to the first season a lot which I haven’t watched…
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Yeah, no clue either, but I think it’s fine to go in the order you like. I’m doing the first one because I get confused with the commentators’ names and inside jokes though. Which Boys and girls are you watching? Not the first one then?
The parts where I don’t get what’s going on is usually the commentators joking around. 8 can live with that for now.
I’m only watching the latest one alonh with the first because it’s not as intimidating to have the episodes released one by one, compared to the first show with its many, many seasons.
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Translation question (since I am reading extensively, this seems like a fair place to ask but if not, just chase me away with fire or something): 俺のヘマもあって、君からブツを盗んだ奴とは差が広がるばっかりだ。
My current best guess: In the case of my blunder also, the difference (distance here maybe?) between you and the guy who stole your stuff only increased.
Any suggestions to make it make slightly more sense? I actually feel like I have cleared it up for myself a bit here as I wrote it down, but it still feels like it could use some work.
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〜もあって doesn’t mean “in the case of”, but “that also happened/it’s also because of”.
So 俺のヘマもあって、means “it’s also my fault” with the nuance of “but not only”.
In this case that would be the distance, yes.
Keeps increasing
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Thanks! That ties up all the loose ends and makes a lot of sense in context. 
Some day, I will study grammar, but it is not this day.
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I’m on Pt. 2 of Boys and Girls in The City, I guess it’s the first season that came to Netflix but it’s not the first season ever.
And yeah usually I don’t get the judges’ jokes though I was proud that I caught one just yesterday! Light spoilers: One of the guys who does kickboxing tried asking out a girl but she kind of back-handedly refused. So the judges were making comments about it being kickboxing vs aikido (aikido is a form of Japanese martial arts where it’s all about using the opponents’ attacks against them)
Also it’s funny because one of the housemates is an American ハーフ and he is so much easier to understand. Not because his Japanese is weird or anything but just because he’s a typical frat-boy type. All the other guys ask out girls so euphemistically. When he did it he was literally: “I really like you. I want you to be my girlfriend.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes, haha.
Would you mind sharing some of the exceptions with me? (My wishlist still has some free space for interesting book / author suggestions )
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Some people on this forum might be getting tired of me mentioning this already, but I really like the writing style of 支倉凍砂, the author of 狼と香辛料. I’ve also been reading a Visual Novel by him (World End Economica) and it’s great too. Only thing is he apparently can only write about economics, but I think the real meat of his stories is in the characters. I don’t even like economics, but I could probably read and enjoy anything he writes.
The other one I think stands out to me is the writing style of the ゴブリンスレイヤー light novel. It uses some grammar structures and stuff I don’t encounter a lot reading other things, and it gives me the impression he’s writing in an “old-fashioned” way, for lack of a better description, and I think it fits really well. Admittedly, that makes it a bit harder to read and frustrates me sometimes, but I still really like it.
Another unrelated thing I like in ゴブリンスレイヤー is that the characters don’t have names.
Sadly, I haven’t read that many different authors yet 
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Thanks for the recommendations! Having seen 狼と香辛料 mentioned here and there in the forums, I’ve taken a stab at it some weeks ago (when it was on sale). I can see why you like the style, and I think I will like it too, but for now it is still too hard for me.
Don’t know exactly why it is too hard, but I guess it’s due to many long sentences full of higher-level grammar… I was basically confused by each sentence, and that just doesn’t make sense for me yet. Let’s chat about it again next year or so
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While I did manage to find the book, I did… not reach my goal. Well, I have my last exam for the semester on Tuesday, so I shouldn’t have any trouble with actually getting around to reading the book then!
I did read the 7th volume of the やがて君になる manga though, so at least I have read something even if it’s just a manga(and I finished Kino too, but that was just for the book club). Just as a warning if anyone else here is planning to read やがて君になる: the last few pages of volume 7 are kind of sneakily hidden after the afterword for some reason, so don’t stop reading just because you see “あとがき”. I almost missed the last few pages myself!
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Is still waiting for the manga to be finished
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Thanks for the tip! I just finished the first volume, but it’s good to know for when I get to the end.
I’m so excited to find this thread! I love reading groups. <3 I’m working through the first of the Spiderwick Chronicles in Japanese right now. I’ve been reading stuff like にゃんにゃん探偵団 and よつばと！before this, and regular Japanese books look so intimidating with their small font and lack of pictures, so it’s a nice little step up in both grade level and in challenging myself to a book with less pictures and more text.
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That sounds like an interesting experience! How are you finding it? Are there lots of katakana words?
Also, welcome!
On a personal note, finally finished my first light novel yesterday~ Kino, that is. My keeping at it was thanks in large part to the book club, I’m sure. thanks guys~
Next project is finally finishing toki wo kakeru shoujo~
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I really haven’t noticed any more katakana than there is in other books, bar for proper names and some creatures (Brownies, for example, is in katakana). It’s a pretty easy read in general–I wanna say it’s somewhere around mid fourth grade level if we’re talking U.S. grades, and I’d say it’s probably about the same in Japanese since I can read through 三年生 level books with the bare minimum of help from a dictionary but need to look up words a few times each page with Spiderwick. I’m enjoying it though! Read the series as a kid, but I remember like none of it so it’s good to revisit. Thinking I might do the same with Cirque du Freak as well since my library has all of those.
And nice job on your first light novel! That’s a big accomplishment 
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