Finished the last bit of Volume 3 of One Punch this morning. Read Chapter 4 of the web novel version of 転スラ around noon. Next I have to read the last chunk of chapter 1 of 銭天堂 and will call it a day for reading.
I’m just gonna have a giant anime marathon afterwards. xD
August is when the next volume of 本好き comes out. I’ve been looking forward to August since April (when the previous volume came out).
I haven’t posted here at the time, but I finally finished 獣人隊長の仮婚約事情. The writing itself wasn’t the worst, but darn that story made me mad. The plot starts with the “love interest” (25) being completely confused due to a high fever and putting “by accident” a betrothal mark on the main character (13!?!) against her will. In world, you can’t put a mark like that on someone without their consent (otherwise, it’s a Mad Max style “this is my property” declaration), and anyway you’re not allowed to do it before someone is 16.
Also, the “love interest” is generally violent and manipulative and I hate him.
Upon adding the book to Natively, I found out it was part of a series (and also the first book written by the author) which consists of (mostly) independent romance stories set in the same world (so we keep 獣人s, the mark mechanism, and some other magical stuff). Half of those book are in the TL category, which made a lot of sense. For some incomprehensible reasons, having beautiful men of high social standings almost forcing themselves on the main character seems to be a trope in that genre. That does match what I saw in this book. Well, thanks I hate it. (I indeed ended up giving it one star @seanblue)
Instead I started reading 草魔法師クロエの二度目の人生 (specifically, the なろう version). It’s a typical “reincarnated into a medieval fantastic world” except the main character is from that world to begin with, and she just reincarnated into her 5 years old self after she got executed as an adult (for treason; not a spoiler since that’s the very beginning of the intro).
It’s been very fun so far, a much welcome change from the previous book. My only concern is that one of the two main love interests is her older brother (adoptive, but still).
Checking the preview of the last published volume (volume 2), they edited out a whole part 
I have to admit I found it a bit slow and checked a couple times how many “chapters” I had left in that part…
You readin’ 50 Shades of Grey over there?
Honestly, that comparison literally came to my mind. Not a fan
Dungeon Meshi vol. 12 comes out in August too!
I got 2 months of kindle unlimited for 99 yen one or two weeks ago and have been reading a lot of trash I wouldn’t buy but don’t mind reading for free since. (Also 2 volumes of ゆるキャンプ)
… Putting the stuff I was reading before on hold. And now I’m feeling a bit burnt out and mentally unable to consume anything but more trash. Might be because of the temperature as well, but the abundance of trash definitely plays a role.
Now to somehow catch up with my bookclub books again. 
That’s a mood. My energy for more literary / challenging writing has been dipping too (sideye to 糞尿譚) so I agree we should blame summer sunshine and resume concentrated hard reading in the fall 
読書の秋 ! Can’t wait…
I’ve finished Red Data Girl Vol. 1 and have already started with book 2.
I liked it a lot, especially its introspective writing style. There are stronger fantasy elements present in the second part, but the characters are clearly the focus of the story. The supernatural parts all relate to Shinto and Buddhism and are very much shrouded in mystery. So far the story has revealed very little about the world of the gods and how it works. I think it really does do mystery well, though. I also really liked the finale,
Book 2 takes us to a school where Izumiko who has only ever experienced inaka life meets lots of new people. We know that this school is kind of special, but it’s no “wizarding school” like Hogwarts, more like a normal school with a secret that is yet to be revealed. It is obvious that book 2 will also focus on the character development for now and I am very curious about the direction it will take.
I’m glad I bought the books, it’s a brand of fantasy / coming-of-age story I really like. I really enjoy the deliberate pacing and well-written interactions between the characters.
Has anybody else signed up for the next tadoku contest (starts 1st July)? I’ve got pretty lazy about reading recently but I always find the leaderboard gives me an incentive to put in a bit more effort. Plus I have a box of books arriving Tuesday…
Oh, thanks for the reminder! I was just thinking about doing a challenge for myself the other day. Guess I’ll wait a few more days and join the Tadoku challenge then.
I own too many manga and can’t decide what to read next. 
The main ones I’m deciding between are:
I’m leaning towards そらコミュニケーション because it’s only a two volume series, so I can finish it up, and also because only two people have completed this book on Bookmeter and I’m tempted to become the third. 
It’s kind of weird how unpopular this series is. It’s a pretty standard Manga Time Kirara series and the first volume was entertaining. Not anywhere close to my favorite series, but still pretty good.
I do also need to go back to the last two volumes of うらら迷路帖 at some point, but not feeling it right now. Will probably finish that up later this summer though.
That sounds like a good reason. I would also go for that.
That’s indeed a pretty low number. Maybe their marketing (or lack thereof) is the issue?
Oh wow, is that still going? I remember checking it like 10 years ago (it was abandoned at the time). Ah but the site is different, so someone just took it over/used a similar name?
I ended up reading some other stuff in between but I finally finished the first volume.
The mysteries were fairly easy to figure out, but the interactions between the characters were great. Also, 在原 業平（ありわら の なりひら）is one smooth talker. Also, I thought I had seen his name before, and I remembered that there were some womanizers in the 百人一首. I checked and not only is he in there, he is the one who wrote the ちはやふる poem. I feel like that’s something that must have been mentioned in the historical notes they put between chapters, but, I’m not gonna lie, I didn’t read any of those.
Anyway, there are other characters, I am told, but I’m mostly here to see him look amazing while he 口説く any woman in sight speak in old Japanese. Right. I’m all about practicing reading 古語.
(This is a joke, the rest of the cast is pretty nice)
Yeah, the original version of the site was abandoned and eventually stopped working, so the community of regular users moved over to a re-implementation.
I was talking about it with my spouse, and they couldn’t believe I didn’t realize that they are all super famous historical figures. They also mentioned that I would know that if I had read the historical notes between chapters.
Edit: I finished volume 2, which has a much stronger focus on 菅原 道真 (すがわらの みちざね), and I’m less interested 
At least it seems that there’s going to be plot instead of the mystery of the week format we had so far…
Oh okay! That makes sense.
Thinking again about reading ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖 in the near-ish future, as it should be very approachable by now, but kinda wondering if having knowledge of the authors/works mentioned is relevant to enjoying the book.
Maybe someone who’s read it can give some input on that? I know at least @Naphthalene has read it (no pressure P:)
Not at all! You will get all the relevant bits of information through the interaction between the main characters.
There’s just one case (in a later book) where the reader is expected to be kinda familiar with the story (since the clueless protagonist that is a proxy for us knows about it). I did know about that book and that knowledge was relevant to the plot, but it’s minor in the end anyway.
Oh, that’s nice then! Now I just have to try to restrain myself from starting before I finish some other stuff.
Just out of curiosity, which book is that?
A clockwork orange (technically, the main character has seen the movie, but it follows the same plot).