Getting a figure that’s neither the tax-included nor the tax-free value is odd. Maybe Amazon are calculating and including some kind of US import duty or sales tax? (Books in the UK are zero-rated for VAT so wouldn’t need anything adding.)
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I’m around 1/4 into 怪人二十面相 (the book) by Edogawa Ranpo and so far I’m positively surprised. It’s definitely very suspenseful. I wanted to grumble a bit by how the characters fall right into the hands of our master thief and are super predictable, but Edogawa-sensei is one step ahead of me 
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Shout-out to @Milgram who’s reading the same book!
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I just finished my 12th book which was my goal for this year! 
Considering I’ve gotten to a stage where I can read books like わたしの幸せな結婚 in 2-3 days, 20 books might not be too murimuri after all kamo? 
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Oh, hey! I started reading that book yesterday too!
I wouldn’t grumble, I just thought it made sense for a book aimed at children. I’m curious about what you are referring to, though! I’m at ~33% and so far I’ve been able to call all the developments.
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I started idly reading 異世界の名探偵 after discovering it in a YouTube video and am now about 50 pages in or so. I previously talked with @Naphthalene about the different types of LN and how thus far I haven’t cared for the ones I’ve read due to not vibing at all with the main characters and/or not finding joy in descriptions of upskirt views or bountiful bosoms. They suggested I try LNs aimed at women or more ‘neutral’ ones like 本好き. I actually started 本好き a few weeks ago and honestly…I see some decent parallels between it and 異世界の名探偵.
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In 本好き the main character wants to be reborn in a world full of books, but is instead reborn in a world with almost no books. In 異世界の名探偵 the character is a mystery nerd who wants to be reborn in the world of famous detective novels, but instead is reborn into a fantasy world where mystery novels aren’t a thing.
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Reborn at a much younger age and need to learn the language. In 本好き’s case it was toddler age, in 異世界の名探偵 it was as a baby (but there are significant fast forwards).
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None of the female characters I’ve encountered thus far in reading 本好き have been depicted chest-first and thus far in 異世界の名探偵 the only non-family female character has been described as androgynous.
I suppose for me it’s a little disappointing there isn’t yet that much (well, any) mystery content, but the fantasy setting is a nice change of scenery and the approach to magic in this book is fun.
Also @WeebPotato – I loved 怪人二十面相! I’m a fan of Edogawa Ranpo in general, but that was the first book by him I read and so it holds a special place in my heart 
I want to say the exposure to somewhat old fashioned language in it also made diving into Aozora Bunko short stories a lot less intimidating too.
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I was looking at the picture and thought, you might have been somewhat influenced by the book clubs, no? 
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It’s my second 江戸川乱歩 book and the first one was for adults and thus more, well, colorful, but the writing style is very similar. It has a very nostalgic feeling too. The book kinda reminds me of stuff like “fantômette” or “le club des cinq” that I was reading as a preteen (aka a billion years ago, aka “now I feel old”). Not what I would usually read nowadays, but it feels nice.
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My newest purchase arrived today! It‘s not something to „read“, really, but it‘s gonna keep me busy for a while
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Whoa 
You sure they didn’t accidentally send you a telephone book? 
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Big boi guide for a big ass game. Did you play it in Japanese as well? @Myria
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No, and that’s gonna be part of the struggle 
to figure out all the place names and enemy names.
I didn’t actually play it myself, I‘m just a backseat gamer, at least when it comes to the Souls games. I‘ll have to convince my boyfriend to switch to Japanese for NG+ 
I‘d love to see and hear all the cutscenes in Japanese!
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Original voice is actually English, they don’t make Japanese VA for any Souls games.
Still, I’m thinking if I should order a Japanese version for PS…
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Ohhh, I see… The English voiceover is really cool, though! I‘ll have to make do with Japanese subtitles, I guess
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Yeah the only that has Japanese voice acting is Sekiro.
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Even Demon Souls? 
Currently not taking part in the challenge, but I wanna share my thoughts somewhere
Finished my first Japanese light novel last night 「また、同じ夢を見ていた」which is a big achievement for me, because I’m not really an avid reader, not even in English nor my native language. It took me about a month of reading between 30 and 60 minutes every night.
Already read halfway through「コンビニ人間」last year, but never finished it, even though I enjoyed it, so this is the first one I’ve actually finished.
I was going in without knowing anything about the book, so obviously I didn’t understand everything, but it was a quite enjoyable experience nevertheless. Last 2 chapters even got me thinking about life and stuff
Next novel I’d like to ready is 「世界から猫が消えたなら」, which is already locked and loaded on my Kindle. After that I’ll go back and restart 「コンビニ人間」
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Updating my log, I realized that I have now read as many books this year already as I did in 2020 and 2021 each. 
That is kind of crazy.
This year is also the first year (since the very first I started reading) that I set a goal that, while it felt possible, I wasn’t actually sure I’d reach. It’s crazy how something like that can become a motivating force. I’ve been staying just slightly ahead of it this whole time.
I’ll probably go for a more chill goal next year, though. 
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I thought Harta’s off month would be a good time to catch up on 青騎士, but noticed I wasn’t very motivated to do so despite that, so I ended reading through the issues I’d accumulated up to the present (5A-8B) working under the assumption I would probably stop reading after I caught up. So while I didn’t actively try to not pay attention, I also didn’t try to make myself slow down or keep up if I was losing track of what was going on in a series, and ended up skimming plenty. So high-concept visually interesting series did rather better in those circumstances than wordier ones where it wasn’t immediately obvious what was going on.
A couple memorable debuts along those lines from this range:
ピッコリーナ by 大槻一翔
is about a romance between a yakitori chef and a bunny girl who comes to his stand with her coworkers for lunch.
I have to imagine that premise is due to bunny girls eating grilled meat being a combination of the artist’s fetishes (or more charitably, what they like to draw, anyway) but I sort of admire that directness and the incredibly specific niches there exists manga to fill, and thankfully the story is sweet and sappy enough that it doesn’t feel nearly as skeevy as I would probably have assumed.
メガロザリア by みやまるん
is about an unscrupulous young woman in a medieval fantasy world meeting a witch with unique time travel powers and exploiting them to claw out a better life for herself.
The witch’s powers have the following rules:
- if you murder someone in front of the witch, you may rewind time to a point of your choosing
- once time is rewound, everything will be exactly as it was then except you and the witch will retain your memories, and the person who was murdered will still be dead (of no apparent cause)
- once time is rewound to a particular point, no subsequent rewind can ever go back further than that point.
The series has a definite mean-streak, as intense depictions of cruelty and murder happen in every chapter, both directed at and perpetrated by the protagonist, so I’m definitely not without caveats about it (like – just to underline that again, content warning for a lot of rough stuff), but I like the interplay of the magic rules and the kinda Toriyama-ish character art, and would be curious to know how it ends up developing.
Also, not a debut, but I still really enjoy むすびめ, the closing illustrations from the illustrator 長田結花. They’re always pleasant and delightful, and if I do stop reading the magazine here, they might be the thing I’d be saddest to see go.
When I caught up with all of the series running in Harta, I charted out how I felt about them this way:
So out of curiosity to compare and to try to gauge my feelings about 青騎士 so far and whether I should consider with it, I did something similar with it as I read the last volume (although I forgot the specific descriptions I used last time and was a little bit more generous with the placements I think) and ended up with:
(enthusiasm level → number of series I feel that way about)
5 → 0
4 → 11
3 → 16
2 → 3
1 → 0
which I think is a pretty good representation of my feelings on the magazine. I do like it, but definite a notch or two less than I do Harta, and that juxtaposition + not having a series or two that I feel extra strongly about exaggerates the gap and makes me a lot less enthusiastic on the whole.
It’s hard to point at specific things, since really the overlap with Harta encompasses both magazines in the sense that there’s no single series in either that I’d be like, flabbergasted if it swapped magazines (as some series did when this one launched), but the average of 青騎士 definitely feels a bit rougher (both in terms of content and polish), and more straightforwardly “seinen”-y in the sense of being overtly horny or shocking or violent. Plus Harta has fantastic presentation around the magazine that makes it easy to be endeared to it, whereas 青騎士 is pretty much completely bare bones still.
I’d definitely be curious how much of that difference is just this magazine/its editors being less on my specific wavelength, vs. how much might grow and improve over time as the magazine develops. But unless I’m really hungry for manga around the 20th of August, or I catch up with 北北西に曇と往け and decide I need to know what happens next as soon as possible, I’ll probably regretfully part ways with it here and use that time to read other things.
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Tadoku week 4 (covering the last 9 days to the end of the month): finished another three books:
A ‘best of’ collection of short stories – a mix of detetctive mystery and creepy/light horror tales, ranging in length from a short-short 10 pages to a 100 pager. I didn’t dislike the stories, but overall I think my preferences lie elsewhere, so I’m happy to have read this taster selection of 江戸川’s work but am unlikely to seek out any more.
Read this to give myself an easy book in the runup to the end of the contest. 赤川 is always fun and I’ve read several of the 吸血鬼 series before, so I knew exactly what I was getting: easy quick reading action mysteries.
This is book 2 in the 善人長屋 series. The setup is that an Edo rowhouse is occupied by various petty criminals (fraudsters, dealers in stolen goods, etc), who put on a front of being good people to avoid attracting attention from the authorities, which has resulted in the place acquiring the nickname 善人長屋. Except they accidentally allow an innocent do-gooder to move in, much to the consternation of the other residents… Book 1 was linked short stories mostly introducing the characters; book 2 is a single story about the appearance of a mysterious group of samurai who call themselves the 閻魔組 and seem to be going around murdering criminals.
Pages read in the last 9 days: 890. Pages read over whole month: 3174.
I just about managed to get 5th place in the contest ranking, and hit an average of more than 100 pages a day. For me that’s a very heavy reading load – it relies on my including some easy books in the pile, and I usually fall below the average on work days and have to catch back up on my non-working days. I tend to reckon my average reading speed at about 25 pages an hour, which means 100 a day is a serious time investment. So I’m pretty proud of hitting that. I’d forgotten how much it takes out of me, though 
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