Solo leveling. Its Korean and has been cloned to hell though. It also has a manga if that’s more your speed, but I really liked it. Shit was impossible to put down.
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Yes; also I think that if you wrote an isekai in the 1990s it was probably because you thought it integrated well into the fantasy story you wanted to tell (十二国記 springs to mind). If you wrote an isekai in the last decade it was probably because it looked like a super popular genre and you wanted to jump on that bandwagon - so the odds are higher that any given isekai story is uninspired cliche ridden trash 
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Imo the problem isn’t the isekai premise – there always were and will be good works about going into other worlds. The problem is that 99% of these なろう系/LN stories are blatant wish fulfillment power fantasies with 0% subtlety in how they do it that rely on the same, lazy hyperescapist tropes. Basically the literature equivalent of fast food. People like sweet things? Okay, then lets add sugar to it. Loads and loads. Won’t lead to a sophisticated taste, but people will want more and that’s what matters. Worst thing is that even most of the better works rely on these workings.
But at the same time that’s the appeal, I guess? Otherwise they wouldn’t be so popular.
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Because the protagonist is (or was, in their previous life) a member of the target demographic, making it also wish-fulfilment for the reader. Gamer, otaku, overworked salaryman, beaten-down school student, NEET.
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Volume 7 of tomozaki-kun made it pretty apparent he was going to “pick” between the two choices he had in terms of getting a girlfriend which was pretty hype going into it. I had one choice in particular I really liked.
But man, 500 pages all to just pick the worse one hahaha. oof. Felt that one in the stomach. I guess I should respect the fact that someone was chosen before the final volume. Eh, I might go ahead and finish komari 5 today too. Then its on to no game no life for my little book club I suppose.
Edit: finished komari 5 and it was pog.
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Well, I reached a milestone a couple of days ago. I reached 300 活字 books!
More than the number itself, I think it’s nice that I took over 7 years to get there and I’ve reached a daily average of more than 30 pages per day over that whole period (and read a book every ~8 days). In practice, of course, I was reading way less than that at the beginning and I have been much faster over the last couple of years, but still. I’m happy about it. I guess the next milestone is 100000+ pages, that’s only ~15 books away, so it’s likely to happen this year as well!
Now, the elephant in the room is that, thanks to Natively, I know that 203 of those are light novels… So if I ignore those, I am still 3 off from 100 
BUT the cool thing is that I also need to read 3 more non-light novel books this year as part of my goal, so I should reach that as well!
At the end of the day, it’s not much, my everyday life is not going to change from that, but I’m still excited about it 
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That’s impressively fast. Have you done anything in particular to increase your reading speed, or did it just happen because you read a lot?
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Why not be excited about it? It is always nice to reach milestones. At the start of it, how far away did 300 books seem?
I can tell you: VERY FAR AWAY. xD
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It was not for the exact purpose of improving my reading speed, but going through WK helped improve my kanji recognition speed, which in turns helped my reading speed. That being said, I really started reading books at the time I was preparing for the N1, and I could already read at a pace of ~10 pages per hour (that felt crazy slow at the time, but I guess it was still fast enough).
Beyond that point, except for WK, I didn’t do anything, so I guess it’s just reading.
I’m not sure I understand. I said I was excited about it
In terms of “how far”, considering my reading pace was about 10~15 books a year before I started reading in Japanese (and, err, if we ignore the light novels, still is), that would have sounded like a comically far goal (like, 20-30 years goal).
The advantage of light novels is that I can read them while being brain dead at the end of the day. The disadvantage is that I really don’t feel like I’m learning anything nor am I improving my cultural knowledge. well, except for a useless subculture I guess 
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Yes, but you also said:
Which kinda minimizes the milestone/achievement. But maybe I’m just so used to people (including myself, often especially myself) minimizing their achievements and putting themselves down when they’ve achieved something, that I saw that in what you wrote.
If that was the case, sorry. 
I just think we can all us a little bit more celebration 
and excitement in our lives for things that by the time we achieve them might not feel like much. Incremental progress tends to leave me with a smaller feeling of achievement, than if I put in a lot of effort over a short time.
So reading for 6 hours/day over a long weekend to finish X amount of books feels more like an achievement than reading a bit every day and reaching the same goal. But I’ve come to realize how bogus that is. Why would a bit done/read constantly be less of an achievement than a lot in a short time? Honestly, pushing like crazy for a short time is far easier than day in and day out keep going on with one thing.
So maybe I read some of myself in your words too.
Do we always have to learn or improve something? Couldn’t we just sometimes enjoy something? 
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grats! 300 books and (soon to be) 100000 pages is like…100x what I’ve even read in my native language lmao.
I’ve been feeling this, honestly. With certain exceptions, most of the stuff I wanna read just doesn’t really have much of anything for me to learn apart from a few words. Its super liberating, but at the same time…you lose the two birds with one stone factor by being able to read them and enjoy them while still getting language gains. Sucks having to choose, but I know it comes across like some “first world problems” type thing.
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You’re right, I was definitely minimizing it, but more in a “nobody cares” kind of way. It is a big deal for me, so I couldn’t keep it bottled down, but I don’t want to sound like I’m boasting or anything
Thank you 
I always see you posting in the “read everyday” threads. I feel like you are doing great on the consistency front 
Well, that’s mostly prompted by me reading a whole book a few days ago that I absolutely hated. I would have dropped it after the first 100 pages (which was already being fairly patient with it) but instead I thought going through it would give me a +1 on my stats. It was neither learning nor fun. I should not do that But you’re right that reading things just for fun should be (at least one of) the main goals.
… you’ve read only 3 books?
That’s true! Not the worst problem to have.
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Seeing someone else do what I want to do is inspiring, and while I/we probably don’t care as much about your milestone as you do (would be a bit weird if we did), I’m sure I’m not alone in liking milestone posts. It invigorates in a kinda “if you could do it, then so can I” way. 
Thanks
Yeah, maybe finishing that book wasn’t in your interest.
I remember back in school when they tried to force feed us classical works of literature, both from Swedish authors and “internationally” authors (when I was young I would have considered it international, but really, I think most of it was European so… ). I ended up not reading most of them.
Of the few I actually read (I faked I’d read all of them in class, of course), I actually enjoyed Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky; I only mention it because to this day I am baffled that I liked it.
But yeah, I can’t remember reading a book I didn’t like all the way until the end. Now, I didn’t enjoy all the graded readers I read, but they were short story length at their longest, and I have read all the way through a short story I haven’t liked before, but only when I’ve had some extra reason for reading it. (Like being completionist about finishing all the graded readers in a series.)
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And the new winner for most ridiculous title is…
私、異世界で奴隷にされちゃいました(泣)しかもご主人様は性格の悪いエルフの女王様!(でも超美人←ここ大事)無能すぎて罵られまくるけど同僚のオークが癒やし系だし里のエルフは可愛いし結構楽しんでる私です。
It literally doesn’t fit in the preview!
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Yeah if we only consider books I chose to read after going into highschool, it would be around 3 I think.
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I’m guessing the author of that probably just tried to stuff a bunch of potential keywords into the title and that’s how it ended up like that.
And just for fun, apparently this is how it’s listed in the Kirara MAX table of contents
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At this point, my reading habits are dominated by WK book clubs.
I also picked up an issue of Harta, since I haven’t read any meaningful amount of manga before, and this seemed like a reasonable way to try it out (inspired by @rodan’s posts in this thread). But I didn’t expect it to be the size of a textbook! 
It seems neat and is incredibly cheap (other than the shipping cost).
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Finished 今昔百鬼拾遺 : 鬼, and I liked it a lot. I prefer his historically-set 巷説百物語 series, but this book is definitely a shorter and easier read than those. My favourite bit was the diversion into the history of 凌雲閣, the tower that stood in Asakusa until it was destroyed in the 1923 earthquake. Maybe avoid if you want action in your mysteries, because basically the whole book is just people talking to each other.
I expect I’ll read the other two in the series (河童 and 天狗). The three books were published nearly at the same time through different publishers, as some kind of marketing wheeze.
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Oh ho! I hope you enjoy it! 
Speaking of which… I finished that issue of Harta!
ハルタ ９７号
There’s no 新連載 in this one but there’s a handful of 読切 - a couple I liked are:
キッサコ by 児島青 about a nice and mysterious tea time.
and ストレンジハウスの子供たち by 徳留圭秋, about three odd characters in an odd house, which has a really nice art and a strange vibe that I like a lot. I think what it reminds me of is (distant memories of) Tony Millionaire’s Sock Monkey - that kind of like… detailed line art showing the whimsical adventures of a memorable cast of odd characters in a way that feels like a kid’s story but with material that isn’t really for kids at all. Anyway, I think it’s neat and would be happy to see more.
There’s also a feature called “Harta Begins” that’s a collection of eight 8-page shorts. That’s a pretty short time to make an impression and I happened to be especially tired when I read this part but it seemed like a cool interesting little thing. I wonder if it’s a way to recycle series pitches or something (I often wonder how many shorts in general are series pitches, since some do end up becoming series, and others just have that vibe).
ようこそにんげん, the yonkoma about a human attending a school of animals ends in this issue in kind of a bittersweet way. It was pretty fun. I wonder if another yonkoma will replace it soon? Usually (always?) in the time I’ve been reading there’s been one or two, which seems like a good percentage to me.
In terms of my usual favorites, Dungeon Meshi’s chapter was a really interesting change of pace! would be an interesting, oddly maybe sort of ideal starting place if say you had this issue of the magazine but hadn’t read Dungeon Meshi before, 希釈王 was unusual as usual, I thought the Hotel one was especially sweet this time around (flashbacks to hotel men befriending each other!), and as usual いやはや、熱海くん is right up my alley.
The back of the magazine has a nice feature that I usually don’t read where authors of different series in the magazine interview each other in a sort of telephone game, with the subject of this issue interviewing the subject in the next issue’s column and so on, and anyway, the author of 熱海くん, 田沼朝, is interviewed this issue, and they talk about having kept a notebook for many years and filling it with miscellaneous lines from imaginary conversations used as grist for the very dialogue and language-focused series (which is totally in-line with the vibe from the series). And when asked about what interests them about this being their first series, the answer given is wanting to portray the kinds of long-term interpersonal relationships that develop slowly over time, which sounds great to me and hopefully means it’ll run for a long time! They’re also from Osaka which is another thing that checks out based on how everyone talks in the book.
other manga report
- 高橋留美子劇場 （３ー４）
These were in line with the other volumes – pretty fun stories based around mundane concerns with a zany touch to them. - くしゃみ
This is a Naoki Urasawa short story collection that I remember being pretty fun! It’s been a bit of time (I read that Harta issue surprisingly slowly) but the material that sticks out most in my memory is the non-fiction work that shows Urasawa’s deep love of classic rock and guitars, with stuff like visiting a festival in America and getting to jam with a music industry person who was at the Beatles rooftop concert, and so on. It’s not really an interest I share with him at all, but the obvious enthusiasm shown is pretty infectious. - けものみち （１）
This is a volume I picked up a long time ago, I think just because I heard pro-wrestling was involved? And… it is, but this reminds me most of the kind of manga I would check out from the library and that wouldn’t hit with me – I think the biggest sign of which is like, too jumbled of a premise introduced too abruptly, without time to actually process and get to know the characters. In this case it’s like – a pro wrestler gets isekai’d, and introduces the concept of a pet shop to the fantasy world, and is helped out by a group of monster women? And you just kind of start the story in the middle of all of that. It starts to sorta explain things like how these characters met later in the volume, but it just seemed like a lot of disjointed elements to me and I personally would likely have preferred more focus on the “pro wrestler gets isekai’d; has tendency to german suplex people” element rather than the “isekai’d animal lover tries to establish the concept of a pet shop in a fantasy world” element. - ドラえもん （３）
Doraemon’s awfully fun, and I remember having enough trouble with the first volume that it’s pretty satisfying still to just… read it. There’s an inventiveness to the storylines that lines me roughly of like, Calvin and Hobbes storylines. One from this volume I enjoyed is about Doraemon time traveling to read new chapters of a manga early only to wind up feeding those chapters to the deadline-plagued mangaka in the past and eventually writing the manga himself. - ONE PIECE （１ー２）
I successfully lured a work friend who majored in Japanese in college to Bookwalker with a gifted copy of Dungeon Meshi, and he’s a huge One Piece fan so I’m trying to lure him further and further by reading along with him in One Piece (which I read some of a very long time ago in English). It’s been fun! It was really cool to see how much he’s been enjoying it, although progress understandably slowed down as the novelty wore off and the reality of the pacing started dialing up… - 東京卍リベンジャーズ （１ー２）
Didn’t really know anything about this going in, but I’ve found it a very enjoyable mix of school gangs and time travel so far! I like the art, and it seems brisk and suspenseful in that way that makes for easy reading. - 青のフラッグ （１ー２）
A close friend recommended this highly but otherwise I didn’t know anything about it. It’s really fun! The author is especially talented at that kind of endearing character art where the level of detail on them can change to be cute or funny or serious, and the love… triangle? is well-constructed and interesting, and full of likeable and relatable perspectives and emotionally fraught situations. - ヴィンランド・サガ （１）
I’ve read a handful of volumes of this before in English, and honestly it’s at that awkward level where the English is fresh enough in my mind I’m not enthusiastic about reading parts over again in Japanese, but not so fresh that I’m all that confident in skipping ahead in the Japanese version (and I think I got three volumes free? So I mean, might as well catch up…) which put this in a tough spot, especially when the previous two series I mentioned were engaging in a much fresher-to-me sort of way. But I do like Vinland Saga! So I’m sure I’ll read further and catch up to where I was but maybe I’ll give it some time…
One slightly brain-melting technique that was interesting to see coming from the English version, is that the difference between the Norse language and say, the Frankish language here is the former is written as regular Japanese, and the latter is still Japanese, but written horizontally, filling more western-shaped word balloons.
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