I just realized that, having finished Kiki today, I now have read 2 non light novel books this month, none of which are 雪国. Oh well.
Eventually, I’ll get to it. I only have 10-ish books left to read anyway… except if I give in and buy the rest of some of 薬屋のひとりごと or something.
And so, the privilege of being my first completed book of the year goes to… 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない…3, of course.
Comments containing spoilers
When the first kiss happened and she still decided it was just a dream, I was devastated, but fortunately he really did an effort to make himself clear by the second kiss. I really hope this time she will remember a confession happening.
Apart from that, surprisingly little happened in this volume. Introducing political charades was interesting, but in the end it only gave us 5 new characters and the action was once more reversed to status quo. All new characters turned out to be nice people, there wasn’t any real danger and the situation was under control all the time.
Maybe デービッド メイスン wasn’t a nice person, but he didn’t even appear directly anyway.
By the way, the ever-expanding cast is starting to get me worried. How crowded these books will become in the next volumes?
It’s still a very warm story and I am enjoying reading it, but some action and power/relationship shuffles would be nice.
Also, I adored Cinderellasque shoe dropping on ジオルド’s head in the bonus manga. It makes me giggle more than it should.
First month of the year is almost over.
Well, so far I’m getting back into reading Japanese, and the more I read the more my brain seems to remember how to read Japanese. So that is good.
If I wanted to be perfectly on target I would have finished two mangas by now, but I’m still working through my first one for the year. I expect I’ll need to do some 多読 of shorter manga later this year. (I seem to be reading far too many 完全版 versions of mangas, so they are thicker. But bigger pictures are nice, so… ^^ )
Especially since I’m moving again in 2-3 months. Thankfully, this should be the last move for the next few years, hopefully as many as five or ten or you know, not moving again for a couple of decades would be nice too, lol.
Finished 蜘蛛ですが、なにか 2! Both quite pleased with this volume’s developments and quite worried about where the story is going next. Hopefully it will keep being enjoyable to me for many volumes to come. <3
Though I’ve been under a vow of not reading books in English for a while, today my hold came in on the newest book in one of my favorite series, so I might splurge on rereading all of those and then devouring the new one. 
I don’t know if I’ll manage any Japanese reading during that time, but with seven books finished in the first month, a break is not a horrible idea.
One month into the year. My reading goal is going well. I’m reading pretty much everyday. I’m 52 pages in so far.
What series?
Just barely was able to finish out my first month of the year with my 5th book. Pretty happy with a solid start to the year so far seeing as from now on ill actually be starting to get kinda busy.
カノうわ vol 2 actually didn’t disappoint either. The latter half of this book focused pretty much entirely on the main characters best friend and their relationship. The whole book I was having a hard time really telling if she had feelings for him since that seems to be the usual way of things in light novels and anime, but it looks like that may not be the case. They have a very weird relationship that doesn’t really fit into “normal”, but both of them seem aware and happy with that. Its a very refreshing take that I feel like I don’t see much.
Honestly still recommending the series to anyone who wants a college life slice of life with pretty likeable characters.
The one by Megan Whalen Turner starting with The Thief. It’s possibly the book (/series) I’ve read that most benefits from not being spoiled at all, which is timely. 
In January I finished a book that I started last year and read one additional book, and I’ve read 11 volumes of manga. Not bad overall I’d say! Well, not bad except that if I keep reading manga at this pace I’m going to spend a lot of money and run out of bookshelf space really quickly!
Now I need to decide what to read next… I was going to take a short break to read something in English, but none of the books I have in English are calling out to me. So it’s either on to 本好き book 6 or 夜市. I should probably read the latter now since it’s so short, and then go back to 本好き after. That was the original plan at least, but as usual, the end of a volume of 本好き makes me want to read the next book right away. 
I’m definitely taking a real break after book 7 in any case. At that point I’ll read a few other things before going on to the third arc later in the year.
Please, for the love of all that is good, read at least the prologue of book 6.
No no no. Then I’ll never stop! I already read the first line to confirm the location / view point, and it’s basically what I expected.
Shh! Stop it! I refuse to catch up before the series is done being properly published. I will properly pace myself to enjoy this series over the next two years. Hmph!
Are we doing monthly reflections? 
In January I finished 2 books (according to schedule) and started 3 others (bookclubs make scheduling so weird). I was leisurely reading manga at a nice, slow pace of about one per week until 黒執事 became completely free to read for a weekend because of its 15 year anniversary. The rest of the month was more like a volume a day (+1) for a total of 25. I’m all over the place and might remove (or ignore) my manga goal and simply count up.
A downside to reading all those manga is that my reading speed.for books went way down. I finished half a volume of リゼロ in the time I would have usually finished it, and that feels somewhat unsatisfactory.
I really do prefer not having so many open books at the same time, so in February I want to finish 黒執事 and 2 books before I start any more… Which I already know are going to be 2 book club picks again. This is a problem. 
In case we are…
I read エンドブルー at the start of the month and two volumes of わたしが恋人になれるわけないじゃん、ムリムリ! (※ムリじゃなかった!?) closer to the end, as well as a bunch of manga volumes inbetween(and I finally actually continued reading haikyuu!). And I read one of the bonus stories released with the 安達としまむら anime blurays, though those are just about 50 pages each(Since I haven’t commented on that yet, I also feel like I have to say that I very much wasn’t expecting the bonus story to be partially post-apocalyptic 
)
I also started reading both 処刑少女の生きる道 ―そして、彼女は甦る(which interestingly enough got an anime adaption announced yesterday) and ののはな通信 because I’m bad at resisting the temptation of starting new books instead of actually finishing the ones that I’ve started first.
And finally… just a random observation looking back at what I’ve read during the last three months: since I’ve unintentionally alternated between light novels that originally were written as web novels and ones that just were traditionally published from the start, I’ve noticed that there definitely seems to be a bit of a difference between the writing style of the two, at least among the ones I’ve read(the web novel adaptions have a more… anime-ish and action-focused style on average, I guess? Not all of them, but most). Of course there’s also a lot of similarities as well though.
(actually, I guess I can also mention that kindle has started trying to recommend me Japanese books about learning English for some reason and I have absolutely no idea why )
I can do one of those things too!
I guess this sums it all up:
… okay maybe not.
This is going to sound a lot like things I have posted before, but on the one hand I am really happy about my current reading speed (I can finish some books in a single day!), on the other hand I set myself a goal of reading 雪国 in January and I read maybe 10 pages of that.
Also, despite promising myself I would not buy more books until I’m done with everything I own, I still bought the rest of the 薬屋のひとりごと series…
I guess I’m conflicted about doing great at doing the wrong thing.
Anyway, for something different, I was looking the novel rankings just published by booklive for their 10th anniversary:
First, はめふら is number 1 in the light novel aimed at women category! I’m kinda happy about it. Looking at the rest of the list, uh, that’s a lot of pink and blond wavy hair.
Then I checked the category for men and uhh that’s a lot of exposed flesh.
Also, why is くま クマ 熊 ベアー considered a LN for men when 転移先は薬師が少ない世界でした is considered to be aimed at women? 解せぬ.
Similarly, 紅霞後宮物語 is considered aimed at women but 薬屋のひとりごと is for men??
Who is sorting those categories.
Is there no category for books not aimed at a certain gender?
I guess there’s at least the 小説・文芸 category 
(which, the categories being kind of silly and very arbitrary aside, has quite a few books I recognise )
Same here, I started two book club books last month (with a third one starting soon) and I am already considering finishing one of them way ahead of schedule…
For the monthly reflection, last month I participated in a German-Italian language circle where each participant read the short story 高瀬舟 by 森鷗外 on their own, and then everybody got together in an online meeting to discuss the contents. In Japanese!! 
I was super-nervous. Also, it was aimed at upper-intermediate to advanced learners while I think I’m “normal” intermediate at best, and so I was not surprised that my Japanese skills were probably around the weakest of all attendees. But I understood quite a bit and I said something as well, so mission accomplished
The story was pretty nice though, muuuuch easier to read than 雪国, and surprisingly relevant to modern society. I would like to read more by that author.
Other than that, I finished two book club manga and started two book club books, as mentioned above.
You could just… not do all the book clubs. 
Seriously though, are you joining all these book clubs because they all interest you, because you don’t like missing out, or some other reason?
I wish.
Yes, but those are not light novels, by definition
Oh, I don’t even do half of them
Many different reasons, I guess.
Initially I thought that “book club” means a group of people who decided to get together to read books, and so they read all of the books that get picked no matter whether they are fond of them or not, because they have this “overarching” commitment of being book club members. That’s how I handled the book clubs for quite some time because I like this commitment idea in general and also for the weekly assignments which can be very motivational for me. But (maybe due to the fluctuating nature of these forums and the online medium in general?) many participants don’t act in this way, which has two effects: Sometimes a book is being read by only a small number of people (which leads to very silent threads), and on the other hand there are book reading threads popping up everywhere. Both of which is totally fine, but it got me thinking how I want to treat the book clubs in the future. Bottom line: my participation in book clubs used to be motivated by this “commitment” idea for a long time, but I’m more and more stepping back from that.
For the book clubs I’m currently part of, these are the reasons:
I really like the Advanced Book Club pick (容疑者X) because it’s a book with a good reputation that’s aimed at adults (that’s where my main interest lies).
I joined Koteki mainly because I like the Read Aloud sessions, not because of the book.
And Your Name is one of the first books I bought, so I would be super-happy to read it eventually (this is where the motivational aspect of the book club comes in).
For the manga, it’s different. Manga is not really my medium but I thought I’d try a few to see whether I might like them nonetheless. So far, the results have been mixed, and I will probably more or less stop reading them at some point. But I’m planning to read at least the volumes I bought so far, and then decide again.