wow, that is a banger of a special feature for a book club!
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黒猫ニャンゴの冒険
Author: 篠浦 知螺
Page count: 320
Natively: Level 29
Summary
Japanese
第1巻の内容紹介: 異世界に転生した少年は冒険者を志すが、体は最弱種族の猫人で、手にした魔法は”空っぽ”とバカにされる空属性だった。 しかし少年は大きなハンデをものともせず、創意工夫で空魔法を武器や防具を生み出せて、空も歩ける魔法へと変えていく。 周囲の優しさに支えられ成長し、そして空属性の真価に気付いた時、最強の猫人冒険者としての旅が始まる！
(Source: Amazon)
English
Becoming a a cat in a different world - an adventure that is more than just cute begins!
A boy is reborn in another world and aspires to become an adventurer, but his body is that of a cat person, the weakest race in the world, and the magic he has in his hands has the emptiness (空) attribute, which is ridiculed as just that: “empty” (空っぽ).
However, the boy, despite his great disadvantage, uses his ingenuity to transform emptiness attribute magic into magic that can create weapons and armor, and even walk in the sky.
With the support of the kindness of those around him, he grows up, and when he realizes the true value of the emptiness attribute, his journey as the strongest cat adventurer begins!
(Source: DeepL translation from the Amazon.co.jp, edited by me)
Availability
Physical: Amazon JP | Rakuten | CD Japan | Kinokuniya JP
Ebook: Bookwalker | eBook Japan | Honto
Personal Opinion
I have read the first two manga volumes currently available, and it was really fun and incredibly charming, so I need more. Enter the LN.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
- Technically isekai, but actually adventure fantasy. In the manga it’s mentioned once in the beginning that the character is actually reborn from another word, and then never again as far as I can remember. Napthalene commented on it on the Natively forums as “It’s mentioned a few times in the story, to explain why he knows X or Y. But his behavior matches that of other people, while the main character of 男性向け isekai tend to stick out, so it doesn’t really matter.”
- Unlike many isekai, the main character starts pretty weak and has to train hard and actually use their head. And… he actually gets badly hurt (light spoiler), which is something that I feel like doesn’t happen often in isekai.
- A cute beastfolk main character who’s kind, clever and hard-working.
- It’s a series, so if you like it, there’s more where it came from.
Cons
- The series is still ongoing, so if you reach the end you’ll have to wait for more.
Pictures
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You can probably remove 夜警 from the list since I ran it as an informal club.
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Thanks for the heads up! I think I‘ll leave it in for now - if nobody is interested it will drop out soon anyway.
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It’s Poll Time!
Have a look at the List of Proposed Books section in the first post for details on each book. Every book has a Natively level associated with it which is annotated in the poll (this Natively list contains all nominated books if you want to have a look at the gradings in detail).
Do not rely solely on Natively level when making a choice. Please have a look at the nomination posts if you haven’t already.
Expected reading pace: We aim to read books at ~15 pages per week (that number might vary a bit throughout, depending on the book’s breaks and chapters). The pick’s exact reading schedule will be negotiated before the book club kicks off.
Short book rule: If the first place is taken by a pick that will take us 6 weeks or less to read, we will read the one in second place directly after it, without running a poll in between.
Start of Book Club: We will start the next book on May 31st (after a one-week break).
Poll duration: The poll will be closed on 2025-04-17T09:00:00Z. You can choose up to 5 options.
Oh, and if somebody could update the thread title to “Now voting!” that would be great. Thanks!
- 人質の朗読会 小川 洋子 [246p. / L30?? / Novel]
- 西の魔女が死んだ 梨木 香歩 [226p. / L28 / Novel]
- 掏摸(スリ) 中村 文則 [175p. / L32 / Novel]
- 森崎書店の日々 八木沢 里志 [205p. / L32 / Novel]
- 夜警 赤川 次郎 [312p. / L30 / Novel]
- すずめの戸締まり 新海 誠 [384p. / L31 / Novel]
- 家守綺譚 梨木 香歩 [208p. / L30?? / Novel]
- 阪急電車 有川 浩 [269p. / L35 / Novel]
- お探し物は図書室まで 青山 美智子 [327p. / L29 / Novel]
- 怪人二十面相 江戸川 乱歩 [245p. / L29 / Novel]
- ミーナの行進 小川洋子 [348p. / L30?? / Novel]
- 黒猫ニャンゴの冒険 篠浦 知螺 [320p. / L29 / Light Novel]
0
voters
12 Likes
FYI I found Bookwalker’s free version of 怪人二十面相 (this one) -
So far Bookwalker has all the Aozora free books I’ve searched for, you just have to trawl through the results or sort by price.
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I keep thinking it’s Tongariboshi all over again at first glance. 
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Might have been mentioned before, but there’s also free readings on it on YouTube since it’s out of copyright!
Ex: male narrator, one long video and female narrator, playlist
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Cool thanks, I’ve added it to the post 
I think I’m happy I read it on Aozora because it’s easy to copy / paste the text, use Yomichan etc, but I can see why it can be nice to read it on Bookwalker for people having all their books over there or for the vertical reading
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ニャンゴ is used to struggle. It’s not an easy life, being a pirate adventurer cat.
But I’m happy to see that there is some interest at least! 
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I happen to have picked up 西の魔女が死んだ for cheap somewhere, but haven’t read it yet. I won’t skew the vote (have a bunch of other books on my to-read list), but I’ll keep an eye out if it wins.
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I was trying to avoid temptation, but … free audiobook … free e-book … a classic … I give up! If this wins I’m gonna have to give it a go. 
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In early counting, it doesn’t look as if it is enough to tempt people. 
If it doesn’t win, I’ll potentially read it anyway and run an informal club so that I can ‘meet’ my 推しの作家 for the November event
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I forgot to post the epub I found for those who want to be able to load it on e-readers with proper formatting:
Note that it contains two stories.
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Shame there’s so little interest for the other 小川 in the list. Personally, I think that one sounds even more interesting.
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Well, we can add it to the list for an 小川洋子 off shoot club.
I’m keen to read the one I have nominated next, but also thinking of running a re-read club for 博士の愛した数式.
And then there is ホテルアイリス, which looks good in a somewhat disturbing way…
(oh, and 密やかな結晶)
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I have been thinking about an 小川洋子 book club for some time now… but in all honesty I would prefer it to be on Natively instead of here 
The chances of finding like-minded people feels much higher to me over there. What do you think?
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I watched an anime a couple years ago called 二十面相の娘. I didn’t realize it was actually based on an existing work.
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I don’t have any experience of the Natively book clubs, but happy to do that/join that if there are more people interested. (Could possibly cross post to WK).
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