May 19
And today I finished Roman Holiday booklet. The story picked up considerably from the boring part early on. Note for authors: when half your main characters (and there are exactly two) are asleep, interesting/fun conflict is hard to do. 
(Side note: if you want to read some more commentary from me about graded readers, I did a post over in that book club.
Tomorrow, or today maybe if I have time, I will dig into native content. So I guess it is time to check on the poll and close it. /be right back
Poll results and my reflections on it
Thanks everyone for your votes and comments. It honestly helped me pick what I am going to read next and feel confident in my choice. Before then, I was pretty wishy-washy about what to pick, so your votes made a difference.
Lets go from the bottom up, shall we?
結婚しても got the short stick for sure. But perhaps you all agreed that I should try and revive the off-shoot book club and therefore voting for me reading it alone, made no sense. ^^ That is my interpretation of the no votes anyway. 
Something else was the suggestion of Fruits Basket, and it is high-ish on my list, so I made it fairly easily accessible too when I re-arranged my boxes of books. Aria got almost no love, haha. Poor Aria.
I’m not sure exactly when I will pick Aria, but for some reason I’m feeling pretty hype about it? Maybe because despite seeing it mentioned a lot around the forum (when it was an active club and for some time after), I actually don’t really know what happens in it at all. I know it is slice-of-life-ish, but how much? How much overarching plot is there? It does have an end, so supposedly something gets finished/changed (I hope anyway). But options higher in the poll is definitely higher on my reading list for now.
Sailor V was about as popular as the other low ones. Make me think that maybe I’ll just read it after Sailor Moon, like I originally planned. (Of course, I didn’t know that it was a prequel (I think) and started before Sailor Moon, when I started Sailor Moon.)
I’m skipping discussing Orange for a bit, and instead sticking with Sailor Moon. I found it interesting how many voted for me to continue that despite my somewhat negative commentary on it. Not sure what it means. Maybe we’re all just a bunch of completionists?
Just to be clear, I’m not putting anyone down for picking that. I would have left it off the poll if it truly didn’t interest me. ^^
Edit: I realized I forgot to get back to Orange, it has been covered pretty well in replies to the poll. It is high in my priority because it is one long story, but also only 6 volumes long. So not a super long time commitment while also giving the satisfaction of reading a proper story (instead of slice of life). And would hopefully have more even difficulty than Sailor Moon which always gets harder towards the end of an arch when the enemies are more present.
When it comes to manga, I think my plan looks like this:
- Read volume 1 of Yotsubato.
- Continue with volume 2 directly, or finish of the current arc in Sailor Moon (or possibly both)
- Profit?!?!?!
- Keep reading Sailor Moon or switch to Orange, while possibly reading Yotsubato on the side.
- I don’t plan this far in advance.
As for Zenitendou… I honestly don’t know where I wanna slot that in. It got enough votes that clearly I should try to get to it sooner rather than later (it gained second place!). I’ll probably check in how I feel when I’ve finished the current arc of Sailor Moon. So maybe I won’t read more Sailor Moon or start Orange at that time, but slot Zenitendou there (so step 3 4).
So later today or tomorrow, Yotsubato is on the menu. /nom nom nom
On a slightly unrelated note, considering the difficulty of 坊っちゃん, would that be considered hard enough for Intermediate book club? I’m just kinda curious where I kinda fall in my current reading ability. ^^ I’ll probably be looking to join BBC for the next pick.
(Even if I can deal with IBC’s difficulty, its weekly volume might be more of a hindrance right now. I want to have time to read my own picks. :3 )
Edit: PS, I leveled up today. <3