It hath returned! 
Can I suggest you maybe collapse some of the information, to make it a little less intimidating to read? Like the samples, perhaps. If you’re new to discourse, you can do it with:
[details=“Text Sample”]
sample goes here
[/details]
But I love reading walls of text!
I only read the section on 獣の奏者 since I recognized it…
Now I skimmed through the rest though. So on that note:
This is the worst. I’m looking forward to reading more “normal” books with proper kanji use.
Good suggestion! Should be easier to read now with the detail tags.
@seanblue
I know what you mean. If even basic words like 暮らす, 終わり or 始まり are written without kanji – and that is often the case in Kiki –, I personally think it hurts the text flow a bit. I think having more kanji and an adequate amount of furigana would make it easier. On the other hand, this, too, is good practice to improve your own reading capabilities by learning to segment the text even when there are no kanji to help you.
Ooh, looking nice!
Also definitely agree re: furigana. It’s very overwhelming as a beginner to be presented with an unending string of hiragana.
I wonder if I want to read this. Hmm hmm. It seems interesting. And the protagonist is named エリン. I have an affinity.
I can only recommend it. It’s a beautiful story. The vast amount of new words in the beginning may be discouraging, but it gets easier quickly once you’ve read a few chapters.
If you like fantasy you’ll probably enjoy it. The anime was fantastic, and covers the first two books out of four. I probably won’t get to it this year with so many other books already on my shelf, but I’ll probably try to read it next year.
Thanks for the recommendations. I’m loving コンビニ人間.
I’m not much into fantasy so I kinda stopped looking too often into the Book clubs here, been under the impression that that was the favorite genre.
Would you happen to have a similar recommendation? Daily life, straightforward type of novel. Before this novel I was under the impression that I was sort of bound to read books aimed at kids for quite some time, so now I’m eager to found something similar. 
But コンビニ人間 is fiction. 
I don’t have any similar suggestions for you, but I’m definitely interested in what others have to say because I really liked コンビニ人間.
I guess I meant fantasy 
…
But yeah, looking some other forums now, seems that it caught a lot of attention with japanese learners for some of the same reasons I like it. Easy to read aimed at a more mature audience.
Maybe I should update this thread with the books I’ve read since. Yeah, I’ll do that when I have time.
I read 佐賀のがばいばあちゃん in May and absolutely loved it. It’s more or less an autobiographical book completely different from コンビニ人間 in terms of style and ton. But it’s straightforward, daily life, easy to digest and super funny and heartwarming. Might even be my favorite Japanese book so far (and I only bought it by accident).
I wrote some more here: 多読/extensive reading challenge
The book we’re reading with the intermediate club right now, キッチン, is similar to コンビニ人間 in that it isn’t too difficult in regards to vocab and grammar used. It is very daily life, and kind of straightforward-ish? Like, it all follows a certain theme, and there’s no confusion why stuff happens. But also kind of not straightforward at all. There’s a lot more metaphors and philosophical themes in this one compared to コンビニ人間, and that can be a challenge! I’ve been enjoying it a lot.
The author, 吉本ばなな is pretty well known and has written a lot of other books as well (as has the author of コンビニ人間). Other books written by an author whose style you like might be a good bet too. 
you sure weren’t giving any spoilers there…
any synopsis available?
You can check the nomination in the intermediate book club thread.
I also don’t think fantasy is the favorite genre of the club, since none of the selected books fall in that exact category. It was SF, horror, horror-ish?, action with fantasy, whatever the hell Kino is (SF?), slice-of-life with SF elements, literature, literature.
If anything, I’d say there’s more of a bias toward SF, but it’s not even that clear.
Thanks, that put a couple of books under my radar. 
I actually stumped with the synopsis here as well
Who knows, maybe some of those could make it to the club in the future. I’m saving 「きらきらひかる」as a candidate .
Well, two of those were already picked up 
きらきらひかる sounds interesting too.
You’re welcome. 
Personally not a big fan of uninvited spoilers. Unless you want some?
I’ll link you the nomination post in the intermediate book club thread. It has the Japanese and English summaries as well as sample pages so you can see the writing style for yourself.
I recently discovered a book review blog that you might want to roam for interesting books:
I just briefly skimmed it but one book stuck out to me so far: むらさきのスカートの女, by Imamura Natsuko.
The review even compares it to コンビニ人間 style-wise.
That’s great!!! thanks!
Actually I was trying to find such kind of blog. Just going through books and shows basing my choice on personal preference and likings is the way that I’m trying to progress with my japanese these days.
I don’t have any interest in kids books anymore (but sadly for a long time it was the only category where I could pick some books that I felt could comfortably read) and not been specially a fan of SF or fantasy books, which I feel are the most popular recommendations in the book clubs, was looking for literature that could result in an enriching experience while hopefully creating a reading habit.
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