ホリミヤ (Horimiya)
Summary
Taken from MAL:
On the surface, the thought of Kyouko Hori and Izumi Miyamura getting along would be the last thing in people’s minds. After all, Hori has a perfect combination of beauty and brains, while Miyamura appears meek and distant to his fellow classmates. However, a fateful meeting between the two lays both of their hidden selves bare. Even though she is popular at school, Hori has little time to socialize with her friends due to housework. On the other hand, Miyamura lives under the noses of his peers, his body bearing secret tattoos and piercings that make him look like a gentle delinquent.
Having opposite personalities yet sharing odd similarities, the two quickly become friends and often spend time together in Hori’s home. As they both emerge from their shells, they share with each other a side of themselves concealed from the outside world.
Availability
Digital: Amazon JP ・ Bookwalker
Personal Opinion
It actually took me a bit of flipping through my reading list to find something that I felt would be suitable for this club, but I think I found it with this pick! I think it’s a good fit because it’s a nice, fun read without too much difficulty. As a slice-of-life manga (with progression!), it has a lot of daily-use speech, and the grammar is straightforward and simple. It’s rated a touch higher than some previous picks at level 21 on Natively, but is still more than achievable!
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
- Kanji has furigana!
- Grammar is simple; nothing crazy that I’ve spotted
- Book length is easily within our usual bounds
- Just a nice, funny read! Nothing heavy (could also be a con if that’s what people are looking for)
- The main series is finished, so there is a goal to strive towards in finishing the series (though there is also an Omake series currently running for those who would want more!)
- Artwork is just adorable (personal opinion, but it’s got a charm to it that I love!)
- Popular anime, and an English translation of the manga for those who like to compare side-by-side.
- Forgot to list this at first, but if you have Kindle Unlimited, you already have access to the first volume!
Cons
- Longer chapters mean we’ll be splitting up chapters quite often (generally there are decent breakpoints from what I’ve been able to see, though).
- The author really likes to utilize the small background text to make jokes fairly often, and that is handwritten, so could be a little more difficult to parse for newer readers/readers who are only comfortable with standard fonts
- Text density can occasionally be a bit heavy, but nothing too crazy
Pictures
Additional Pages
The next 3 pages of Chapter 1 are pretty representative of what you can expect to run into. You can view a preview of the book here.
Difficulty Poll
How much effort would you need to read this book?
- No effort at all
- Minimal effort
- Moderate effort
- Substantial effort
- So much effort my head might explode
- I don’t know
0 voters