I actually made a mental note that it might be helpful to have a filtering mechanism for larger lists 
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I did add a couple books from the Korean side, including that good one I think! (ある閉ざされた雪の山荘で | L30 ?) I can’t read Korean, though, so I just copy-paste the titles into google and see if I can find a Japanese title, and if I can’t or if the Japanese version isn’t already listed on Natively, I haven’t bothered 
I didn’t know that was a thing! I’ll consider it if I start getting lazy about it later on, thanks!
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First update! 4 squares filled:
Pretty cover: 미제레레 | L32
Also a physical read! Randomly bought it because I loved the cover. The story tells about about 이영음– a frighteningly thin woman who can only crunch on bamboo toothpicks for her food. It also seems that death follows her…
This book isn’t what I thought it was going to be, but I still had a good time!
Fantasy: 만화 화산귀환 1 | L28
I’m in my webtoon era. Pretty typical ‘reborn boy gains skills in martial arts/powers or whatever in order to save his sect’.
No Reviews/Ratings/Gradings: 번외 | L28
Also a physical read! May need to move things around if I don’t keep up with my physical book reading lol but I have so many I need to get through…sigh….
Young adult book about the sole survivor of a school shooting, taking place on the anniversary. Very meandering and interesting look into what it might be like to be in his position. (Of course the perpetrator is a korean-american 
)
Hidden Identity: 비밀 | L31
Another from Higashino. Love this man.
After an accident, Hasuke discovers that his 11-year-old daughter actually harbors his wife’s soul. So while on the outside he must grieve his wife, in reality his wife is ‘alive’ through his daughter’s body. And his daughter’s soul must be gone with his wife’s body….sigh. Was kind of a slog for me as a lot is just them living life in this situation, but it made me really think about their situation and even when the characters made bad decisions, I kind of got it. Because wtf DO you do in this situation. I got rlly into it the last 200 or so pages, so worth the slow first half tbh. 10/10 don’t talk to me if you disagree (I see you, English reviews. No, it’s not a thriller, Higashino has range so don’t expect everything to be like suspect x!!!).
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OK - a couple of updates from me!
And I think I’m going to go for the full bingo board, so adding in the missing prompts.
| B | I | N | G | O |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Science Fiction - 星くずの殺人 | Someone’s card | Historical fiction | Won an award | Added to Natively - 円卓 |
| Mythical creature | Book Club | Nonmodern period | New Author - 愛してる | Published in 2026 |
| Past club | MC hidden identity | Prettiest book | Going in Blind - 国境の南、太陽の西 | Grapevine |
| Ghost(s) | Unseen lifeform - はるか | Natively Virgin | Title doubletake - 我が友、スミス | Fantasy - 炎上する君 |
| TBR limbo | cat(s) | Dropped in 2025 | Finish a series | TBR forgotten |
So newly adding
はるか | L27 - Unseen Lifeform - An AI human - still not something real thankfully!
星くずの殺人 | L32 - Sci-fi - Murders in space
我が友、スミス | L34 - Title doubletake - Quite early on we realised that Mr. Smith is not a person as you’d assume, it’s an excerise machine 
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They’re quite literally called Smith machines. (in case anyone thought the character named it himself, like some people do with cars) My husband has one in our garage. That’s funny. I wouldn’t have thought of that from the title either. 
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Another week, another bingo update! March is starting out quite well, with three books finished already, plus another two that I finished in late February. The bingo is still not bingo-ing but I’m starting to get close, and I technically have a diagonal with 6 books already.
First we start with Japanese! Manga again, https://learnnatively.com/book/4757e36a02/ and 玉藻の恋 | L18. Both were really cute. I got a kitten a few months ago so the dynamic between the older cat and kitten felt quite relatable, and the language was nice and simple. This, naturally, is perfect for the has cats prompt. As for the other book, I started it what seems like forever ago with the ABBC, and I’d never gotten around to finishing it, but I’m glad I finally did! Not the best manga out there either, it’s kind of a romance kind of not, and not necessarily my style of book either, but it was fine.
Next we move on to Korean with 김 대리가 죽었대 | L30?? ! This was a library book, and I am happy to report that I managed to finish it before the end of my hold. I most definitely recommend this. It’s a bit of a peculiar style, a dark comedy wrapped around a mystery, but if you go in expecting a traditional mystery you’ll be disappointed. Overall it was very interesting though, with lots of unexpected but funny scenes, and as a bonus a commentary on how people with invisible disabilities are perceived by most able-bodied people. This was definitely harder than expected language wise (I was not ready for so much medical vocab), but I made it, with the reward of being able to enjoy a good book as well. I’ve put this in my going in blind square, because all I really did prior to picking this book was confirm the page number (so that it’d be feasible for me to read it in under a week), the title, and then I just saw that it was a funny.
Next comes a Spanish book, La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades: 5 NOVELERIA | L43 ! This is a classic, the first example of Spanish literature, and while I’d somehow disillusioned myself into thinking I’d like this, it wasn’t great. I’ve read parts of this before too, so idk why I thought it’d be enjoyable. Anyway, at least now I’ve read this emblematic work and I can move on to more interesting books, it really was bugging me for years. Not one I recommend unless you just want to read it for the culture. This one is going into my TBR #2 square.
And finally, I’ve just finished 죽고 싶지만 떡볶이는 먹고 싶어 | L30 ! I’m kinda ambivalent on that one, I know this a super popular book so I was expecting more and it unfortunately didn’t deliver. The format of the bulk of the book being therapy sessions was interesting, nothing like anything I’ve read before, but reading someone else’s therapy sessions is only so interesting. I actually liked the second part better, but that was unfortunately just 1/5th of the book at best. Either way, this naturally goes into my nonfiction square!
Past squares
- Korean No reviews no gradings: 연어 | L30??
- Korean Fantasy: 나 혼자만 레벨업 3
- French TBR: Le village des sourds
- Korean Reread: 죽이고 싶은 아이 | L25
- Spanish TBR #1: LA OTRA ORILLA FG (FORMATO GRANDE) | L42
- Italian Unusual genre: Novencento : un monologo
- Italian Nonfiction: Il fascismo eterno
- Spanish Poetry: Rimas y leyendas
- English Nonfiction: How to kill a witch
- Korean Rec’d to me: 고양이 학교 1부 1 | L25
- Korean What is this title?: 당연하게도 나는 너를 | L26
- Italian TBR: Il piccolo principe
- Korean Past book club: 밤을 건너는 소년 | L26
- Korean TBR: 따뜻한 글자
- Korean Final boss: 12시간 뒤 1권 | L31
- English Book club: Capitalism: a ghost story
- Japanese Keep hearing about it: ハピネス 1 | L15
- Japanese New creature/lifeform: 10分で読めるこわい話 1年生 | L18
- Korean Library book: 눈물 상자 | L26
- Korean Buddy read: 시간 고양이 | L27
- Korean Hidden identity: 나 혼자만 레벨업 4권
- Japanese Has cats: https://learnnatively.com/book/4757e36a02/
- Japanese Past book club: 玉藻の恋 | L18
- Korean Going in blind: 김 대리가 죽었대 | L30??
- Spanish TBR #2: La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades: 5 NOVELERIA | L43
- Korean Nonfiction: 죽고 싶지만 떡볶이는 먹고 싶어 | L30
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Fantasy! 魔女の宅急便〈その2〉キキと新しい魔法
I loved where this volume went in the end. There were a few chapters in the middle that were quite sad, but yeah, the themes throughout the book were great and made the story feel very cohesive. Definitely plan to keep reading this series at some point. And maybe someday other series by 角野 栄子, who knows!
| B | I | N | G | O |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Past club | Finish a series | Cats and Dogs | Title doubletake | Fantasy |
| Dropped | Meta | Nonfiction | About language | Non-modern |
| One word title | Someone’s card | Reread | SF | Unseen lifeform |
| Pretty | Ghosts | Mythological | New author | Multiple contributors |
| Queer | Final Boss | Natively Unreviewed | MC hidden identity | Award |
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Wanted to make sure I filled the series square early, because it seemed like it would be a big time investment, but it turned out to be the easiest one so far
G4 - Finish a series: Doubt 4 | L21
Reread of a manga series I read a longggg time ago in English as an edgy highschooler, where a group of teens who met each other in a Mafia-/Werewolf-style find-the-traitor game online are kidnapped and made to play it for real. I remembered very little about it and I’m not sure how happy I am about revisiting it from an entertainment perspective, but it gets me a little closer to my goal of understanding Natively levels at least.
Overall, I did not enjoy the story much and wouldn’t really recommend reading the series for entertainment alone. However, I did consistently look forward to my sessions reading it as a learner. This manga is like study junk food – the dark/edgy content feels like it should be much more difficult than it is, so it takes very little effort for the accomplishment of destroying a ‘mature’ 800-some page series in Japanese.
When I started the series, it was a level above きまぐれロボット (22 vs 21), and I think my grading might have been what changed it (to 21 vs 23). I don’t like the idea of grading prose against manga, because I don’t think the style of difficulty is very comparable or the comparisons are very useful, but in this case, Doubt was so significantly easier for something rated more difficult that it didn’t feel right to skip grading them. Doubt could probably be comfortably read by someone at a much lower level of Japanese than きまぐれロボット.
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Despite the fact that the vague memories I have don’t quite inspire me to re-read it, I still went “IS THAT—?” when I saw the cover in your card
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My bingo is so cooked. I need to pick up the pace, but work is busy and I keep reading bad books.
you may notice that there is a new book in the DOTY space. Yep, right after I read what I thought would be my worst book of the year, I read one that was worse. 더럽혀진 성지순례에 대하여 was just hard to read (think several chapters made up entirely of 3 characters talking to each other with no dialogue markers at all) and had no impact, unlike the first book. So I moved Red Clover to coverly love since I fell for it based on the cover. Here’s hoping I don’t find a worse book than this.
Then I decided to immediately read a very short book by the same author of the one in the DOTY box. It was pretty good.
Then I started reading this Chinese 사회파 mystery, but it turned out to lowkey be kind of like a collection of short stories, so I lost steam. I will finish it at some point.
I finished my first planned buddy read of multiple with @Kelorae . We technically started 7년의 밤 in late December, but I was in Korea for all of January and then we were both reading other books as our main books, so I think we read most of it in the last week. It was a goal book for both of us. It was recommended to me in January 2025, but it looked way too hard for me at the time. On 12/4 it reached 98% comprehension and I finished it today at 98.7% comprehension. I can’t say I loved it. It was a bit of a frustrating book in a few ways, but I’ll acknowledge that it had themes and the writing wasn’t half-bad. Huge trigger warning. 3 stars.
I have plenty of books in progress (including physical books), but I think my next ebook – because I do most of my reading while walking around or in bed at night – will be 방황하는 칼날 because a book at 99.7% word comprehension sounds like a joy. I’ve heard this one is also quite triggering. Haha.
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