There are 5 parts in the web novel. The 5th part is the longest, but there have already been 11 books in part 5 (more than part 4’s 9 books in total). So it looks like volume 33 (part 5 book 12) will be the last one.
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By the way, there are a couple LNs I could nominate, but honestly there’s a good chance I wouldn’t join any book club unless the pace is just right, so should I still nominate them?
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Hmm. Nominate then if you think they’re good books other people will enjoy, I’d say. If we get a bunch of nominations from people who aren’t intending to participate in the first place it could be a problem, but at such an early stage we’re probably okay with an extra nomination or two.
What kind of pace are you looking for, incidentally?
One is a relatively well-known / popular series (青春ブタ野郎はバニーガール先輩の夢を見ない). The others have simply been recommended to me and I don’t really know much about them, which makes me a bit wary to nominate them. (Those would be 竜殺しのブリュンヒルド and AURA ~魔竜院光牙最後の闘い~.)
I haven’t read many LNs, other than 本好き which has already been nominated, so that means I can’t really nominate ones I’ve already read. The only other one I’ve read that I would recommend is 魔法少女育成計画, but that’s probably a bit niche.
Probably about 30 pages per week, which to be fair is probably faster than this club will go. Basically looking for something comfortably between the WaniKani IBC (15 pages per week) and ABC (sometimes 30 pages per week, but can get as high as 50 pages per week).
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I’d be fine if you nominated one or two, even without knowing quality; we’ve got plenty of room for nominations at the moment.
I’ve been thinking over the pace question; initially I suggested doing a separate pace for each book, but I’m a bit concerned we’d just pigeonhole ourselves into a set pace anyway. Newcomers could see a faster pace than they’re comfortable with and assume that’s our standard pace and ultimately decide not to join.
I’d like to make the club as welcoming as I can; I’d love to see a bunch of engagement. Unfortunately reading levels are going to vary so widely and/or be massively skewed towards lower levels, which makes things difficult… I think we’ve been averaging something like ~30 pgs/week in the mystery club, with the odd 50/60 page week here and there.
A manga club to potentially be more welcoming towards lower levels. Could also set things up to be more like WK with a beginner club, etc, but I personally do like the more “themed” clubs myself. Maybe some polls could be illuminating:
Which are you more interested in?
- A set reading pace
- Voting on the pace per book
0
voters
What pace are you more comfortable with?
- Slower (~15-20ish pages/week)
- Medium (~30ish pages/week)
- Fast (~40+ pages/week)
- Wherever suits the natural divisions in the book
0
voters
Also, you should nominate your picks @Dexter since you were the interested one in the first place!
The Mystery Book Club was modeled on WK’s Advanced Book Club so I generally try to split things into 30-40 but try when possible to ramp things up towards the end as the nature of mysteries means people get impatient and it’s honestly not very fun (for me at least) when people race off an finish ahead of schedule. So… I try to schedule it 
But LNs are a different beast. For me personally, if the vote landed on something that interested me I wouldn’t have trouble slowing down to meet a 15 page/week pace, I’m always reading multiple books and for faster readers that seems to be common.
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Book:
Is there an ebook available?: Yes
Is there an audiobook available?: Yes, at least from Audible
Is there an all-furigana version available?: I don’t think so
Summary - Japanese
――ねえ、キスしよっか。そう言って僕をからかってきた彼女は、しばらくして僕の前から消えてしまった。 図書館にバニーガールは棲息していない。その常識を覆し、梓川咲太は野生のバニーガールに出会った。しかも彼女はただのバニーではない。咲太の高校の上級生にして、活動休止中の人気タレント桜島麻衣先輩だったのだ。数日前から彼女の姿が“周囲の人間に見えない”という事象が起こり、図書館でその検証をしていたという。咲太は麻衣に協力する名目で彼女とお近づきになるが――？ 海と空に囲まれた町で、僕と彼女の恋にまつわる物語が始まる。
(Amazon)
Summary - English
Out of sight, out of mind! Bunny girls do not live in libraries. This is simply common sense. And yet, that’s exactly where Sakuta finds one in the wild. More bewildering is who the bunny girl is: Mai Sakurajima, a girl one year older than Sakuta, famous at their school for her acting career even though she’s currently on break. To top it all off, it seems like no one else in the library can see Mai at all, no matter what she does or…wears. Wanting to find out more about this mystery and maybe get a little closer to this beautiful upperclassman in the process, Sakuta launches an investigation to discover why an unforgettable bunny girl keeps becoming totally invisible.
(AniList)
Content warnings if known
None that I know of, unless you have a problem with bunny girls.
Why are you nominating this book: I enjoyed the anime years ago but haven’t had the motivation to read the LN on my own, so I figure a book club might help push me to read it.
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By the way, @eefara, I’d recommend tweaking the template to suggest grabbing the English summary from AniList before just settling for machine translation.
(Also, I think I’m only going to nominate the one for now. I’ll consider nominating more in the future depending on how the first book club goes.)
People like you make me feel like a weirdo, only reading one book at a time. 
I’m rarely reading more than one book at a time because I have trouble balancing them. And if I’m enjoying a book I tend to focus on that one and stop everything else, making it hard to keep up with more than one at a time.
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Ah, that’s a good thought. 
I’ve basically never been to the site, so I don’t really think of it. Plus I stole the template from the mystery club and barely gave it a second glance, haha. I’ll go change that though, it’s a good idea.
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The last volume is coming out this December, and a draft version is available on なろう, so “pretty much finished”.
(edit: ah I see now it was already mentioned)
Officially, it was due to health issues. Volume 7 is like 90% done and even have the illustrations finished. But it’s true that it might never happen. Anyway, volume 1 works well on its own.
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It works much better for this club than the mystery club since AniList tracks LNs but not regular novels.
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It happened with Full Metal Panic, it also happened with Amaburi (and this one, afaik, doesn’t even have a % completed). My point is he keeps starting stuff without finishing the previous.
If it’s a health issue, it sucks, and shit happens, but my point still stands that starting something that you might never get to see the end, specially if you enjoy it, is a horrible experience.
So if a series doesn’t have a constant publishing that I see is kept, or finished, for the most part I stay away.
I voted on the medium/higher part, but for me it really depends on whether I’m enjoying or not to be capable of doing such speed. Also usually when I start, it’s always slow until I get used to the writing style.
I guess that would be a way to go for me too. I have two Novels ongoing, so it’s a matter of switching to the other in the end.
Glad to know a conclusion is on the way! It’s always scary when series get those high volume counts and that in the end you might get forever waiting after investing an insane amount of time.
How many sequels that series has?
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Uhh, a lot, which is certainly part of my concern with reading it as well.
Yeah I agree. Like I mentioned earlier, the only LN series I’ve enjoyed so far besides 本好き is 魔法少女育成計画, but this series is already up to 17 volumes (granted 5 of them are short story collections) and I’ve only finished 6 and have no idea how long the series will continue. I tried to find a web version but couldn’t find one for the main story, just the short stories. Well except for the two-part Breakdown volumes, which ironically are really long and rated very highly compared to the other volumes, so I’m surprised those were originally serialized online. (Side note: In trying to see if it has a web version to figure out how long it might go I found a pixiv page with art even to the 5th/6th volumes that I just read and beyond, which seems to indicate the series is surprisingly popular.)
Also, given my enjoyment the 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 anime I want to give that LN a try at some point (maybe after I finish 本好き, so not nominating it now). This one is on ncode.syosetu.com, indicating it has a Part 1 and Part 2 with several chapters/sections each, definitely beyond the bunko version (which publishes relatively slowly), but there hasn’t been a new main chapter since 2020 (and no new side story since 2021). Unfortunately I have no way of knowing if that means the series is completed on web and it’s just a matter of converting them to bunko or if it’s just on hold because the bunko version is taking up the author’s time or for some other reason. It’s really frustrating not knowing if the series is done or if it could still have actual new content for years to come.
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same. If I enjoy a book, I find it hard to put down and my brain keeps wandering back to the other book if I try to read something else. In the mystery BC I am usually OK in the first half but then abandon the schedule in the second half as I want to know how the story ends. 
Maybe LNs, with their slower pace, might actually be easier. I have not really experienced the same urge to rush to the end with LNs so far. Probably because the end of one LN is not actually the end of the story.
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Book:
Is there an ebook available?: yes
Is there an audiobook available?: no
Is there an all-furigana version available?: yes (1st vol has an aotori version)
Summary - Japanese
夕士が高校入学と同時に始めた、あこがれの下宿生活。幼い頃に両親を事故で亡くしたため、早く独り立ちをするのが彼の夢。ところがそこには、ちょっと変わった、しかし人情味あふれる“住人たち”が暮らしていた…。
Summary - English
Inaba Yuushi’s parents died in his first year of middle school, and he moved in with his relatives. Though they did care for him, he could tell he was a burden. After he graduated, he happily prepared to move to a high school with a dormitory. Unfortunately, the dormitory burned to the ground before he could move in! Yuushi doesn’t want to live with his grudging relatives, but it’s rough finding lodging as an orphaned student with little money. He finally finds a room in a nice old building which seems too good to be true.
The catch is that it is a Monster House, a place where humans and supernatural creatures–ghosts, mononoke, etc.-- live together. Another high schooler lives there, a cute girl named Akine, and she’s completely unfazed by the monsters. In fact, she can even exorcise evil spirits! Yuushi’s high school life just got much stranger than he ever bargained for! [source: anilist]
Why are you nominating this book: Watched the anime years ago and wanted to read the LN ever since, but somehow I have yet to get around to it. 
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Book:
Is there an ebook available?: yes
Is there an audiobook available?: no
Is there an all-furigana version available?: no
Summary - Japanese
「あなたには、どうしても殺したい人がいます。どうやって殺しますか？」 福岡は一見平和な町だが、裏では犯罪が蔓延っている。今や殺し屋業の激戦区で、殺し屋専門の殺し屋がいるという都市伝説まであった。 福岡市長のお抱え殺し屋、崖っぷちの新人社員、博多を愛する私立探偵、天才ハッカーの情報屋、美しすぎる復讐屋、闇組織に囚われた殺し屋。そんなアクの強い彼らが巻き込まれ、縺れ合い紡がれていく市長選。その背後に潜む政治的な対立と黒い陰謀が蠢く事件の真相とは──。 そして悪行が過ぎた時、『殺し屋殺し』は現れる──。
Summary - English
In Fukuoka, crime reaches new heights in the seedy underworld. In the Hakata ward of the city, there are various individuals with special talent who are professional killers, detectives, informants, and professional revenge seekers. Among those, a so-called “killer of professional killers” is becoming more than just an urban legend. [source: Anilist]
Why are you nominating this book: Bought the 1st volume on a recent trip to Japan and want to know if I want to continue with the series. 
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Are they actual sequels, or just “this is set in the same universe”? Anilist says that this first volume is complete, which makes me think the books are standalones.
Are you talking about the 青春ブタ野郎はバニーガール先輩の夢を見ない | L30 series? It’s just one series but the author chose to not number the books and instead go with a different title every time. He mentioned regretting it in the comments at the end of every volumes I read.
That being said, volume 1 works well as a standalone (also I really didn’t like volumes 2, 4, and gave up on volume 5)
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AniList made a change a few years ago where they started making LN sequels their own entries when they aren’t in parts. This makes sense for things like 本好き, which has five entries, one for each part. But for series like this that don’t have multi-part entries it’s a bit weird if you ask me.
You gave volume 2 a 3/5, so it couldn’t have been that bad!
I get what you mean though. I gave the anime a 7.5/10, which is slightly below my average rating, because I didn’t enjoy the later parts as much. It’s possible that’s because those volumes are actually worse, though squeezing 5 LN volumes into a 13 episode anime adaption probably didn’t help either.
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I did like the concept used in that volume but the fan service was waaaayyy too much. I gave it the benefit of the doubt at the time, but I would probably go with 2/5 these days… The attitude of the main character and the fan service are literally why I gave up on the series too.
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