This is also on the horror nomination list and it’s definitely short. 
Don’t know how good or difficult it is, though.
other short(ish) novels:
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Thank you thank you all!
I have read a few of the recommendations before, but I added 号泣する準備はできていた and 不倫と南米 to my basket!
And I also decided I’d add いなくなくならなくならないで from the Akutagawa nominations, as it got my interest too.
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Not sure of you’re still looking but I have 2 short story collection recommendations if you don’t have them already though one is rated higher on Natively than what you were looking for:
Zoo book 1 & 2 by 乙一. The content is quite dark and does deal with themes of loss, abuse and murder.
神様 by Hiromi Kawakami. It is a little over the level you were looking at but her stuff is a little whimsical. I have only read the story 神様 in it which is about a picnic with a talking bear, but found it relatively simple to read. The others may be more difficult.
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I loved that book! It was also pretty interesting in the sense that the stories are loosely connected through sharing the same main character (and previous side characters being sometimes mentioned again).
I don’t remember any drastic change in difficulty.
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神様 is in Read Real Japanese Fiction: Short Stories by Contemporary Writers | L30 (where I first came across it) and is one of my favorite short stories I’ve read in any language. I’ve probably read it 3 or 4 times and am always absolutely charmed by it.
Funnily enough, one of my other favorite short stories is The Princess and the Bear by Orson Scott Card, so I guess I have a thing for bears in short stories 
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I’m going to post here since it seems more relevant instead of polluting further the LN book club.
By the way, how/where do you check things? Is it directly on the site of the publisher or through some aggregator? I know nothing about the localization process of Japanese (or otherwise) media either, so I don’t even know which publisher to check (even in my native language) 
I get all my knowledge of what’s new from r/LightNovels on Reddit - publishers seem to announce everything getting translated in batches and there’s a thread for new announcements.
That said, most of what gets translated looks absolutely terrible and the general taste of that sub is awful. The weekly sticky has good reviews, but yeah - would not use what’s being translated as a good way of finding new books.
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I just realized a fatal flaw in my plan: most of the titles discussed are in English, so it’s kinda hard to map them back to Japanese some times
(Plus, I’m not very good at navigating reddit)
BUT I still found a BL light novel that sounds interesting out of there (英雄はアンブロシアを喰む 上 ルビーコレクション | L30??) so that was worth it
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When I have this issue I look up the English title on Goodreads and it should have the original title under “Book details & editions”
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Right, and probably just googling can solve the issue… but it’s just too much work
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So I’ll see license announcements through a combination of following certain publishers on Twitter, the r/LightNovels sub @Aik mentioned (I do appreciate the megathreads they’ll put up when licenses get announced), as well as news articles posted on Anime News Network. Typically English publishers will announce large batches of licenses around major convention times; I believe Anime NYC just wrapped up, for example, and three big publishers off the top of my head announced licenses there. As for when these conventions are… I don’t usually keep track. Since normally my Twitter feed is filled with them going, “see you guys there!!” about three weeks in advance anyway, haha.
Larger and more active LN English publishers would be Yen Press (through their Yen On imprint), Seven Seas, and J-Novel Club (digital-only except for a few series; they’re 本好き’s EN publisher). Hanashi Media, One Peace Books, Vertical/Kodansha, and Cross Infinite World also publish LNs, though how many series and how often vary pretty widely.
French publishers I’m not as familiar with, sadly, but an easy way to check would be to go onto Amazon France, type in names of popular LNs, then see who’s publishing them there. There probably aren’t going to be many major LN publishers, so I bet you can pretty easily find them that way.
This is also really true. The English market’s currently knee-deep in the isekai and villainess markets, so the quality of what gets picked up is going to vary wildly. English publishers are probably just grabbing whatever’s semi-popular and cheapest to fill their catalogue. Casual LN readers aren’t as picky, so it all sells.
A lot of publishers will typically post a temporary romanized JP title with their title announcement, especially if the JP doesn’t translate into a non-awkward sounding English equivalent and they’re still working on it, or because the title is both popular and only currently known through fan TL, who are more likely to just keep a romanized title instead of translating it anyway for some godforsaken reason, and they want those fans to take notice while they come up with a localized title. The covers they’ll post in these announcements are typically the JP ones as well, since the localization process isn’t usually far enough along to have an English mock-up, so it’s generally fairly easy to just look at the cover and get the title from there.
And speaking of all this recently-localized stuff, apparently a title that 本好き’s author has endorsed on Twitter got picked up; dunno if you’ve heard of it Naphthalene, but might be worth checking out.
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Thank you for the detailed explanations! I guess I’ll check some of their catalogs.
(Just did that for the French publisher of 本好き… didn’t see anything new that caught my eye, but their catalog was small)
I haven’t! (I don’t have a Twitter account either, which prevents me from interacting with the site in any meaningful ways)
That sounds really fun and that is indeed a strong endorsement as far as I am concerned. On to the wishlist.
And with that, it seems to me that this forum remains my best bet to find new books
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It’s a pretty excellent resource to be fair. The only one that has it beat for me is r/yuri_manga (not super helpful for LNs, but they occasionally pop up)
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it’s probably irrelevant already lol but if you want something fun and don’t mind non-fiction I honestly recommend
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Thanks for the rec! I’ve added it to my list.
I’m always happy to hear about interesting books, so feel free to recommend stuff whenever you want!
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By the way, volume 4 (completing the series) just came out, and the first three volumes are discounted, if you (or anyone else) is interested.
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Wondering if anyone can suggest a book up to Lv 27/28 that features a retired character?
Looking for recs for the bingo for 2025 but since I don’t seem to have one and can’t see a tag for this, I’m kinda at a loss for how to find a suitable book
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Can it be manga? メタモルフォーゼの縁側 1 | L21 is quite good. BL is the subject but there’s very little BL in it* if that would matter to you.
*You occasionally read along with the MC to a series that she is reading, but what is shown is very tame.
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Thanks 
That could work. I’ve read some BL manga before so it shouldn’t be an issue.
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I know that I’m pretty 腐ってる, lol, but メタモルフォーゼの縁側 passes my, would I be embarrassed if someone picked this off my self and started reading it, test for recommendations. But I still figured it was worth a warning.
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