He is 100% an airport novelist 
I feel the same way about reading him, I don’t think I’d care much for it in English…unless I were bored on a plane
5 Likes
I finished the book!
Well, technically, the second half was a 外伝 story. I’m really glad to see Oscar again (and I enjoyed the spooky vibes).
Sadly, the edition on Natively is like the only one that does not include this story. I requested the book itself to be added with a note that, in my mind, it belongs to the same series (considering that it usually is sold as such).
(Edit: oh, I keep forgetting, but I wanted to say Oscar made me think of the Chevalière d’Eon (the knightesse of Eon). It’s the right place and the right time period too… (completely different life story though)
I started reading a bit of a bunch of random books that looked interesting (despite having other books I need to read to return them to the library or book clubs ). I would like 48h per day please.
8 Likes
I am glad you didn’t end up hating one of my favourites. 
I know I am somewhat blinded by nostalgia here but still…
I’d be fine with not having to work and sleep. (Or getting tired, for that matter…)
7 Likes
I’m still reading 汝、星のごとく | L34, but progress has been very slow because it’s super 重い and sad. I normally love stories that are more on the depressing side, but I haven’t really been able to get into this properly yet. 
So, I’ve decided to take a break from it with another book and return to it after! 
Going back to some 純文学 with ##NAME## (just added it to natively but it’s not up yet, hence the Amazon link).
It was one of the nominees for the last round of the 芥川賞 and I’ve been dying to read it since one of the J-booktubers I watch covered it.
I’m really interested in seeing how it covers all the themes and topics it seems to have going on - the “digital tattoo” anyone who grew up in the internet era has, child idols and sexualization, feminism, BL, fan fiction. Let’s see!
8 Likes
… and finished, in a little over a week (plenty of opportunities to read on trains, ferries, beaches and hotel balconies). This volume was a sort of side story set in England[*]; it wasn’t bad but I prefer the “normal” books in the series. I still have this week’s Maria Beetle club reading, and then 舟を編む | L36 which should last me to the end of the holiday.
[*] Apparently if you come here you shouldn’t bring nice clothes because they’ll get messed up in the laundry. Who knew?
6 Likes
I am reading too much, atm. 
From my personal TBR:
探偵チームKZ事件ノート 赤い仮面は知っている | L27 still as ridiculous as ever. A 13 year old just became CEO of a French company. OK, sure. 
Clubs:
リング | L35 which I am really enjoying. We only just started but I had to hold myself back to not immediately read further… 
https://learnnatively.com/book/b26291e5b3 (本好き 1, link does not parse correctly ) well it’s not really reading but listening and it’s my… third? time and while I still remember the overall story, I have forgotten (missed?) so many details that it’s still a nice experience and it’s still my favourite volume (of the ones I have read so far). Later volumes are still good but you have less of the shenanigans and family life that makes this volume so fun to read.
マルコと銀河竜 This VN is all over the place. It jumps around a lot but it’s fun if you just go with the flow.
And soon, those will be joined by medium 霊媒探偵城塚翡翠 | L33 for the mystery BC.
11 Likes
I loved everything that involved Oscar and André (and to a lesser extent Rosalie).
On the other hand, pretty much everything else felt too much like an illustrated textbook. Sometimes, it had those weird jumps were one page tells us about something, the next one about something else that happened a week later, and the next one yet another thing that happened a month later. Yet, despite the historical focus, the author still chose to change how some things happened…
In conclusion, not enough Oscar and too much Marie-Antoinette, but I still enjoyed the series overall (or maybe I should say on average?).
6 Likes
are you gonna watch the anime? would be interesting how you find that in comparison. (since I came to it the other way around.)
I can still sing the German OP , though the Japanese is great as well…
4 Likes
I did watch some of it as a kid. It’s been a while, but I don’t really feel like going through the whole thing. I don’t mind watching the specific parts I liked in the manga, though…
In any case, not in the near future, since I am already behind on library books (there’s 香君 上 that I need to return in a few days and I haven’t cracked it open yet) and there are more book clubs starting.
Also booklive just sent me a notification with a bunch of recommendations, but I will hopefully manage to ignore that.
3 Likes
Finished その着せ替え人形は恋をする 1 | L25 today, pretty happy about it. It’s still difficult and there was more than a fair amount of lookups required, but I feel like I’m getting better, though there were still a few constructions I had to DeepL then reverse engineer. It’s like, I dunno, the possibility space of what I can read is really beginning to open up (as long as I’m willing to spend the effort).
Anyway going to drop a few rungs since the newest volume of 今日から始める幼なじみ 8 | L17 just came out and I love this series, then might see where I go after that…
6 Likes
I read the assignments for my various book clubs today (medium 霊媒探偵城塚翡翠 | L33, 正欲 | L35??, 夏と花火と私の死体 | L28 ) and I had been planning to read more of 正欲 but I have had the most insane itch for medical drama lately so instead I read レゾンデートル | L30?? which is by the same author as 天久鷹央の推理カルテ (series) | L35 which…I ordered all the remaining books in the series off CDJapan 
I’m actually hoping that by continuing to read 知念実希人 I’ll knock JK Rowling off the top spot of my series page for Author Distribution, as well as Series Distribution (if I read all the 天久鷹央先生 books that’s nearly 4k pages to the ~2900 I’ve read in Japanese of the HP series)
7 Likes
are you not reading manga or not tracking it? Most of my top series are manga. I hope premium will let me fiddle with the stats. 
3 Likes
There is Fruits Basket as the #2 series, which is a manga (unless there is a LN adaptation that I don’t know of). So it looks like cat is just reading more books… 
4 Likes
Yep, as @nikoru pointed out, I do read manga… It’s just eclipsed by my novel numbers. I have a much harder time getting into manga for some reason, and cost wise it just doesn’t seem worth it to me unless I were to do a manga renting service (if even available in my region…?) as the vast majority of manga I can read lazily over 2-3 days or, if I feel like it, in one evening.
Meanwhile, most 300 page books take me at minimum a week. There are a few exceptions to this, but overall I get way more bang for my buck with novels
7 Likes
never mind. I just can’t read.
same. Which is why my overall manga volumes are actually pretty low. But Mandarake and book off have been quite good for that. I am still salty that companies make it so hard to access digital stuff from abroad.
8 Likes
I’ve made a fair bit of progress, and I’m pleased to announce that it does slow down and start properly taking its time! And I’m definitely still enjoying it—in fact, am enjoying it more. We got a first kiss already, but it still feels like a slow burn. Zef holds some fondness for Villant but doesn’t quite recognize it for what it is/is growing into, in part due to his low valuation of himself as just a 地味でくたびれたおっさん, which I presume will be a character development point. Also he mentions Villant’s beauty about as much as Seigi does Richard’s, but I dunno why Seigi doing it makes me go, “Are you very certain you’re not bi,” whereas with Zef it feels closer to a statement of fact. Maybe because Seigi comes up with all these different ways to describe it while Zef mostly sticks to 美形? Still, he does mention it (and the color of his eyes) an awful lot for someone ostensibly not developing feelings lol
I dunno if it’s just the bigger pages, but I feel like I can read less of this in a day than Jeweler Richard. Like, it does feel easier (which tracks with their Natively levels), but at the same time it feels harder. It’s weird. I’d say maybe it’s the vocab, but I think lookups are pretty much the same…
My “break” from 2.43 only ended up being a few days this time, yay. I read ch 2-1 yesterday and am planning on reading 2-2 later today. If I read one subchapter a day, it might take a while, but I’ll be making steady progress while still hopefully having enough time to, like, emotionally process stuff.
My series and author charts are exactly the same currently, although once あさのあつこ gets added as an author of the Battery manga (for some reason she’s listed on vol 10 but not the first 9) that’ll change. 8 manga volumes + 4 novels = 1 more than 大島司 (although I still have the 4-vol continuation of アタック!! left to read, but then I also still have the last 2 vol of the Battery manga + I think 9 other novels, and that’s not counting the ones I wanna read but haven’t bought yet, so even if Ooshima takes the lead again, Asano will ultimately have him beat lol)
I wonder if I’ll ever read (finish) a series longer than HQ though. If I do ever get ダイヤのA like I want and finish both parts, that’ll be a new top author, but a single series…
I should start getting some novel authors into the ranking soon enough (esp. if it ever gets expanded into top 9/10 rather than top 4), but it was only this year that I started being able to read them comfortably, so it’s still all manga rn. (あさのあつこ, 天沢夏月, 壁井ユカコ, 辻村七子, and it’s looking like possibly 椹野道流 and 月村奎 too, are all in the running, though only 辻村七子 has a series long enough to potentially make that ranking!)
7 Likes
Going through クラスで2番目に可愛い女の子と友だちになった | L26, and it’s been really refreshing. It’s the first time I can read an LN semi-extensively, without translation, and it feels really comfortable. It doesn’t feel like an exercise, and it’s the closest I’ve been to the way I feel when reading something in English (still a ways to go there)
Also the story is really nice. It’s technically a romance, but a very slow burn, and very much a story about friendships. The relationships are very organic, and the setting and character’s lives feel more realistic (in a good way) than a lot of other romances I’ve read. More I could say about it, but I’m gonna save it for writing a review!
6 Likes
Well, I read one third of 東京かくりよ公安局 落チル月 (小学館文庫 Cま 1-3) | L31 instead… So, not doing that fine
Technically, I also listened to this week’s 本好き part for the book club, but that’s not really reading, I guess.
Well… I bought a bunch more books, so I didn’t do great on that front either. Weee.
5 Likes
Finished リング, my first “novel”, in almost 4 weeks, yeah.
Now I will finish off 魔女の宅急便 2, the book that sent me in my recent slump, end of June. But actually that’s not fair, as at that time I got a new TV set, and of course I had to test it, thoroughly. And then there also started the new season and reading got a bit out of focus.
All in all it took me 7 Yotsuba manga to come out of that slump 
I will spare the last three for the next one, which will come for sure…
Edit: Oops, sorry Naphthalene, wrong indentation…
10 Likes
I finished it yesterday and it was okay. There were some slice-of-life-y parts (as in, just showing the everyday life of the characters), which was refreshing. One of the problem I had with the series so far, is that something is always happening (or about to happen). It was nice to see the characters just interacting with each other and the environment. Those parts were pretty short, though.
Anyway, I feel like the series is setting itself up for infinite number of volumes, each focusing on the problem of the week™. I mean, that’s pretty much what was happening so far, but at least there was some kind of overall build up (leading to this volume’s conclusion). But now that we are here (basically the big bad is now free and his cult is thus getting more active/energized), I feel like the situation can just be milked forever (the protagonists don’t have a way to defeat him as of now, so they have to get stronger™ first, which can obviously take as long as the author wants). I guess the author can also finish the series in the next book. That decision will probably depend on sales
I also went through ~30 pages of 香君 this morning and boy, that’s a lot of geopolitical info drop. I have to return it in 2 days, I think I’m going to be late especially if I join @cat’s watch party instead of having my Saturday morning reading time.
7 Likes
