What are you reading today?

Keigo Higashino’s Masquerade Hotel! It’s the longest book I’ve ever attempted in Japanese, and I just passed 400 pages. I would recommend Keigo Higashino for anyone who likes a mystery/thriller that’s not scary, written in fairly straightforward Japanese and always well paced :slight_smile:

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Checking out the book cover on Natively - whoa. Got enough text on there?

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Haha oh my goodness, my copy looks very plain: it just has the mask, the title and the author!

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It’s kind of annoying to me how some book covers on Amazon include the obi; covers up all the pretty cover art with giant characters that are now permanently glued to the picture. :\ At least for Natively it’s annoying; I’m looking forward to the day where we may be able to suggest alternate cover uploads so some of these books can be free of the clutter.

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I started reading 八つ墓村 | L39 today and it’s kicking my butt, haha. This feels just a bit more difficult than previous entries, at least for the opening part. It’s only 15 pages long but boy did I look up a lot of things. :joy:

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Good day, readers of Natively, I hope you are all having another marvelous day doing what you do.

Today, I am reading すべての神様の十月 | L27, a book that Natively selected for me in the recommendation thread. So far, I am liking it. :smile: I think I should let Natively decide what I read more often. Or maybe I should read more books reviewed by @cat. :thinking:

Lately, I have been playing around with formatting when reading digitally. Sometimes I can’t tell if I want a huge font or not. Sometimes I tell myself that it’ll be easier to read if the characters are bigger, but at other times I tell myself that it will easier if there’s more on the screen at once. :laughing: I’m the type of person that will tweak their settings over and over, but never reach a point where they’re satisfied.

I used to pretty much always read horizontally, but I have been trying to read vertically for a change. I do like that it lets my Yomichan pop-ups take up the entire screen without too much obstruction. Eventually, I end up returning to horizontal because I can’t determine which I like best yet. I think physical mains would probably have no problem sticking to vertical. The one thing I will say I don’t like is vertical on mobile. It feels like I can only fit a sentence per page without going down to some incredibly small font. It’s probably fine on a tablet, though.

:pray:

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:joy: so long as we have similar tastes it works!

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I’m done with 獣の奏者 3 and 本好き 30, so I “randomly” started reading わたしの幸せな結婚 五 | L31
(I was talking about it with someone on the WK forums, so I thought I’d go ahead again with that series)

Additionally, a bunch of series I follow had a new volume in the past few weeks (including 本好き obviously) and I think I bought everything :sweat_smile: That’s how my 積読 pile never gets better.

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Because you ppl kept talking about this story, I read it just now… WHY? WHY?! I did not expect that end…

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わたしの幸せな結婚, I need to finally continue reading that one… I need to re-read vol 2 and then go from there… I wonder if it has a proper ending… :pray:t2:

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I am currently making my way through 十角館の殺人 for the bookclub and ももこの21世紀日記〈N’04〉(which is part of ももこのよりぬき絵日記 2). I also still have 夜カフェ 2 going but it has kinda fallen to the side

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Also working on 十角館の殺人 | L34, though very slowly so far; I’ve read the prologue, but I think I’m going to re-read it before starting chapter 1. The language used was really evocative, so I want to make sure I’m in the right mindset before pushing ahead. 薬屋のひとりごと 2 | L37 is currently on standby while I read easier reads; my goal is to have it done before the end of the year, so I’ll probably start it back up in November at the latest? I’m hoping that gives me a better chance of having a smoother reading experience.

@Drinos I have two 吸血鬼 recommendations for you. :eyes:
First one is PURE BLOOD (series) | L25; a short, two volume manga series. Slight BL, shoujo, some found family themes, episodic in nature; I thought it was rather sweet in general. Could be a good palate cleanser between other things.

Second is 吸血鬼と愉快な仲間たち (series) | L24??. Four volumes of manga (so far? not sure if completed or stalled atm), definite BL. American turns into (incomplete) vampire (he turns into a bat by day and is only human at night) and is accidentally frozen with meat being shipped to Japan. He ends up there, no clue what’s going on, and is taken in by a mortician. There’s a novel series it’s based on (which is currently not yet on Natively) that I haven’t read, so can’t speak to how well it’s adapted. I have enjoyed what I’ve read of the manga, though.

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Currently rereading the first 古見さんは、コミュ障です。 Noting the vocab that I need to look up

Just want to add that I love their punny names sooo much :smiling_face:

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Iv’e yet to read any manga you’re making me want to! The sheer amount of 吸血鬼 manga out there is tempting. This might sound very, very petty, but one reason I’ve avoided reading manga is because I think it’s stats getting mixed with everything else on the site would bother me. Though, bradon did say that he would add filters, so maybe I should stop worrying about insignificant things and just read what I want.

There’s also the problem that my wish list would probably double (or triple) in size. :smiling_face_with_tear:

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I, too, have not been adding my manga to Natively for the exact same reasons, so fear not, I totally understand! Perhaps others will be inspired to give these two series a shot; I aim to spread good reading experiences all around! :wink:

I’m kind of curious now, though; how many here have abstained from adding a book type to their lists because of stats/wishlist or unread or would be enormous/etc?

  • Yep, I don’t add certain book types
  • Nope, I add everything
0 voters

For those who vote yes, I’d be curious to hear what type(s) of books and why!

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You really gotta ask why we’re not adding certain book types? (lol)

Aside from that, I guess I add everything, if it’s a published thing and I’m actually reading it. I’m not tracking my page count or reading speed, so I don’t care if manga affects the numbers. I don’t think my reading speed has really changed anyway, because as soon as I get better I just read harder stuff and it cancels out.

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Eh, I guess I’m just curious if there’s any other reasons than the usual why someone wouldn’t add this or that.

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I just remembered that I have a few other things I haven’t asked to add because they’re hard to categorize, and also hard to read.

For example, I have a couple of these Junior Aera current affairs prep books for middle school entrance exams. The vocab level is pretty intense so I don’t read these consistently. But if the fiction books I picked for my everyday reading turn out to be at a comfortable level and I’m not getting much vocab, I’ll read some of these current affairs articles to make sure I’m still learning something.

I haven’t asked to have them added to Natively because they’re mooks and new editions come out yearly. Also, I might never actually finish reading one cover-to-cover.

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Oh, true! In that sense, I don’t add everything either. For instance, I have read a book about あやとり(cat’s cradle?) recently (and did all the figures in it :crazy_face:) but I’m not planning to add it. The text is very repetitive, from a Japanese learner’s point of view too. I also read some sewing stuff, but not cover to cover, just the parts I needed.
Ah, now that I think about it, I also don’t add magazines (because I also just read the part I care about, so it’s not “completed”) or books for toddlers or young children (which I obviously don’t read for myself).

So, huh, I guess I am not adding everything. That being said, I am adding manga, since the whole point of using Natively for me was to have a place to track everything. I am using Bookmeter for books only stats.

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Some things I just don’t want showing on my book page. Some embarrassing, some too dark for me to think they’d be useful to add. I already felt iffy about adding 遺書 | L41 to the database and I own at least one book which is just as, if not more, dark and likewise nonfiction.

I track my stats separately, in a spreadsheet, and have since before Natively was a thing - so to me having it track ‘perfectly’ is meaningless.

Also textbooks. I have no desire for books like 論理的な文章の書き方 to be in my library. That would just annoy me.

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