Thank you for such a detailed reply, that’s really helpful! The edition you mention with editor’s notes sounds interesting, where did you find it?
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What did your teacher think of you reading the OG, out of curiosity? I can’t imagine they get many students who choose to read in the original language, haha.
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I’ve got the Shincho Bunko version of こころ, which has them, but something similar was also in the Kadokawa Bunko version of 坊っちゃん and 吾輩は猫である, so I’m guessing most new printings have them. Shincho is my favorite publisher for bunkobon though because I like the ribbon bookmark and the rough cut top edge.
Well, I asked her about it at the start of class and she said it wasn’t a good idea and told me to get the specific translation she wanted (which I think is completely reasonable, to be clear). But the main reason I took the class was for an excuse to read in Japanese, so I just read my Japanese copy anyway and didn’t tell her 
. She eventually found out and was a bit annoyed, but thankfully also impressed and it didn’t affect my grade overall.
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i think this is the first time i’m replying to this thread?
today i read マグナムリリィ, because it was available for free (on bookwalker) and sounded like it might be fun, and it was a delight! 
girl is like, that guy just dumped me! oh look, a boxing game in the arcade, i’m gonna go punch stuff. second girl joins, hey, stand like this, move your body like that, you can punch much harder! btw. i’m featherweight world champion, wanna come see my match tonight?
girl is even more amazed, decides to join a gym and start boxing.
really nothing serious about the whole thing, but just a lot of fun to read. and i really feel that “oh wow, my body is strong!” thing, and how much joy it brings.
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I started reading 黒の召喚士 1 封印されし悪魔 | L30
It’s pretty good, but I am still early in the series. It is also readable on syosetsu. There is an anime that is running right now. I forgot how I found this, but if someone has seen the anime, it’s a pretty easy read (assuming books around L29 aren’t a big problem).
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Good day, readers of the Natively, I hope you are all having another grand day flipping through pages (or swiping if you are a digital reader)
It’s already September. I can’t believe it. It’s amazing how fast time flies when you are having FUN reading! 
I finished the fourth book of ヴァンパイア大使アンジュ lately. The story definitely picked up from this volume. The first three books were basically just your normal Japanese slice of life school bs with the occasional 精霊 incident. With the fourth volume, it goes full fantasy and turns in to this all-out demon war in Europe. Honestly, it gets a bit dark (and violent) for a kids book at times (at least compared to the ones I’ve read so far). Like, in the first volume, the grandfather of the two main characters suddenly dies, in the fourth volume their relative’s grandfather ALSO suddenly dies (it was stated that both her parents were killed earlier), when the vampire village gets attacked, she witnesses a vampire boy die and turn to dust right in front of her. Though, I guess you can still tell its kiddy from how unrealistically positive the characters are right after tragedy. The plot has also been getting a bit ridiculous lately: Main girl finds out she actually has the power to suck powers away (imagine kirby if they were a vampire). She then unintentionally sucks away the power of her fairy friend, almost causing them to die. Turns out her grandfather (who died in the first volume) had a twin brother (who died in the last volume), and his granddaughter actually has the same the power, but instead of sucking abilities from just being around people(?), she can actually suck them up through 吸血. So, get ready for this one… she sucks away the main girl’s ability sucking ability(wtf???) and that reverts the sucking done by the main girl (because it just does???) so now the fairy is fine again.
I also finished some short stories earlier today. It’s nice to get that quick dopamine burst from finishing a “book” in a couple of minutes. Maybe I’ll actually read some m*nga soon. 
I just started 西の魔女が死んだ | L27, another book selected for me by Natively in the recommendation thread (you guys should really use it more!!!), I’ll make sure to talk about it once I get deeper in.
So, what are your reading goals for the new month? I just want to get a finish up ヴァンパイア大使アンジュ and maybe get a couple more easy high purple/low orange books out of the way. I basically want to clean out my “backlog” (my wishlist is obviously not my backlog) before October since I already know I will be exclusively reading 吸血鬼 books for that entire month.
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Heh, I said this in a WK thread the other day, but I’m already planning out the rest of my year 
Currently reading: 十角館の殺人 (with the Mystery Book Club!), 火車 | L35, and 天使の傷痕 | L33. I expect to be done with the non-book club books before the end of the month.
I am starting 三体 | L30?? after that, and might pick up something light to read on the side of it (I have a bunch of 赤川次郎 books on my shelf) or I might not as I do plan to read whatever the Mystery Book Club reads next, provided I haven’t read it before. 三体 I expect to be hard and take me awhile - it’s sci-fi and I’ve not read a sci-fi novel yet. It’s known in English as The Three Body Problem, it’s originally a Chinese book.
I also want to try to read 半落ち (not yet on Natively, but probably mid-to-high 30s) before the year ends and try my hand again at 黄金仮面 | L38. I am somewhat making that book harder for myself because 1. I have a paperback and 2. I’m reading it along with the audiobook which means I must have fast comprehension and I’ll have little to no patience for looking up words when doing that combo. It’s actually what I’m doing right now with 火車 but last year trying that with 黄金仮面 was just…not good.
Oh, and I want to finish reading the short story 糞尿譚 | L38! I’m kind of loading myself heavy with hard reading at the end of the year, but it’s largely because spring and summer tend to be my ‘easy read’ time. Something about snuggling up under a blanket with a challenging read is more appealing than doing it while sweating in shorts
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I think I originally had a total books read (lifetime) of 70 books for the year, but I hit that goal really fast, so I bumped it up to 80 but then added some older books I read, so right now I have it for 100 books (lifetime).
I can actually read pretty fast now, and I like reading things that essentially have N1 level vocab that is commonly used. It is motivational for me to read something that has lot of kind of difficult words, but ones that I have seen other places. For example I didn’t know 啞然、驚愕、怯える、躱す a few months ago, but have now seen over and over. I swear 啞然 has been in almost every book I have read. Even some stuff like 禍々しい I thought might be kind of rare, but I have seen that maybe 5 times recently. And I never knew how often Japanese people sent out 助け船s.
It reminds me when I took the JLPT N1 and didn’t know 窮屈 and よみがえる but since then have seen over and over. I remember hearing 窮屈 on TV the same day after I took the test lol. I think that is my best learning process so I am trying to go with that. I have been reading a lot of Isekai books, mainly because they are really approachable for Japanese learners I think. Also they often can be read online and have manga/anime adaptations.
There are many very difficult books listed on this site, but I think a lot of them just have too many words I don’t know and will just go in one ear and out the other.
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I want to…
- …finish 世にも奇妙な商品カタログ 1 インスタント死神・友だちクジ他 | L23
- …catch up with the ルーパーズ ♾ (Visual Novel Book Club) // Finished! - Book Clubs - WaniKani Community… I’ve fallen 2 chapters behind
- …either pick up something easy (like ちいさな森のオオカミちゃん 1 | L16 or チーズスイートホーム 1 | L15) after months of constantly reading stuff at my current highest level (L24/25), or finally join the The くまクマ熊ベアー Enthusiastic Appreciation and Recommendation Society.
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I really need to catch up on 十画館の殺人. >.< Catching up and maintaining my pace will be most important, I think. Other than that… I’m not sure. I’ve got a pile of books on my backlog I’d like to get through before the end of the year, but I haven’t quite decided how I want to handle things. Might make use of the recommendation thread myself to break the deadlock.
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Are you really sure you want to join the bear cult? I hope you can afford the membership dues (of an unstated amount), there are no refunds…
You can always join the non-existent 吸血鬼Appreciation Society and give ヴァンパイア大使アンジュ a try. Unless my ratings are totally off, it’s (probably) even easier than the bear book!
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Don’t tell the bears, but the main reason I’m thinking of starting it is because it’s high time I’m reading my first isekai in Japanese. So the vampires have to wait for now, unless they’re isekai vampires. (Thinking about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen any isekais with vampires, huh.)
Also, regarding “non-existent”: Considering how many 吸血鬼 books you read, maybe you should actually create a 吸血鬼 Appreciation Society thread! 
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I just finished the final volume. I took a trip last weekend that involved a lot of driving (well, being driven around technically), so I read a volume a day for four days straight.
For a quick non-spoiler review I’ll just say that it didn’t end quite how I would have preferred, but it was still fine overall. I give the series a solid 8/10.
Ending spoilers
First, regarding which sister ended up being the bride, I think Yotsuba was a fine choice, but not the best choice. Once it became clear that she was the sister Futarou met in elementary school, the ending wasn’t a surprise. 幼馴染 romances are a bit cliche (even if this is slightly different), but whatever. The reveal and subsequent love interest kind of came out of nowhere, but I think the mangaka backed up the decision reasonably well after that, so it’s fine.
That said, I think Futarou had far better chemistry with Miku and Nino, so I would have preferred one of them be the bride. But I did like how Miku and Nino became really close and even opened a restaurant together. That was a really nice touch. Anyway, Yotsuba was still a better pick than Ichika or Itsuki. In Ichika’s case, I didn’t like how manipulative and deceptive she was. She gave off the impression of “I want to steal what my sisters want” rather than genuine affection, so having her be the bride would have been terrible. As for Itsuki, she simply showed no interest in Futarou aside from like one scene, and I’m glad the cliche of “first girl that MC meets in-story is the love interest” didn’t win out.
Final comment is that I found the last several pages of the series annoying. I hate the trope of making the ending ambiguous, so having him “wake up” at the end and mumble words that make it seem like the future wedding was a dream is stupid. Thankfully there is narration afterwards that seems to clear that up and show that he is remembering a similar situation from the past, but why even add that “trick” scene? Just remove one text bubble and it changes from “trick scene that’s actually a flashback scene” to “plain old flashback scene”. Such a strange decision.
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On another note, I read お兄ちゃんはおしまい! 6 | L21 over the last few days. I do enjoy this series a lot. It’s a really easy manga, so it’s a good one to just lay back and read when I don’t want to think too hard.
I’m also over 40% done Red Data Girl, so slow but steady progress on that one.
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At the very least, one of the main characters in 蜘蛛ですが、なにか? (series) | L33 is a vampire. So are a couple of the secondary characters.
There’s also ひきこまり吸血姫の悶々 | L34 that seems isekai-ish, but the fan service prevented me from moving past the color illustrations at the beginning, so I don’t know.
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To get back on topic, I’ve been reading 痛いのは嫌なので防御力に極振りしたいと思います。 (series) | L28 volumes 12-14 over the past week or so. Volume 12 was kinda meh, but on par with everything with past volume 6.
Volume 13, though, had some fun developments, though, and I had a good time reading it. Also, it finished on a cliffhanger. Which didn’t get resolved in the free preview of volume 14. After half a day, I just gave in and bought the volume and read it. The cliffhanger was resolved around the ~2/3rd mark, but since I had read so far, I just kept reading and finished it. The current plot (which started towards the end of volume 12) is quite fun, in a “no brain needed” kind of way. I’m looking forward to the next volume… but considering that there are only a few extra chapters on なろう, it might take a while.
ANYWAY, I have finally picked RDG. I was surprised to see that my local library stores it in the light novel section (technically YA section, but that’s mostly LNs). Well, I’m still counting it as a non-LN for my yearly goal.
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Wikipedia says it’s a regular novel. I do understand why it’s in the YA section though. Being YA makes it harder in some ways (awkwardly long strings of kana at times due to reduced kanji usage), and it’s not exactly holding back with the Shinto terms. I wonder if the average Japanese teen knows all those terms… 
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I totally agree, this series is just fun and not too challenging. It’s one series I know I can pick up and just feel like I’m reading rather than “studying.”
Well, I’m about halfway through こころ | L39 and I want to finish that up around the midpoint of this month. After that I’m going to pick up 風立ちぬ | L41 and maybe try to finish that by the end of the month (it’s pretty short), with 人間失格 | L40 after that as the last book of my “chronological classic literature” reading series.
On the manga front, I’ve made a physical 積読 pile on my floor of 18 books to try and finish by the end of the year. To stay on track for that, I’ll need to read 4-5 this month… plus Book 2 of 魔法少女事変 1 | L26 which just dropped and I’m super hyped for 
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I’m only around 50% of the book, but they would know most of those, yes. I’m not 100% sure the average teen would know much about 山伏, but they would have seen them on TV and most likely in real life, so as soon as the book gave a description, it would click in their head (like it did for me; “oooh, those guys”). Especially, the conch (? 法螺貝) they are using is pretty characteristic.
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Very interesting. Well I know pretty much none of this stuff and it’s really increasing the difficulty.
By the way, since I only finished chapter 2 (46% according to my kindle), you’ve already passed me.
How are you finding the difficulty compared to other things you’ve read lately?
