I should be reading 春琴抄, but instead I had my eye caught by 殺した夫が帰ってきました | L28?? and it has been the only (text) book in my life this week I’ll likely finish it tomorrow.
If I had a nickle for every book this year I read about a woman murdering her husband and then the guy turning up alive at her door…I’d have two nickles. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird it happened twice.
It’s nice to have a book I’m excited to read again. I’d been kind of drifting through my books out of the pure habit of reading, and with this book I’m like ‘oh yes, this is why I like reading.’ I wouldn’t call it a deep book, but I like mindless books. Deep books require a certain mood and mental energy, this is fantastic for after-work brain-off time.
Content warnings for anyone interested
Sexual abuse
Child abuse
Domestic violence
These are all discussed with a decent amount of detail, although the sexual abuse does skim the details a bit in favor more euphemistic phrasing that still makes the reality obvious.
I’ve been plowing through 星空の下、君の声だけを抱きしめる | L23 since the weekend after finishing 私の推しは悪役令嬢。 | L32. It’s really quite nice to see the percent complete go up so quickly on a book, and if I can’t read faster then making the book shorter will have to do.
Slayers is great, the anime series is also worth your time if you have it. I think there’s also a tsubasa bunkou release as well, but I’ve only seen it on natively. Good luck!
Good luck with スレイヤーズ. I tried the anime a while back, bc I always thought it looked cool, but couldn’t get into it… Can’t remember clearly why, but I think it was partially to do with gender roles
I started on Let’s read Japanese series of books yesterday. Graded readers in full Japanese with short stories from folklore or parts from famous stories throughout the world.
It feels like a step back since it’s much easier content, but I think it’s what I’m needing to try to help me get back into studying properly (at least I hope it is ).
Yesterday’s story was ヤマタノオロチ. When I’ve re-read that story today again to make sure I picked it up correctly, I’ll then start on the next story, 節分の鬼.
I’m kinda looking forward to reading that one because my language exchange guy was talking about it on Setsubun and he didn’t go into detail about the folklore background of it, just the foods and the throwing of soybeans based on your number of years on this planet
Picked up 青い花 1 | L27 again, after 6 months. It’s amazing what a difference 6 months can make. It was pretty hard back then, but now I can read it fluidly with only an odd word or two and names to look up (the difficulty was the grammar tho). It does help that I’ve seen the anime already. Gonna order the physical ones next month!!
It’s a really nice surprise, especially since I opened it up again on a whim. I was wondering why 放浪息子 1 | L27 (by the same author) felt so much easier in comparison, and the answer was 160 books (mostly manga) and 425 anime episodes in 6 months really makes a difference!
Yeah I’ve gotten into this more and more lately. I think extensive watching (with JP subs) is what’s made the most difference here, but level proximity is key. Thankfully I’m at a point where “things I’m interested in” and “things I can consume extensively” are overlapping more.
I started お探し物は図書室まで | L30?? (or more accurately, restarted since I read a bit while I was in Japan last year but abandoned it among the usual chaos of Christmas and winter colds!). I know from reading another book by this author that it will be a sweet, feel-good read with a little gentle life philosophy thrown in. It’s not the kind of book I would necessarily pick in English, but I found I really enjoyed the last one and was craving reading something else like it! Does anyone else find their taste in books is a bit different in different languages?
I was actually discussing this with some people the other day! I have a lot more patience for bad/trite writing in Japanese, and generally an easier time finding fiction that I enjoy. Meanwhile in English I have a harder time getting into fiction these days (I loved it up through high school) due to the mentioned issue with trite writing, and I’d say 90%+ of what I read is nonfiction.
I find a lot of English fiction to be just entirely unappealing, even if there’s a hook or setting that I think I’d like. I seriously wonder whether or not it’s some kind of brainrot where I can’t care about anything that isn’t anime adjacent, or if there’s actually something about modern Japanese lit that is scratching some itch I don’t know I have. It’s similar with TV, but there’s always one or two shows a year I hear about that I end up watching and really enjoying.
I pretty much only read in Japanese now except for non-fiction, but something I did notice before then that has been a sort of connecting thread, is that I am much more drawn towards the settings and stories in YA books. I’ve been really enjoying the 青春小説 that I’ve read so far, though I need a larger sample size to really determine.
Depends on what you mean I guess. I pretty much exclusively read fantasy and sci-fi in English (not that I read much in English these days). In Japanese I do still primarily read those genres for novels and LNs, with the occasional exception like コンビニ人間 and the やがて君になる LNs (and a few I plan to read at some point). The real difference shows up in manga, where I read a lot of romance and slice of life. So my answer of “depends” is because I wasn’t sure if you meant books books or if you’re including manga in that. Also I can’t really say if it’s due to the difference in language or in medium.
I haven’t read anything in English in a long time, but a lot of what I read in Japanese is stuff I’d never consider in English (various romance, slice of life, comedy, etc). Nothing against those genres in English, but I only discovered them in the first place, b/c they’re easier reading material in JP. There was a point where I read mostly fantasy in EN, and taste has definitely remained. (Also American and JP fantasy feel somewhat different)
Otoh I don’t have much interest in non-fiction in JP. Also my tolerance for going in-depth on stuff like magic, game mechanics, or other info-dumping is way lower in JP - mostly a result of my slower reading speed & smaller vocabulary.
For me it’s the katakana names in so many fantasy books. It’s hard enough remembering bizarre names in English fantasy. Now I have to remember them in awkward European-inspired Japanese approximations? Ugh!
Yes, definitely, though it’s more that the different elements are in different balance. My English reading leans heavily towards SF and fantasy, with a little detective fiction. My Japanese reading has a lot of detective fiction, a moderate amount of historical fiction, a little bit of fantasy and almost no SF. I put this down to a mixture of picking books that are easier to read (for detective fiction if you understand the plot you get most of the enjoyment the book has to offer and you’re not missing too much if you can’t appreciate niceties of language style) and also difficulty in discovering books in Japanese. I lean pretty heavily on “I liked this author, read more of them”, and it seems like in detective and historical fiction I’ve found some authors I like who’ve written quite a few books and who I can reliably go back to for more, whereas for Japanese SF although I’ve read a few interesting individual books I haven’t found any authors where I want to read more by them and they’ve written a lot.
I’ll likely finish it tomorrow.
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