Erm, what? 
Maybe she did that with a dulled blade too? 
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Just finished ブライト・プリズン 学園の美しき生け贄 | L32; pretty good. Not necessarily mind-blowing, but the author’s got a decent setup, at least, and I went ahead and purchased book #2 to read down the line. Here’s my review:
Spoilerish summary for the first, idk, let’s say first third of the book to be safe: kid becomes a 神子 in the secret sex cult he was raised in.
My two next focuses will be 神去なあなあ日常 | L33 (am about halfway through; put it on temporary hold since I was on vacation the past week) and FLESH & BLOOD 15 | L35 (somehow already about halfway through as well; put it to the side briefly to wrap up ブライト・プリズン).
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I binged the Manga CLAMP PREMIUM COLLECTION X 1 | L19 yesterday. I adored CLAMP manga when I was a teen (but have never read X!) and reading stuff from them now makes it a mixture out of nostalgia and still liking the core elements of CLAMP in terms of how they lay out their stories, what their characters are like, the art style, …
I then bought all of カードキャプターさくら クリアカード編 | L18 because bookwalker is running a sale on the full set currently.
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Speaking of CLAMP, I need to get back to ツバサ: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE | L25 one of these days. xxxHolic | L25 is also on my list (have read them both in English before).
I love their art style in general, but especially in Tsubasa 
Update: this got me to start again! Also I love their cover art so much 
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Last night I read ten pages of 虐殺器官 | L37 , which is about as much of that book as I find I want to read in one go. Then I thought I’d read a bit more of 遠巷説百物語 | L42 and by the time I next looked at the clock it was nearly half past midnight…but I only had another five pages to the end of the first story in the book, so I finished it anyway
It’s odd how one book is five levels harder than the other but I find it much easier in practice to get stuck into reading it.
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when a book hooks you, it hooks you good. it’s such a rare treat as an adult, I find. 
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I finished reading 地球とは何か 人類の未来を切り開く地球科学 (サイエンス・アイ新書) | L30?? this morning. It was mostly good, but the author seems to completely ignore renewable energy and nuclear power in the natural resources section, which I found pretty weird.
I liked the book, but I don’t really think I have the stamina for long non-fiction like it at this point. I really slowed down to reading a small section a day, until I got to the point this weekend where I decided I just wanted to be done with it.
Next up for me are some manga (I want to do a proper intensive read of 放浪息子 | L27 ), then some novels I picked up a while ago.
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I just finished reading 乙女男子に恋する乙女 | L26. I read the whole series over about a week and a half and I really enjoyed it! Nice art, cute premise, funny. It was a quick but fun read.
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I finished up the final volume of 老女的少女ひなたちゃん today. I enjoyed the series overall, would give it like an 8.5/9 out of 10 rating. Of course, there’s always the possibility that I’m biased and that it’s the new experience reading Japanese (as it was when I started the series) helping, but I think it’s not quite that.
The premise is basically (For anyone that hasn’t seen me promoting it before here or in the WK ABBC :p) that an 88 year old grandma dies and is reborn as Hinata, and the story picks up on her in her kindergarten years. It starts with a lot of episodes of Hinata being this weirdly wise kid which makes for some cute comedy, but as the series goes on it starts to tackle a lot more of a longer plot, and some of those parts are pretty strong on the feels. Volume 3 in particular might deserve a couple of warnings for some the stuff with some of the side characters: implied child neglect, implied suicidal thoughts, and while I think later volumes kind of consciously backed away from tackling anything that serious, there’s still a nice rebuilding story for several characters that gets told.
Ending Spoilers
I kind of… don’t like the ending. Not in the sense that it’s bad, but in the sense that it’s much more of a downer ending to me than I think was probably intended. It feels like the intention of the ending was like "Look, Toyo’s lingering issues are resolved, Sadao’s life is on track, Yamanashi has some friends, and Hinata now gets to live the normal childhood that Toyo’s memories sort of denied her.
But in a real sense, the Hinata minus Toyo thats left at the end of the story is not the same Hinata as people have come to know, both the readers and the other characters. There’s Sadao’s and Yamanashi’s closing scene which touches on this, but honestly, even aside from new-Hinata being less interested in them, it’s like… what are Hinata’s school friends going to think? Her family are bewildered too. It kind of feels like rather than Toyo passing on and leaving Hinata free, that Hinata as we have known her died and some stranger appeared in her body.
Now apart from that, I really enjoyed the manga, even aside from the Japanese practice. Like I started it when I was much less confident reading manga as a “Hah, funny kid acting like a grandma with easy language”, and for people reading in the book club, it’s still at that stage, but it’s definitely been a lot more than that as I got quite invested in the overall reincarnation story. Like as it goes on, it’s clear the core of the story is the sort of a resolution arc, for Sakuya, Yamanashi and Sadao. Hinata too, though hers is primarily expressed through Sadao. And while I’ve enjoyed the comic antics of “Look how weird Hinata is”, those resolution/redemption plotlines are the parts that were the highs of the series for me in the end.
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If you are still interested in this theme, here is another, slightly more complicated version: 妻、小学生になる。 1|L25, which will also get an anime this year and already had a live action version.
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I may check it out in the future, but since I’m reading 本好きの下剋上 also, I don’t want to just read reincarnation stories
Just finished reading the 東京ミュウミュウ オーレ! | L25 series! I read books 1-6 in pretty quick succession a few months back, then stopped reading for absolutely no reason and decided to finish it off tonight. Excellent, fun little manga; highly recommended for people who enjoy magical boys, cute boys, and cute boys being funny. But in all seriousness it’s got a fun, high-energy vibe throughout, and the premise, if not super original, fits the characters and themes well.
I’d like to try the original series; I picked up the first couple of volumes for free/cheap some time ago, but I’m a little worried that I won’t like it as much as オーレ, haha.
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I had put both of these down in the first half of 2023, and now they’re both in “mostly comprehensible with some lookups” territory. Still far Tsubasa is trickier grammar, but Tsukihime has some new vocab and no furigana.
Also read through the prologue of 月姫 VN (web version), and was surprised to discover that it’s accessible (with Yomichan) and a million times easier than Fate/Stay Night.
I probably won’t stick with the VN rn (time constraints), but ordered a set of the manga, so I’ll be reading all of those!!
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I haven’t read anything in JP in about a week since I’ve been sick/recovering from being sick and just didn’t have the energy for that, though I did read a fair bit in English (the entire Dark Elf Trilogy by R.A. Salvatore). I broke that streak today by reading ドッグスレッド①. The cover art being better than the chapter art is just the norm, if not a rule, but unfortunately the chapter art in this is largely very off-putting, so I won’t be continuing with it. I did enjoy the story so far, but I didn’t look at much more than the text boxes, and that’s no way to read a manga lmao
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Is All You Need Is Kill | L35 really a light novel? Wanted to double-check here before I requested that it be recategorized.
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That’s what it says on Bookwalker and Wikipedia. Imprint publishes LNs as well: Super Dash Bunko - Wikipedia
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Wow; you learn something new every day.
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LN is at least a bit arbitrary/fuzzy in the first place either way. What made you think of recategorizing it?
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I knew they had made a big Hollywood blockbuster out if it, so my brain equated that to novel. 
Having a movie isn’t indicative of anything, I know, which was why I wanted to double-check first.
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Well, they made a whole blockbuster series from the Harry Potter books, which for me are also LNs.
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