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.
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 ) 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.
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.
Technically I don’t add textbooks, but I don’t really count textbooks, so I still voted in the poll that I add everything. There is a one-shot manga that I want to read which won’t be in the database, so I wouldn’t be able to add that if I ever got around to reading it. But generally speaking I don’t read manga in magazines or LNs on narou, so I don’t have issues with “unpublished” volumes or anything like that. (My general philosophy is that there’s so much available to read that has been published that there’s no reason to read the magazine/online versions. I don’t watch anime that’s still airing week to week for the same reason; I always wait for a season to finish before watching.)
I have even added BL smut to my list, so… I have no issues adding everything. XD tbf, I mostly add stuff after I read it but if I come across something interesting on here, I put it in my wishlist for future reference… I’ll never finish my TBR, so I don’t bother even trying to limit it to an achievable amount of books.
Good day, native content enjoyers, I hope you are all having another exciting day staring at words.
Recently, I finished the first three volumes of ヴァンパイア大使アンジュ (series) | L23 I was checking jpdb.io the other day and noticed that their algorithm puts the book at 5/10. That immediately seemed odd to me. For reference, コンビニ人間 | L29, 夜市 | L31, and キッチン | L31 are all considered 5/10. It feels nothing like an orange-range book to me! My ratings put it at 22, but I guess it could be 23-24 AT MOST. It’s times like this where I have to wonder if the bot overrated the book, or I’m just insane and severely underrated it. I can’t trust robots! I will, however, trust my fellow Natively graders!
For those who wonder what those books are actually about (you probably aren’t), it’s about a girl and her brother who suddenly find out they are 吸血鬼(1/4)! They become 大使 of Japan for the WFA (World Fairy Alliance). Their job basically consists of dealing with all the gaijin 精霊 that don’t know how to behave themselves. I found it interesting that despite it being stated that 大使 and 精霊 are also in Asia and America, so far, all the troublesome ones have been from Europe. I wonder what the author meant by that.
tldr - Easy, fun kid’s books about 妖怪. Recommended beginner book. (Unless jdpb is actually right abut the difficulty, and it’s way harder than I think it is)
I’m almost done reading カフェ・ド・ブラッド 魔夜中の眠らない血会 | L32. I bought it a while ago but didn’t read it because I am really not the type of person who should buy things in advance. It’s felt harder than anything I’ve finished before. Definitely spent a good amount of time in the dictionary. It’s very bloody at times (good!). Truthfully, I didn’t even know what I was getting into. I just knew it had something to do with 吸血鬼 and a cafe. I didn’t even read the Amazon description when I bought it. I thought it might have just been some calm slice of life (I was wrong). The first quarter wasn’t that bad. However, at some point it just goes full 男性向け and it starts feeling like a shitty romcom for a while. The dialogue degenerated from being about 吸血鬼 to 巨乳 for way longer than it needed to be. It really takes away from the main story. Still a better read than 吸血鬼の劣等感 | L31.
The anime is very cute and super easy to understand.
For the light novel, the sentences are really straightforward and tend to be short with an easy to follow the plot.
There is nearly zero furigana so even for non-school taught kanji you are mostly SOL. I guess it’s a good kanji test, and it’s the stingiest book I have read when it comes to furigana. It seems pretty easy to read, but the lack of furigana probably makes it more difficult than it should be. I guess they assume it’s more of a book that appeals to a more mature crowd.
The first 111 pages (lol) are readable on bookwalker.
It used to be on syosetsu for free, but it seems like the author took it down when the series was completed.
Just taken a look at that. It’s easy, but I think childrens books with more kanji are overrated on jpdb. Like 名探偵クリス is also highly rated, but it’s easy too.
From what little I read, somewhere near 時をかける少女 seems fine to me.
I’ve been reading Red Data Girl, as voted by these forums. It was slow for the first 20 pages or so, but once I got past that it started getting more interesting. Now I’m about 50 pages in (near the end of chapter 1) and I’ve been enjoying it.
I’ve also been binge reading 五等分の花嫁, which is a bit unusual for me since I don’t typically binge read manga. I finished volume 4 yesterday, so now I’m caught up with what I watched of the anime (season 1). I plan to keep reading this series, and at the rate I’m going I’ll probably finish in the next 2-3 weeks.
Finally, I’ve been reading volume 4 of きんいろモザイク, which I haven’t particularly been enjoying, so I’ll probably drop the series (again!).
Oh, hey, I almost picked it up as my current book, but went for reducing my 積読 pile instead (which is, as usual, just over 20 books… 解せぬ). I’ll probably pick it up next.
A few other people I follow here and on bookmeter also read it… Based on your knowledge of the stuff I read, do you think I would enjoy it? To be honest, my uneducated opinion (based on the title and covers; I know literally nothing) is that it feels like it would be quite fanservice-y…
I mean, it’s a harem and it reads like one. So (overly plain and boring) main male character inexplicably draws the interest of the main female characters. The female characters have been shown in bath towels a few times and there was an onsen scene. But you know that I don’t like fan service, and I think (at least through the first 4 volumes) it’s been mostly fine. That’s not to say you’d enjoy it; I’m not sure you would. But I’ve been enjoying it (gave each volume so far 4/5) and plan to keep reading. I find the “quintuplets switch places” shtick entertaining, the story is reasonably well structured / well told so far, and I’m interested in seeing how it’ll end (that is, who MC will marry, since the premise is that he’s marrying one of the quintuplets, but we don’t know which one). Up to you to decide whether any of that catches your interest.
I shared this on the WK forums in the daily reading thread, but I thought it was so fun I’m sharing it here too. This is part of the first page of 天使の傷痕 | L33 :
It was surprisingly a lot of fun to read! It changes back to normal writing after the prologue. I will say this author loves their old kanji, or it more likely it’s just an artifact of when it was written (1965).
Yeah, it’s amazing how just switching up the syllabaries like that will completely throw me off my game, even though I’m fully familiar with katakana. That’s a super neat picture, @cat; if you end up writing a review for the book, you should definitely mention it! What’s the book about?
For my own part, my two focus books atm are 十角館の殺人 | L34 and FLESH & BLOOD 3 | L34. I’ve been coming to really, really enjoy reading Flesh&Blood, so I powered through week 1 + 2’s reading so I could finish it early to get started on F&B3 (which I’m reading with an informal club on Wanikani). I swear, F&B just destroys my motivation to do anything but read it. Great for the Japanese learning, not so great when I should be working. Just got to chapter 3 in F&B3, and I’m having to convince myself how this is a good stopping point and I really have other things I need to do… It’s funny, I have no issues putting a book down when it’s time to go to bed, but when I’m awake and have other obligations? It’s a struggle.
Finished 夜カフェ 2. The books are really quick reads.
Started 天気の子 - the difference between like 23 and 31 is always a bit jarring… I don’t think we have the same stark difference in German or English literature. (I mean, if you compare 1 mainstream modern book with another. Not talking about high brow lit or older stuff like Shakespeare…)
(Also: Why do my links no longer show the level? )
Not that far into it yet and I didn’t even read the back summary but the prologue leads me to believe it’s about revenge and so far in chapter one a guy is talking about his fiance so I imagine she’s going to be murdered. We’ll see
If you highlight the text and paste a link onto it it won’t show the level. Just paste the raw link and space away from it and it will auto format
Yea, I used to talk to one of my Japanese classmates about this. She worked at a restaurant and would often ask her coworkers about some of our homework and they often wouldn’t be sure about the answer. Or I had a language exchange partner who was an avid reader and he told me he had a really good imagination and would often have to guess what Japanese authors were trying to say.
This was confusing to me, but then I remembered reading Tale of Two Cities in high school and even though it was in English I generally had no idea what the basic plot was. let alone all the symbolism, etc. Or Shakespeare was also like another language to me, and apparently the commoner audience at the time didn’t really understand the plays and what they were saying and would just laugh at the more slapstick parts of it and respond to the hammy overacting. So I feel like Japanese still has this “classic literature” feel, when maybe in English we don’t have that anymore.
A manga I’m reading uses that style occasionally because it’s set at a military academy in the Taisho period. Official instructions and reports are written like that. It’s pretty cool looking.
An example of the short reports that appear at the end of each chapter of 岩元先輩の推薦
) 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.
To be honest, my uneducated opinion (based on the title and covers; I know literally nothing) is that it feels like it would be quite fanservice-y…
Just got to chapter 3 in F&B3, and I’m having to convince myself how this is a good stopping point and I really have other things I need to do… It’s funny, I have no issues putting a book down when it’s time to go to bed, but when I’m awake 
