I’ve noticed two ways that Japanese books show thoughts: The long dashes at the start of a paragraph, and using parentheses. I do find it a bit odd that there are two ways (that I know of). I wonder if it’s just not standardized or if it has to do with when the books were published or some other factor.
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Good day, members of learnnatively.com, I hope you are all having the best of times reading.
Recently, I finished 小説 アニメ カードキャプターさくら クロウカード編 上 | L25. It took me a bit longer than usual because I have been busier lately. Believe it or not, I actually do have a life outside of reading obscure Japanese vampire novels. 
You might be wondering why I would read the novelization of the anime of Card Captor Sakura when I could just read the manga. Unfortunately, due to my manga allergies, that was not an option, so I had to settle for the LN. 
I am a sucker for this kind of stuff. I eat this shit up for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you asked me why I get up in the morning, I would say さくらちゃんのために. This quote from Tomoyo-chan sums up my feelings pretty well:
さくらちゃん以上におもしろくてかわいいものなんて、ありませんわ～.
It was the first raw anime that I really felt that I could get into. It’s the cutest thing in the universe, and you should all watch it and post about it in the watching thread. 
Once audiovisual is out, it would be nice if we could have “watching clubs” and watch shows and movies together, like in book clubs. I think a 魔法少女 club would be really fun. I know I definitely need some more motivation to get more listening practice in. What shows would you like to watch together, Natively?
With that out of the way, I must admit that reading it truthfully wasn’t as a great of an experience as watching it. The novelization just cuts too many important plot points out. I feel like you would probably have zero idea what was going on half the time if you didn’t already read/watch the manga/anime; it just moves too fast. Though, I’m not really surprised, since they crammed a 50+ episode arc down into 2 books. I can’t really recommend it unless you already know what’s going on and just absolutely NEED more Sakura. Despite this, it’s the first LN that I’ve given more than 1 star (even though LNs make up 45% of my pages read stat 
).
As for difficulty, it’s about as easy as you would expect it to be. My ratings put it at 25. The manga is currently at 22, but it seems to be normal for LNs to be slightly higher difficulty than their manga counterparts.
Overall, recommended to my fellow manga-deniers who also happen to be Sakura-lovers (probably just me tbh)
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I try to remind myself that (though in my case it’s currently time travel pirate books), and I keep falling off the wagon. 
Suffering from success, I guess?
I would definitely be down for this! I need reasons to actively with on my listening; it gets pushed to the side far too easily. I also barely watch stuff in general anyway, so there would be lots of new stuff to discover.
Speaking of novelizations, has anyone read any good ones they’d particularly recommend? I guess you’d generally see novelizations of visual media, but I wonder if there’s any manga → novel out there? 
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I know of ハイキュー!! ショーセツバン!! (series) | L26 (
they literally put “novelization” as the title) and orange (series) | L22
I read an extended extract of the latter and it did follow quite well the manga to that point, I think (I read both years apart, so I’m not super sure). I have no idea about ハイキュー.
Ah, also, warning: the novelization of orange has furigana on EVERYTHING. It gets annoying pretty fast.
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Well, I am now done with said book and sadly, it got much worse immediately after that. Basically, the whole time they are in レムノ, she just keep being caught by surprise (which, in itself, is not a surprise) and getting bashed by narration. I feel like it could still work if only she managed to keep a good poker face (like nobles are supposed to do in light novels), but instead she keeps going “はぇ?” and looking confused… and people just either don’t comment on it or think she is doing it on purpose. Plus, she has an insane amount of luck. Considering the epilogue for this arc, it might be that she has indeed some godly protection or something (after all, Anne did pray for that in the prologue… so maybe?) but it still felt repetitive as a joke and just jarring in terms of plot. It feels like there’s no real challenge or tension 
I just had a look at the illustrations of volume 3 (which starts the next arc), but I didn’t feel like reading ahead for now. So I’ll just move on to another series in my pile.
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Fair enough! Thanks for letting me know what you thought of it!
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Started 私の推しは悪役令嬢。 | L32 for another bookclub. This could be either funny and cute or really boring and awful… 
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If you feel like it, I’d love to hear what you think! It has its flaws and strong points both imo, so I guess it really depends on your tastes and tolerances.
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Finally found time to finish this 4th story, and… well, now I know why it’s part of the カタログ (where we can’t have nice things).
I feel like the stories so far have been a bit of a mixed bag, from pretty meh to rather nice, but I feel like this one has been the best so far. If the last two stories are as good, I might really consider continuing the series.
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I’ve been working through こころ | L39 this week. It’s considerably easier language than the other Soseki novel I’ve read (坊っちゃん | L41), but also less exciting and funny. I’m finally starting to get invested into the story now but the beginning was hard to stay motivated through.
I also finished Book 2 out of 2 of 二ノ国 光の後継者と猫の王子 (series) | L24, and I highly recommend it. It sets up and delivers on a really interesting story in just 2 volumes, and it’s a cool exploration of the Ni No Kuni setting. Worth a read if you’ve ever been interested in the series.
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I think it was @eefara who asked about details on 天使の傷跡 and I don’t think I ever followed up, so here is the basic gist thus far. I’ve reached a (probably) major spoiler point so will leave that out, but generally hiding just because some people like to go in fully blind:
So a news reporter and his girlfriend go walking, see a dude who has been stabbed staggering towards them, he dies and his last utterance to the news reporter is 「てん」. The dagger he’s been stabbed with looks like it has some kind of sigil on it, and it turns out this guy too is a reporter, but kind of a skeezy one.
It’s a really fun read so far, and definitely challenging my kanji knowledge. I think my binge reading of Aozora short stories prepared me well for reading a paperback copy of a pulpy 1960s crime novel. The actual grammar and vocab isn’t hard, it’s just got kanji like 何処, 屑箱, and 或 and the like scattered all about.
All my studying is coming to fruition, ya’ll.
Also I picked up another book by the same author called 恐怖の海 (who wouldn’t with that title 
) and from reading the first page it seems super breezy. It looks to be published in 1995, though, so 30 years later than 天使の傷跡.
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Just finished また、同じ夢を見ていた today. Really wholesome story. 100% recommend
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Wow, my goal is to get up to the level to read authors like Soseki, Kawabata, Tanizaki in the original! Out of curiosity, what are the main challenges? And how did you build up to reading Soseki? 
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That’s a great goal! I actually had no knowledge of classic Japanese authors until a while after I started learning, and only picked up an interest in them recently.
How did you build up to reading Soseki?
I picked up 吾輩は猫である | L48 in 2020, and struggled through the first chapter over several days with the help of a dictionary, audiobook, and occasionally referencing an English translation. After that I decided Soseki was too hard and moved on to easier stuff for awhile
Then, near the end of last year, my university offered a Japanese history class that I enrolled in. One of the books we read for the class was 坊っちゃん | L41, and I decided to read it in Japanese because, I mean, I might as well right? This was really hard compared to the modern books and LNs I’d been mostly reading, but I also really enjoyed Soseki’s style and all the little jokes (once I finally started to get them). I mentioned it in my review on the book’s Natively page too but this blog was really helpful when I got totally stuck on strange metaphors or 1900s references.
So in a sense, I feel like I didn’t quite “build up to it” as much as I could have, but I did have about 10 novels by different authors under my belt before I tackled 坊っちゃん。 The pressure of a class schedule forced me to work through the book at a steady pace, and now I feel more confident with Soseki’s style.
What are the main challenges?
I would say Soseki’s outated and sometimes just strange kanji usage can be confusing at first. Things like 此処（ここ）、其処（そこ）、 and ～に就いて（について）you get used to pretty quickly, but there’s also uncommon grammar like ～がものはない that forces me to stop reading and google stuff for awhile. Thankfully I’ve got a version of the book that has editor’s notes explaining the weirdest ones. Other than that, I spend the most time figuring out what the narrator means when they’re describing their thoughts or reasoning on something. The dialogue is quite straightforward, but it gets harder in these sections of internal monologue.
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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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