Just to note, かがみの孤城 has a fantastic audiobook. If you do end up starting a book club, I recommend the audiobook to supplement (if you’re the kind of person who likes to listen and read at the same time).
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This happened to me in the third chapter. I had stuff going on at work at the time and it was like ‘nope nope nope’ and the book has been shelved ever since 
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Third chapter made me practice inner emptiness. Or maybe I was just dead inside. Then the cover of chapter 4 came in like a wreaking ball.
like… enjoy whenever you get back to it.
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I enjoyed 闇祓!
辻村美月 always writes about things that are like “modern social problems” in a way that is sometimes heavy handed, but I thought the concept of using different types of ハラスメント in a horror book was clever. The title also becomes a pun!
Chapter 3 was annoying though 
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Yes, I’m pretty sure I added that book to my TBR based on name recognition (plus, I was curious about the title)
What if reading hurts so much because the book itself is 闇ハラ and you get taken over after reading it?
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Maybe that does make it a horror novel Personally victimized by a book!
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I finished キラキラとギラギラ 1 | L21 a few days ago and really enjoyed it. The contrast in art style is neat and the story is actually pretty good so far. I’m not going to rush to read volumes 2 and 3, but I’ll buy them when they go on sale.
Besides that I’ve mostly been reading the final volume of 本好き, when not distracted by other things. But I’ve refocused on it the last few days so I can complete it before the WaniKani book club for 風立ちぬ | L41 starts in two weeks. I expect that to be quite challenging, so I want to be done 本好き before that starts.
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Oh! I bought it randomly during my recent buying spree. It’s good to know that it was a good pick!
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I apparently own it? I guess I got it cheap or for free at some point? I guess I’m bumping it up on my list then 
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I finished 魔導具師ダリヤはうつむかない ~今日から自由な職人ライフ~ 6 | L30 yesterday, which isn’t much of a surprise since I have been going through that series at a ~3 days per volume pace recently
What does come as a surprise (to me at least) is that the series itself has now been elevated to my “favorite” list, even though I can’t quite point at the element that made it that way. For every aspect I can think of (romance, action, plot, writing style…) there’s been at least one similar series that I read recently that was better. I guess the only thing where it beats the competition directly is the art style of the illustrations. HOWEVER, all those other series have been worse at some other things, which ダリヤ has been consistently okay at worst and usually good. Also, every time I start thinking that things are getting repetitive, the author comes up with something new to bring me back in. I kinda wish it wasn’t always so close to my breaking point, but I guess I’ll just trust the author from there on.
At the same time I reached that conclusion, I came across a post from the author on なろう celebrating ダリヤ getting first place in the “このライトノベルがすごい!” 2025 ranking.
Rambling about the ranking
Looking it up, there are two rankings, one for 文庫本, one for 単行本, and it won in the later category, but still. (Side note: the ranking was published at the end of November 2024; people complain about stores putting up Christmas decorations just after October, but that’s on another level ). So, turns out that series is popular? I’m starting to feel like I could possibly retroactively use it as my “book I keep hearing about” bingo entry
Also, 服飾師ルチアはあきらめない ~今日から始める幸服計画~ | L30?? made it in the top 20, but I can’t seem to find the actual ranking for 11~20 (the author said it was 20th, so I’ll just take their word for it). I’m not paying 880 jpy just to make sure.
As for the top 10s, on the 文庫本 side, 誰が勇者を殺したか | L31 is the only one I know. I bought it randomly 6 months ago after hearing about it on the forum, so it’s reassuring to see it in here… although, everything else in the top 5 is stuff I would never read, so maybe I should be worried instead? On the 単行本 side, beside ダリヤ, I have read a few volumes of the 2nd place (it was okay), I own the first volume of the 3rd place (which, it turns out, is by the same author as the one in second place), I read the 4th place last year and found it brutally boring, bought all the books of the 5th place during my buying spree the other day, read all the published book of the 7th place and loved it, 9th place is the slime light novel which I read a bunch of because I got the books from the library but was meh, I heard of the 10th place but it’s not my thing. 6th and 8th place are the only ones in the top 10 that I never heard of.
Overall, kind of a mixed bag. There’s obviously a clear bias toward 男性向け stuff, but it’s not as bad as one could expect.
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Congrats to every who passed the JLPT! I’ve been stalking study logs seeing all the good news! 
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I’m about 2/3 90% through 幼女戦記 1 Deus lo vult | L44 and it’s not that bad, difficulty wise. Plus, the author’s style makes him repeat stuff quite a lot (e.g. seeing the same conversation from the point of view of a different character). He uses mostly the same words, though, so I don’t know if it makes it easier, but at least it well help retention.
Plot-wise… it’s kinda meh so far? I liked the idea of having a main character being a high functioning sociopath and reincarnating them in a world war scenario. I kinda liked the unwilling backfire of divine intervention granting her cheat level of fire power but forcing her to pray when using it. The goal was to increase faith around her… but the only people witnessing it are her enemies, reflexively going “well fck you and fck your god”. Probably not the expected result. Other than that, there’s a lot of time skips and jumping between the point of view of many characters, not just the titular one. There are even parts from a journalist 40 years later basically trying to investigate her, but everything is hidden behind military secrets.
I am mostly reading it as my “keep hearing about it” bingo square (well, I guess that it would be more accurate to say that I kept hearing about it a few years ago, and regularly see it when I look through light novels here and sort by difficulty). I feel like it’s a better story (and writing) than 86, but not really my stuff. Except for some miracle (thematically appropriate) from the remaining ~40 pages, I don’t see myself continuing with this series.
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Well, the miracle didn’t happen. The very last part was fun enough, but suffers of the general issue I have with the book: there were a few lines that were interesting about the training regimen she made and some about her mental health (and how she is terrified of people figuring out she is “losing her mind”, so she is masking it instead of seeking help) as well as dealing with her own view of her gender. But it’s all drown in a sea of other random things (mostly people commenting endlessly about the situation or her).
It’s one of those LN series where I am curious about what will happen, but the reward is not worth the read… Maybe I can find a summary of the plot, or go for the manga/anime?
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Do you think the level 44 difficulty rating is justified?
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Nah. It’s about the same difficulty as 86―エイティシックス― | L38, maybe a tad more since people are actually talking in a formal way.
I guess it depends for people with zero knowledge of military vocabulary and/or zero knowledge of magic vocabulary, since they would come across stuff like “illusion magic based light bending decoy” and no vocabulary list/dictionary will help them since it’s an invented compound word… but the basic elements of those words are clear enough.
Based on the books I see you posting about, though, I don’t think it would be an issue for you.
Anyway, technobabble stuff is also a core component of 86, so I’d still say they should have a fairly similar difficulty.
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I finished my first Japanese book of the year:
I put off reading the last little stretch for a couple of days because some recent awful news hit the figure skating community hard and I did not feel up to reading this at first 
Overall, I thought it was pretty decent for a kids’ book - I’m not sure I’m going to want to read the whole series, but I picked up the second one at the same time as the first, so I’ll read that one as well at least. It’s nice that all the Japanese media including skating that I’ve read/watched so far is pretty accurate to the sport, maybe because it’s decently popular in Japan.
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Well, 魔導具師ダリヤはうつむかない ~Dahliya Wilts No More~1 | L24?? was free to read on Booklive, so I did for bingo purposes. I’m still not a fan of manga adaptations of LN, but this one was mostly fine. There was some creativity with the way the scenes were shown, and the mangaka built up from ダリヤ’s childhood up to the moment of the 婚約破棄 (not a spoiler, the LN literally starts there).
Other than that… pretty average, I would say. One of the major issue is that the love interest is described as unbelievably hot (and I thought the style of the illustrator worked well in that regard) while his manga appearance is “average male character”. Kinda breaks the dream.
But heh, one more bingo entry.
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More “plotting for future reading”, but this weekend I have been looking at Tokyo hotels, and cross-referencing them against a map of Book-Off locations. That’s normal, right? 
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The Shinjuku station Book Off game is pretty weak fyi, I wanna say that I do the best at the one outside of Ikebukuro?
Totally normal.
*Says me, over here having hot takes about Book Offs in Tokyo*
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I’m currently thinking east side of Tokyo, near the Akihabara and Ueno book-offs…
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