Yeah read those spring was my first! The long distance relationship was definitely the easiest.
The Jam Make was definitely a good story, I enjoyed it a lot. Now I am keeping track of my start and finish dates, besides the reading time.
What I am most interested in is the sci-fi story yet to be released and fully produced. Did you guys know that?
I loved Kona as well! I think it was probly my next story, after Hole in the Wall. Otherwise I don’t remember difficulty that clearly (I last used Satori in like 2023), plus most of them have “easy” and “hard” versions that I’d switch between
idk anything about the sci-fi thing you mentioned, but that’s pretty cool. I was most impressed by the fact that they have YuYu Nihongo episodes now tho!
Ow I remember now, The Jam Maker got noticeably difficult (more) at the last 20 episodes.
Yeah same, I would love to reach a point to listen to that podcast seems like a real good addition. Cannot wait.
Thank you so much for your wonderful reply! Seems I have some nice stories waiting for me.
I only started Kona, but didn’t understand much of it at all at the time. Then I found Natively and blew way past Satori Reader’s difficulty without thinking about it…
I do consider getting a subscription to it from time to time to just listen to Kona… 
Ah I didn’t know we had series and volume level tags separately! As I go through the series I’ll see how much more of that is throughout. Despite reading at least 8 volumes before, I don’t actually remember a lot of the stories off the top of my head. 
Finished vol 1 and think it’s off to a really good start, with some room to grow. Art style is soft, and there’s been a good sense of suspense and drama so far. I’m gonna catch up on the most recent chapters now.
My main long-term hopes for it are that it won’t eventually turn into just another run-of-the-mill yuri relationship, but will instead stay an S relationship, and I hope it will go on for a long while. The main character is a first year in high school, so the latter seems slightly more likely, and the former is probably just setting myself up for disappointment. There was an interesting twist already (the お姉さま is in fact a year younger than the MC). I did find myself looking up more than I expected, which is encouraging.
After finding myself a bit frustrated with the text-based format of 知ってびっくり! 日本の歴史のお話 後編 | L21 I’ve decided to give the corresponding events in this manga a try. I’ve previously read vol 1 & part of vol 2, and enjoyed - so figured I’d mention it here, since it has a lot of useful maps, relation charts, explanations, etc.
Gonna try and finish ベルサイユのばら(8) | L32 first tho. Edit: I finished it
My impression is a bit scattered bc I took a pause to read some other stuff. While I still prefer the anime overall, I can see where Oscar & Andre are a bit more developed. It feels both more realistic, and less impactful - but I have to wonder how much of that is from having seen the anime already. It may just be that I’m a bit out of steam at the moment. I’ve forgotten exactly how Oscar’s death scene went in the anime, but I was so happy that Rosalie was the one by Oscar’s side in the manga.
It’s kinda hard to believe that there’s another 2 volumes after this. I may take my time with those - tho it would be nice to finish the series and “only” be reading 10 things 
I read the next two stories in 小さき花々 花物語 | L39 . While I still think the book is much easier than L39, the difficulty did jump a bit from the 1st to 2nd story. In 28 pgs (stories 2-3) I added 44 vocab words to my jpdb deck
天国と舞妓 was about a a Buddhist girl and a Christian girl, from different class backgrounds, and how their lives turned out.
姉の幻影 actually got a little supernatural - to my surprise! Overall the stories so far are somewhat predictable, but still interesting. There’s 11 stories in the book, and the first 3 have all been pretty short, and broken into sub-sections - so it’s very helpful in preventing reading fatigue, it getting small accomplishment boosts.
I’ve finished
I’ve copied my review:
Story: The characters and their situation have potential. But I thought it was a bit boring, with most of the drama being in the later part. And the some if that drama and backstory feels a bit off to me. Like it doesn’t fit it is too much too late.
I feel the little kids (the protagonist siblings) could have had more of a personality rather than just being cute.
I might come back to the second volume in the future, or maybe not.
Language: Large parts of the story is slice of life stuff. But there are some parts that are a bit more difficult. There is technical vocabulary related to creating manga. And then there is the sci Fi plot of the manga they are creating.
Content warning:
Rens parents are negligent and abusive. The abuse is only in one chapter and involves beating.
I’ve decided to drop/put on hold 踊り場にスカートが鳴る | L23 and 雨夜の月 | L23 until they are completed. I just keep forgetting everything between volumes. If anyone has any insight of how much longer they are going to be I’d be interested to know. 踊り場にスカートが鳴る is a Yuri-Hime series, so I don’t imagine it will be that long.
I’m now re-reading どうしたら幼馴染の彼女になれますか!? | L23 as it’s complete now. I’ve read 4 of the 5 volumes. I didn’t really remember the context for volume 4 when I read it, so I’ll read the complete thing now that its done. Even though I didn’t like it that much. I do enjoy volume 1, though.
I finished 僕が夫に出会うまで | L30. I was getting bored at my pace by the end, and just sped through without creating flashcards.
While I mostly liked it, I guess I didn’t end up finding it that interesting. It was somewhat interesting to see what life was like as a gay man in the 2000s and 2010s. It didn’t come to any interesting conclusions – marriage equality is something I’m already convinced on, so I’m not exactly the target audience. I clearly wasn’t the intended audience, but I also am wondering if autobiography isn’t for me at all, unless it’s heavily fictionalized.
Anyway, I started reading 吉祥寺の朝日奈くん | L30?? . I think it was recommended on ゆる言語学ラジオ? Or maybe someone here recommended it, but I don’t see any reviews or ratings. I absolutely blasted through the first short story this morning, absolutely loved it. I didn’t realize it was a short story collection, though, so I was surprised to see it end! It had the gimmick of being written as a 交換日記, and I think all the stories in the book might have gimmicks to them. Anyway, at the current rate I may be done by next week!
Thank you for your service (ie yay - someone graded an reviewed an untouched Yuri LN on here)
they do have some long ones too tho (currently running: 私の百合はお仕事です, ささやくように恋を唄う, ゆるゆり, Citrus+, 私の推しは悪役令嬢 for example)
I’d imagine it will be at least a few more volumes, cuz there’s a lot going on at the moment (tho I haven’t read this month’s chapter), and 7-8 volumes is a good length for YH series.
I’m about a month behind, but this also seems like it’s got a while to go to me. Just guessing tho
I read while it was releasing, and found the last few chapters rather frustrating, but I had enjoyed the series a lot until that point. Hope you fare better than me.
Yesterday I started reading 世界から猫が消えたなら after dropping かがみの孤城, for now. I hope to read the later whenever I feel like my vocabulary is stronger, because the quantity of vocabulary was overwhelming.
Judging by the Natively level difference your alternative book is not that much easier, though. But at least it’s shorter.
I thought so at first, and that’s why I decided to download the sample first and, at the moment, it feels easier than かがみの孤城 and I personally feel more drawn to the story.
I think 世界から猫が消えたなら is a lot more “active” than かがみの孤城, which is often cited as having a slow pace. So if you were finding it difficult to stay interested, I think the switch was probably a good choice! As you said yourself, you can always come back to かがみ when you have a bit more experience and can read faster.
Yeah, I’ve read several reviews that say the pace of かがみの孤城 is kind of slow until the last quarter of the book. Also, the grammar felt kind of weird? I’m not sure how to describe but it deffinitely felt difficult and like I had to make a great effort in order to understand what was being said. I don’t think I was in the best place mentally speaking, mood and exhaustion wise, too. I might pick it up again in a few months 
I read the book in 2.5 weeks and I thought the pacing was totally fine. For people reading it over several months I can see that being a problem though.
What did you think of it in the end? I was thinking of nominating it for the light novel club, but then I remembered the thing about the author expecting you to have read 雨のティアラ | L30?? already, which gave me pause…
I’ll personally probly still read it first anyway, just b/c I already started it, and I’m ambivalent about the horror-ish(?) seeming setting for 雨のティアラ (tho Konno-sensei does a decent job with horror/supernatural stuff in general)
Currently on volume 8, and the weird decisions just keep piling up.
There’s a map at the beginning of each volumes and it never gets updated… The main character isn’t even on the part of world shown by the map for the current arc (or the next, considering its title). I briefly thought it might be to avoid spoilers, BUT:
I went ahead and checked the map at the beginning of the first volume of the next arc (getting some minor spoilers on the way, but whatever) and it’s still the original map… What’s the point of putting it there? Not only is the character not in that general area, the map itself isn’t even current for the area itself due to changes in country lines…
Another thing that has been annoying me in volume 8 (not putting the Natively link because the arc title is part of the book title) is that at the end of volume 7 (spoiler, obviously) the main character and セーラ become a couple (to no one’s surprise). Volume 8 takes place after a 3 years time skip and not only nothing happened further, they are back to their previous behavior (regular dates, but nothing more) while everyone else is back to expecting them to become a couple… but that happened already?? Did the author forget about that???
Anyway, whatever. At this point I am just reading this series out of inertia (and not wanting to feel like I wasted money by buying the other volumes).
Well, okay, not just that. I still like the MC a lot, especially for a 男性向け light novel, but the author just sabotaged 80% of the other things I liked in this series…
Sometimes you just need a good hate read.
