I’ll pass on the Aozora one, but interesting to know about
That’s the one!! I almost wanna write to the author of the English book, and ask where/how on earth they got a copy of it. I don’t really care that much tho. I think anything of significance I’d get from it was already in the chapter where it was discussed
The National Diet Library has a digital scan of it freely available, no login required. Unfortunately the scan quality is atrocious and their online reader UI is terrible… The “download whole thing as a pdf” at the bottom works, though, which helps with the UI and I guess would also allow you to try to process it to get rid of some of the noise in the scan.
The lines of dialogue are marked up to indicate the speaker, e.g.
菊「本当に貧乏は嫌ね。」
when something is said by 菊枝, which is an interesting convention that it is perhaps a shame wasn’t continued into modern texts…
Cool! I downloaded the PDF. I was expecting worse tbh. I love seeing the old kanji & spellings! I’d definitely have to try running mokuro or using YomiNinja on this… I tried running a page through Google Lens, but it turned 氣 into 気, and I’m guessing that would happen for other kanji variants. Anyway, thank you for this!
I should check if they have 屋根裏の二処女 | L30?? for download. I have a physical copy of it, but it’s Rather fragile, and the post version I found has modernized kanji… Which is very helpful, but I’d really love to be able to make a jpdb deck with the older ones at some point. Anyway that’s a rabbit hole for another day
I’ve seen that done in クラスで2番目に可愛い女の子と友だちになった | L27 (which I just learned has a new volume coming out next week!) for LINE/group chat messages, and love it. Otoh I remember being frustrated with 灰と幻想のグリムガル | L31 for not doing similarly in 3-speaker conversations. It might be weird in something like マリみて though, where half the dialogue is mid-line.
I agree it’s kind of a shame that didn’t carry over tho
I’ve been reading more of 十津川警部「スーパー隠岐」殺人特急 | L30?? (the book whose author is excessively fond of commas), and I really can’t decide how I’m going to grade it, despite now being 70% of the way through it. As you might expect from the comma thing, this isn’t a book you read for its literary qualities, and it’s not one to read for characters either – even the main detective who’s in all the books in the series doesn’t have much character to him. The book is pretty much there just for its plot, which is a “what is going on?” type mystery with what seems to be an interesting idea behind it. (It’s not a “guess the answer to the puzzle” kind of mystery.) It’s easy to read because there’s no tricky literary stuff or confusing setups – just straightforward description and dialogue where the detectives interview the next person about events. The comma thing remains distracting, and because there are so many they don’t help with parsing of sentences the way “author is generous with commas” usually would.
So it’s an easy read and if you like reading detective novels just for the “interesting mystery idea” part I guess it’s OK, and I’ve been reading through it quite quickly – but I don’t think I’ll be reading any more by this author. So I think for me that’s going to push it down from 3 star to 2 star territory.
The first book I read by this author I adored, it was such a satisfying read (天使の傷痕 I think? On mobile sorry!). The next book I read from him was solidly “fine” and from what I’ve heard of his other books they’re very formulaic. I kind of wonder if he just had one good idea and then realized he needed to support himself with his writing so just started churning stuff out 
天使の傷痕 | L33 I assume. Does that have the massive overuse of commas?
I could certainly see his first novel being much better than the 600th (Wikipedia says he wrote that many over his lifetime). Partly my indecision on the grading is that I can’t decide whether it’s “fine” (which for me would be 3 stars) or if it falls below that line. As I say, the underlying idea behind the mystery plot seems like an interesting and original one, it’s just that the dialogue and characterisation is pretty lacklustre.
Got home and checked my copy. It does seem to have more commas than is strictly necessary, but I remember when I was reading it thinking “if it weren’t for all this old kanji to look up (it was written in the 1960s) this would be as easy as an 赤川次郎 book” so it didn’t make it feel any more difficult I’d say.
Thanks. Yeah, I don’t think the heavy comma usage makes it harder to read, but I do think there’s a sweet spot for learners where the text has some comma usage in places where it helps to make the parsing of longer sentences clearer. If you have this many commas then they stop being helpful and it goes back to about as difficult as it would be without any commas at all.
I’m trying to get back to 魔法少女育成計画 QUEENS | L36 now that I finished サイレント・ウィッチ 沈黙の魔女の隠しごと | L31, but ugh it’s just so dense and so little is happening. I’m also only 30% of the way done, so there’s quite a lot left to read! I want to finish it, but my eyes just start glazing over after a while.
I finished 水属性の魔法使い 第二部 西方諸国編2【電子書籍限定書き下ろしSS付き】 | L35?? and with that reached 500 活字 books according to bookmeter!
Arguably, looking at the last few books I have read, it’s LNs as far as the eyes can see, but I’ll take it anyway 
Congratulations! …and I was happy to reach 50 non manga books end of January
Btw: it looks like you forgot to add 水属性の魔法使い 第一部、IV.
Ah, whoops. It looks like I just finished my 501st book, then 
There’s a chance I forgot to add others as well… I should probably try to check against the export of Natively one of those days.
I just finished 異世界美少女受肉おじさんと 5 | L26, which means I’m caught up to where the anime left off! It’s been fun to read through these quickly, already knowing generally what’s going to happen. I’ll admit it’s even more wild than I remembered though… This series is definitely not for everyone but it is decidedly for me.
I’ve also simultaneously been working on オレが私になるまで 3 | L21, あかね噺 4 | L29, and やがて君になる 5 | L22, all great as well. I’ll probably pick one of these series and read a few volumes tomorrow since I have the day off (leaning towards オレが私に).
In the variety category, I also read:
2☆ Holoearth Chronicles Side:E ヤマト神想怪異譚 2 (ガンガンスUP!) | L29 Hololive manga vol 2, unfortunately still as lifeless as vol 1.
2☆ 俺とヒーローと魔法少女 1 | L22 Way to take an idea and do absolutely nothing with it
4☆ メタモルフォーゼの縁側 1 | L21 This was really cute! I might continue it eventually, but I have other higher interest series lined up for now.
And finally in 活字 I finally picked up an 江戸川乱歩、明智小五郎 collection: 明智小五郎事件簿 1 「D坂の殺人事件」「幽霊」「黒手組」「心理試験」「屋根裏の散歩者」 | L30??
Very good so far! I’ve also been logging the individual stories with their 青空文庫 entries on Natively, but I have to manually set the page count to 1 (0 is not possible it seems) to avoid overinflating my pages read stats. Has anyone else done something like this before? I’d love to know if there’s another workaround.
40% into わすれなぐさ | L37 and really enjoying it so far. Difficulty level is probably similar to 小さき花々 花物語 | L39 (which I’d guess is L33ish) but the prose is more enjoyable for me so far. Like 小さき花々, it’s broken into lots of small chapters, with headings for each section. Since the story is focused on 3 characters, there’s less broader social commentary than 小さき花々, but there’s definitely still some critique/frustration being expressed. If the difficulty and style are indicative of 吉屋信子’s writings in general, I’m really looking forward to reading more
A few pages into 若草物語 | L30?? and realizing it’s going to be a long read (480 pgs, plus 4 total books). While I wouldn’t say it feels hard it definitely feels harder than L21 (what the kids’ versions seem to be around). So I’ll take my time with it (or maybe just watch the anime instead?)
Read slightly more into Friends | L28?? as well. Hopefully I’ll read it right after finishing わすれなぐさ
銀青のプルースト - a new yuri comic that just started in Shounen Jump Plus. I’m kinda iffy on it so far, but will still read at least a few chapters, just cuz I’m pretty sure it’s the first yuri series they’ve ever run
Still have Sailor Moon 6, and book club stuff to catch up with. Tho I DNF’d on 知ってびっくり! 日本の歴史のお話 後編 | L22
When you think “I don’t want to read too much, so I’m just gonna read a manga chapter for my daily read” and then suddenly you’re halfway through the manga and you’re realizing how much you missed the series.
(And even there I’m only stopping because I really, really should go to bed.)
I finished up to オレが私になるまで 5 MFC | L21 today, the latest published volume. I actually thought it was the end of the series, but I’m glad that assumption was wrong. I’ve liked each volume more than the last and I can’t wait to read more. Thank you again to everyone who talked about this series on the forums and convinced me to stick with it past the first chapters!
I can’t wait to read this series myself, I’ve heard so many good things! And since I just caught up on one series maybe I can squeeze it in soon…
I just finished reading 雨の日も、晴れ男 | L24 and wow, what a strange story. It had me laughing quite a few times by just how ridiculous the situations and character’s actions were. The plot was just so unpredictable. I never knew what crazy thing the main character was going to do next, and I loved every second of it. I definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a funny story.
I finished reading 赤ずきんチャチャ 3 (りぼんマスコットコミックス 732 ) | L18 earlier this week. Knocked a star off for some poorly aged humor again… Using the same slur as before. 
I bought multiple volumes from bookwalker for a coin bonus sale, so I’ll read those but I don’t know if I’m going to continue the series after if they keep making this same joke. In 2025, it just makes me sad.
Currently reading 私の拳をうけとめて! 1 | L21 digitally which feels like a pretty significant step up from the L20 manga I’ve read before. I think once I get used to the speech patterns, it’ll get easier.
And for my physical read, Kinokuniya finally had https://learnnatively.com/book/3a114d9a85/ in stock at my local store. 
I’m starting to realize I prefer reading digitally because I can zoooom in and make the font really big if I need to. Trying to discern some of the kanji/furigana last night was making my eyes hurt (looking at you 隣 
).
Starting this, and the contents are not quite what I was expecting. The majority of the book is 短編集 - a bunch of short stories from various doujins or events, that appear to all be related to the main story (spanning from vol 1-6). The remaining portion is 書き下ろし. So for once, om actually looking forward to short stories - bc I like it when they fill out the story like this. Tho the main plot was in the middle of some DRAMA and I reaallly want an update on that 
. Kindle seems to think it will take me about 14 hrs, which for 340 pgs probly checks out? (Maybe a bit optimistic)… I better get some solid reading in this weekend
Also they finally announced that the anime will be out in 2026! I’m somewhere between excited, and anxious they’ll do it poorly like the manga
Actually I’m finding 若草物語 | L30?? this requires a much closer reading then I thought, and I’ve been checking the original English frequently, plus a lot of lookups. It’s interesting seeing how things get translated into Japanese for once, rather than the other way around. And even here I have my “eh, I’m not crazy about how they translated that” nitpicks . Lookups for me are similar amount to わすれなぐさ | L37 but the words/phrases are much more unfamiliar so far.
Right now I’m inclined to guess the level at mid to upper 30s? But curious to see how it feels once I’m further in. It’s gonna be a pretty gradual read though (like months gradual)
I read 雨夜の月(9) | L23, which was great as always. I find myself smiling at every interaction between the two main characters. I wish it published more frequently though, because getting four chapters once every five months doesn’t feel like enough (especially since it’s a slow burn). The series is in my top 5 manga, but when it’s done it could very well end up being my favorite manga series.
