Time and brain pain cost, I understand
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The worst part is that I somehow cannot just get rid of them, my brain still insists that I need to finish everything in my 積読 pile, even though nothing of value would be lost.
There’s a few more free books in there that I’m honestly not super stoked about.
Completely unrelated, but I just read https://learnnatively.com/book/17539c4127/ in a single sitting. It’s fantasy but not isekai (and as such went in my relevant list) with a touch of mystery/investigation. I liked the writing but the main gimmick is really easy to guess (I got it maybe 50 pages in) and the final plot twist is impossible to guess with the hints we are provided. As the same time, the author is not promising a “fair” situation (and it doesn’t really feel like the point of the book anyway), so I don’t like it but I’m not mad about it.
I’m somewhere between 3 and 4* but the bonus story was really weak (and even undoes a major thing of the main story in my mind) and tipped the scale towards 3*.
Man, I wish LN authors would just stop with those extra stories…
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You could just… delete them from your list.
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Sounds pretty interesting - also what a great cover! Thx for mentioning
+1. Life’s too short to waste time reading something that bad. (Would say the same thing about a lot of bonus stories, but probably not as severe)
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I skipped most of the bonus stories in 本好き starting in arc 4 because they were often boring and a waste of my time.
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Most of the time with extra stories it’s like, if it was a good enough story to tell it would be in the main book. Or maybe its own standalone book. But I think it does a lot for marketing, especially the books that started as web novels, so unfortunately they probably aren’t going away any time soon.
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I’m with seanblue. I’d say just to through and do a purge of any past mistakes. Like, go into your digital book service library and actually delete them from your account. You’ll forget about them 0.5 seconds after doing the deed.
I have consistently liked the bonus stories in Flesh&Blood; I think that’s the only series so far where I’ve actively sought them out. The ones in volume one of 穏やか貴族の休暇のすすめ were just so-so, but I liked the ones in volume two, so jury’s still out on that one.
I definitely agree with @shitsurei that they’re just marketing fodder for the most part. I suppose that means you can at least generally consistently ignore them by default, at least, and just poke around the ones in series you really like.
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That’s true, but what if I actually enjoy them? After all, I did get the first volume of 本好き for free as well.
I’m going to try 灰と幻想のグリムガル level.1 ささやき、詠唱、祈り、目覚めよ | L31 anyway because it has high reviews. For those that have 0 reviews, like 目が覚めたら投獄された悪女だった | L32 I’ll just read 10% or so and decide if I just leave them unfinished. (I still feel bad about throwing them away)
Oh yeah, I do remember being okay with those. There were also some bonus stories from 本好き that I liked, as well as a few here and there from various series, but it’s still mostly negative.
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So I was rereading 魔法少女ダンデライオン(1) | L24?? since I bought the volume (while I previously read it on the online publisher platform) and I only just now noticed how long Shades eyelashes are and I’m absolutely in love with it
I 100% stan
10/10
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It pulled out a lot of surprises and new characters - arguably slightly too many. Left a review already. Fun, light read & I’d recommend the series to ppl looking for: fantasy but not isekai, yuri adventure, and/or easy-ish but not boring. Will start vol 3 soon. While I wouldn’t mind seeing the political side of things more thoroughly developed, that would likely up the difficulty a substantial amount, so I’ll eventually go back to 転生王女と天才令嬢の魔法革命 | L32 or 私の推しは悪役令嬢。 | L31 for that
I’ll look forward to your thoughts. And take this as a reminder to finish vol 7 one of these months
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August Manga Reading Challenge, Week 1
*also contains books read the last week of July
Completed books:
- トーマの心臓 | L30 (my copy is split into three 単行本)
- よつばと! 16 | L16
- D.Gray-man 13 | L24
- D.Gray-man 14 | L24
- D.Gray-man 15 | L24
- 幻惑の鼓動 2 | L29
- 彼に依頼してはいけません 1巻 (ZERO-SUMコミックス) | L27 (represented here by the ザ・デスマーチ CD, as I read this volume digitally)
- 幻惑の鼓動 3 | L29
- 獣の王国 6 | L25
- 獣の王国 7 | L25
My original shortlist; this isn’t a hard-and-fast list I’m going to try to abide by, but more a starting point of some of the series I knew needed love sooner. 
indicates I’ve read at least some of the volumes from that series since:
獣の王国 | L25 - Only volumes 6 & 7 remaining. Cute series good for when you need something fluffy to read.
トーマの心臓 | L30 - <.<;
D.Gray-man | L24 - On volume 13
氷の魔物の物語 | L25 - On volume 7
魔入りました!入間くん | L28 - On volume 5. For some reason I keep bouncing off this manga even though I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve read; not sure what the blocker is.
幻惑の鼓動 | L29 - On volume 2, but I only have three volumes at present, so two more to go before I order my next batch.
よつばと! 16 | L17
Reviews/Thoughts:
Note, everything here should have a review on the first volume of the series, except for よつばと because I don’t have any worthwhile thoughts that haven’t already been said for that.
トーマの心臓: Whew, finally done! I knew I probably wouldn’t be super enthusiastic to jump to this after reading easier/more shallow manga not that this wasn’t not shallow in parts, so I decided to knock it out first. I left a review on the book page, but while I generally liked it, I’m pretty sure I would’ve run out of patience for this much sooner in English. Too many emotional 13-year-old boys running around with very little of substance really happening. As a BL classic (and first full-length BL originator book I’ve read) it was a great look into the early beginnings of the genre; as a story itself it didn’t speak to me much. The art was quite nice, and once I got the hang of how the author wrote it wasn’t a difficult read either.
I’ve got the next couple of The History of BL Manga: 1970s Origins 🎓 BL University reads lined up, as they’re physical only, but I haven’t made a definitive decision whether to start the next one this month or not (which would be 変奏曲 | L24??)
よつばと! 16: We all know it. This volume featured gorgeous scenery as usual; that’s what I’m mostly there for these days, haha. よつば and her dad take a hiking trip, and I so desperately wanted to join them for scenery. @.@ There was a pleasant surprise at the end of this volume, too, which was the decided factor bumping it up from 4 to 5 stars for me. (
End of book big spoilers ) I was so surprised to see Osaka from Azumanga Daioh show up! I’m really glad I didn’t have that spoiled for me early; I love AD, and it was so exciting to first wonder who this mysterious teacher would be, and then see it was Osaka. And she hasn’t changed a bit…
D.Gray-man, vols. 13-15 : I continue reading a favorite series that will never not get an automatic 5 star rating from me per book, therefore skewing the series rating in general. You’ll have to read and rate for yourself if you want to stop me, muahahaha. 
Anyway, reaching volume 15 is also a good excuse to finally take D.Gray-man 公式ファンブック 灰色ノ聖櫃 | L30?? off the shelf; it’s the first DGM fanbook, and was published the same day as DGM 15. It’s got one of the author’s earlier oneshots ゾーン included, which is super cool; glancing at it, it appears to be some sort of proto-DGM!
幻惑の鼓動, vols. 2-3 : I’ve finally caught up to the couple of volumes I bought some time back; I read this series in English and liked it enough to want to read it in the original, and contrary to my usual methods only bought a couple of the books, with the intention of eventually reading them, buying a few more, rinse, repeat. See, I know myself, and knew that if I bought the entire series they would sit there for a good long while. 
Anyway, these were a ton of fun (this series might end up like DGM with a majority of 5 star ratings, we’ll see), and went ahead and put in an order for volumes 4-8. It’s nice being able to go back and catch some stuff I missed the first time, both in terms of foreshadowing and just generally understanding what the heck was going on. There were a few panels even now where I just had no idea what the author was trying to convey…
彼に依頼してはいけません 1 : I saw @taiyousea reading this way back and the snazzy cover caught my attention, which was all the motivation I needed to buy it mostly sight unseen and give it a try. I liked it: light mystery solving by two boys who are this close to maybe accidentally kissing. I’d like to read more in the future, I think; I almost added a book or two to my 幻惑の鼓動 order, but didn’t. I can’t actually remember why now… 
獣の王国, vols. 6-7 : Success! A series I’ve been reading on for a while now (I finished volume 1 way back in October of 2020) finally checked off! What did I think of it after all is said and done? I definitely liked the first half more than the second: give me cute 獣耳 boys any day, but biggest issues for me were that the author introduced way too many friends too quickly (should’ve capped them and focused more of SOL stuff with the smaller number) and the plot that they introduced early on was obviously nonsensical and they had to commit to wrapping it up in some way (I wasn’t unhappy with how they wrapped it up; it was just as nonsensical as how it started, but it wasn’t paced well in the ~2 chapters the author had to work with).
I would still recommend at least the first half to anyone looking for fluffy found family 癒し系 vibes, but how much the later bits will carry you will probably depend on what you’re looking for and what kind of mood you’re in, imo. Not bad, but didn’t bring much interesting to the table, at least for me. Finishing this actually makes me want to go revisit MOON・TRICK | L25 and make actual progress on it and compare the two; it’s a somewhat similar setup, insofar as you have animals + CBDCT, and should be completed now. (I can’t believe the author has hit 82 volumes with their other series… Which I also want to try again.)
Thank you for reading this far! 
I probably won’t get as much read this week (as I cheated a bit and included the last week of July in this update), but I’m looking forward to what’s next! Haven’t decided on anything yet, it’s all based on vibes, but I hope you join me again for another loooong post next week~ It’d be neat if anyone was inspired to try any of these as well!
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Huh; I’ve been seeing this series pop up more and more; it looks cute. Shade looks pretty neat as well.
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If you like the magical girl genre I definitely recommend 
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I enjoyed it a lot overall! I liked the concept of following the group of losers (who aren’t just nominally losers, but actually subpar in terms of… pretty much everything, struggling against challenges that everyone else just shrugged off after a few days of getting used to their environment). The extreme spoiler development towards the middle took me by surprise, and their extra struggling past that point was interesting too. Not quite sure where the setting is going, but I am interested in reading more.
In terms of writing, well, it’s a light novel, not much we can do about that. It’s not great literature, but I’m fine with the frequent grunts and screams being directly transcribed.
The one thing that made me uncomfortable was the bath scene. It doesn’t matter that it was not successful, I would never be comfortable around ランタ again.
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Is this a personal challenge or something I missed in the forum? I mean I am currently also reading manga only, as a way to get out of my novel reading slump, but I could easily re-declare it 
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Just a personal challenge! I’ve been meaning to dive into my manga pile for a while and it just never happened, so I decided to dedicate August towards fixing that mistake. 
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Glad to hear!! I absolutely love the concept, and think it executes it very well (tho I think the anime does it better, bc you get to see some parts of their daily life that the novels don’t show). That said the novel plot is better, bc it didn’t have to arbitrarily end.
Even as LNs go, I don’t think it’s the best writing, but it does suddenly improve at volume 5, imo. Won’t claim it’s great literature or anything, but I found it much nicer to read from thereon (I paused vol 7 bc I wanted to read things with easier vocab back then)
It’s definitely supposed to. He’s my least favorite thing about the entire series.
Anyway you’ve made me wanna pick them up again, so when I finish 『人斬り』少女、公爵令嬢の護衛になる 3 | L30?? I’ll give vol 7 a go
On my wishlist, but entirely forgotten about till now, since it’s physical-only. I was gonna offer to read together, if it was digital
I’ve never read it, so it would have gone right over my head. I’m sure it’s not the only series where references show up, so I should read it eventually
I’m “if you convince me, I’ll try it” on the magical girl genre, and 魔法少女ダンデライオン(1) | L23 has definitely been on my wishlist.
Not that I’ve had any bad experiences with the genre, it just doesn’t immediately call to me
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I’m nearly halfway through 文庫版 魍魎の匣 | L40?? now, and ran into this use of the 〼 symbol:
If the author hadn’t provided furigana I suspect I would not have remembered what it was…
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Woah, and here I was thinking I’d seen all the weird symbols by now 
Always something new to discover I guess
Interesting article on it: 〼ってどんな意味？〼について解説し〼 – 枡工房枡屋・ますこうぼうますや（運営：大橋量器）
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That’s interesting!
And thanks @cat for sharing the link 
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