After I finished the 10th book for my bingo this morning, I took a long look at my bingo board and all the books that I want to finish with it because I had started them ages ago, and I want to reduce the number of ongoing books at some point
So I made all these plans in my head, what to finish first and then after that and then as the third one, and then I realized that one of the books I had planned for a certain square was way too hard for my liking, and so I thought about with what I should best replace it (sadly I cannot replace it by any books I already own, so I was a bit torn on what to do), I searched around for a bit, found a hopefully more suitable book, discovered that it’s cheap and currently discounted, bought it and started reading
Yeah, that’s how it goes with reducing the pile
It’s this one: 光と影 | L30?? It has won the Naoki prize so I hoped the writing would be good, and it indeed is! I planned to start reading over lunch but I was lucky that I postponed the start a bit because the author is surgeon besides being author, and on the first few pages he describes in full detail (with detailed sights, and smells, and all) how a group of soldiers who were wounded in war get transported to hospital, and it is set in early Meiji (i.e. end of 19th century)
Luckily I didn’t faint and made quite a bit of progress
I liked the resolution to the cliffhanger at the end of volume 15. It reminds me of the mid part of 魔砲使い黒姫 | L24 (without the fan service and better executed, though)
I do like the current development a lot better, though. It does feel like we are getting close to the end, confirmed by the あとがき (the author mentioned 4 more volumes planned and trying to resist the temptation to stretch things to not have to say goodbye to the characters)
Still, 4 volumes mean two more years… I wonder how far ahead is the journal publication?
Forgot to say because it was late, but I fixed that weakness yesterday by finishing 乙女ゲームのヒロインで最強サバイバル | L31
I did like it a lot, especially the way the skills are justified in world. That does not explain how the status interface works, though. Is the way it looks and the levels/strengths definitions and range encoded in the magic spell? Eeeh I won’t nitpick on that, it’s good enough.
I do want to nitpick about the main character’s promise to エレーナ. Why does it have to murder? Couldn’t she just say “I’ll accomplish one (1) mission for you, even if it’s committing a murder”? As it stands, if エレーナ tells her “please save XYZ!” she would just reply “best I can do is killing them first”
I wonder how different is the published version from the online version. If it’s just the bonus stories, honestly, I really don’t care. Illustrations were also somewhat forgettable.
Actually the audiobook for volume 2 comes out this week, so I may try that instead (trying to not buy anything new)
Actually, the first and last couple of sentences of the prologue of volume 2 are exactly the same as the online version, so I assume there isn’t much difference overall?
Today I finished the first chapter of 「また、同じ夢を見ていた」。I started the book by recommendation of one of the podcasts I listen to, Yuyuの日本語, and the beginning was a bit rough for me. I was not used to long sentences and sometimes got confused by weird logic jumps, but steadly felt like I got better at it. I finished the last few pages in a breeze. Or at least it was not as slow as I was
I also read through 「怪人二十面相」はしがき. There’s a lot of new language for me on this book, so I’m learning a lot. It feels dramatic in a theatrical, exaggerated sense, I like the tone already.
If you’re not already doing so, I recommend listening to the audio book while reading (it’s really well made!) and to use our book club for reflection and any questions you might have.
I swear the first page of that book is harder than anything else in it. It’s a general rule that books get easier as you read as you get used to the writing style and you get more context, but in this case this 2nd sentence from the book is significantly more complex than anything else
I’ve also been thinking about it… After (for me) bingeing the 4 volumes on KU, I’m hooked. Happy you liked it, but sorry about your reading pile…
That was a bit extreme, huh? It didn’t strike me as such while I was reading, but now that you mention it, I guess I agree. Easy enough for me to reason away with her tense state of mind.
That one’s difficult to grasp for me as well, so I don’t usually think about it. Is it a flow of information or an image in your mind’s eye? If it was mentioned I forgot… It’s definitely influenced by the user’s preconceptions and eye for details, apparently then cast into this ‘general’ mould of numbers and letters…?
This is the sort of book I can just read straight through and enjoy while not minding the details too much.
Grimgar 15 was really enjoyable. Grimgar 16 on the other hand… I have really mixed feelings. The author has intentionally been changing his writing style, and the story has a very different focus now than it used to… Also there’s multiple developments I frankly just don’t like. But anyway I’ll save those thoughts for the Grimgar thread.
On a brighter note, I just learned that クラスで2番目に可愛い女の子と友だちになった8 | L28 is coming out on October 1. So I have that to look forward to in October, when I finish or take a short break from Grimgar
It’s enjoyable :>. Not a great book but not a bad one one either. It’s been great for learning though! Still deciding if I’m going to read the second (and final) volume because there are just too many books I want to read (which is a good problem to have I guess).
Thanks! Frieren quickly became my favourite anime. Despite me only understanding half of it because I watched it in Japanese. Can’t wait for season 2 in January!
I can certainly see why. It’s one of the few that left a really lasting impression on me, though I initially found the first 4 eps incredibly dull. I had mixed comprehension (or had to pause and check) as well, when I was watching. I wonder how it would be now.
Didn’t realize S2 is in January - definitely looking forward!!
I’m really looking forward to reading #5; I probably should’ve just given in and added it to my latest import order. I doubt Kinokuniya will have it in-store…
I’ve very nearly finished 日本語で書くということ | L40?? . This is the second volume in the collection of Mizumura’s non fiction writing, following on from 日本語で読むということ | L40. This volume has the more meaty stuff (both more serious in content and generally longer), what the author calls より硬派なエッセイ. The book is divided into three parts, which get steadily more difficult.
Part one has essays generally on literary or literary adjacent topics which Mizumura characterises in her afterword as 楽しんで書いたものだし、読みやすいと思う – I liked the one about her first trip to Korea with its reflections on getting old (though she is IMHO absolutely tilting at windmills in her concluding ideas…).
Part two is more focused literary criticism/analysis of the “argument backed up by extensive quotes from the source work” variety. Four of the seven essays are about 漱石. These are definitely a harder read than part one (especially when the source work is a tricky one), but I enjoyed them. If you have read the source works (which sadly I have not) that probably helps. Note that the essays unsurprisingly include spoilers for the works they are discussing. I liked the one about 虞美人草, a work Soseki apparently considered a failure and his 尤も興味なきもの; he wrote a letter partway through its serialisation where he pretty much says he’s so fed up with it he wants to kill off the heroine and get it over with already… I’ve also mentioned the essay about 春琴抄 in another thread.
Part three is where the difficulty curve turns into a sheer cliff. This part is essays on the work of Paul de Man, a literary critic and literary theorist in the school of deconstruction. (If you’ve read 私小説―from left to right | L40 you’ll recognize that de Man is the professor whose illness is one of the things the author used as an excuse for procrastinating taking her postgraduate oral examination.) Almost all this part is taken up by a Japanese version of the essay Renunciation which the author originally wrote in English and presented at that oral examination and then wrote up for the journal Yale French Studies. It is therefore uncompromisingly academic, and its subject is the writings of a man who was himself writing about other works in a very abstract and jargon heavy way, and the audience fellow academics who were deeply familiar with de Man’s work. Mizumura says about it in the afterword: これを日本語で読んで感心してくれた人物に逢ったことがあるが、私は私で彼の読解力、いや、想像力に感心した and goes on to suggest that reading the Japanese version in parallel with the English original may be the best way forward! I suspect most readers take her other suggested option: ああ、こんなことをやっていたのだなとパラパラめくる… (I read the whole thing in the sense of reading the sentences, but I definitely did not understand it beyond very fragmentarily.)
Well, the good news is that I’m halfway through 乙女ゲームのヒロインで最強サバイバル5 | L31 and it’s been pretty disappointing so far.
We have reached the 乙女ゲーム proper, but things make no sense. The personality (and interests) of the characters is completely different from what the game should be, to the point that playing the “heroine” straight would not (and, technically does not) work.
I could conceive that for people who have been affected due to the changes in past events, but why are others also different? Plus, I still don’t buy the “royalty should be okay with murdering everyone and everything that gets in the way” type of mentality, and I don’t like that trying to find another way is systematically called weak by the book. Like, the author could have said that, sometimes, it can’t be avoided, but that’s not something you should worry about at the policy making level. All in all, I think the crown prince is perfectly fine (and in fact better than the “correct” people around him) which makes it really hard to relate to the main character and the princess. I do find it funny that they have basically the same thought pattern as evil witch girl (クララ or カルラ, I always mix up their names), but are not considered evil by the book because they do it for the “greater (?) good (???)”. Heavy quotation marks here.
So, once again I ended up buying too much stuff to get a small discount, and now I have a bunch of stuff I feel I won’t enjoy reading… Pretty smart of KU to stop at the previous volume
It’s been more than 2 years of hiatus for 悪食令嬢と狂血公爵 ~その魔物、私が美味しくいただきます!~ | L32 and I was resigned to see it just never get finished… but since the announcement of the anime coming this October, the author started posting on なろう again! We have now reached enough content for a volume, so maybe we will get something next year?
I also hope the anime will be well done… I feel like a bad anime would kill the series even more surely than the extended hiatus.
Happy you liked it, but sorry about your reading pile…
