If I could give 魔法少女ダンデライオン 3 | L23 more than five stars, I would!! I read well past my allotted hour of reading time because I couldn’t put the last chapter down
Edit: I can’t spoiler pictures anymore…. darn….
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Well, just bought volume 1, because, at this point, why am I still worried about my 積読 pile. It already collapsed onto itself, turning into a black hole.
In other news, I just finished やさしくてよくわかる! はじめての将棋レッスン | L26??
One of my kid is really into shogi right now and got a bunch of books from the library, so I just read the cutest looking. 
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That cover is great, too. I need to see if my local Kinokuniya has volumes two and three…
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It’s on my bingo list for next year, just waiting for the end of the year and volume 3 arriving (already got volumes 1 & 2). Can’t wait to read this 
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Congratulations to all the JLPT test takers! Apologies for not responding to everyone’s thoughts on their logs; I’ve been jumping around having fun reading them, and it’s always so interesting hearing the different takes!
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Chagol arc - In the middle of this with my read-aloud book club, and really enjoying. The final chapter of the series releases in a week & a half 
I picked this back up over the weekend, cuz I needed a break from my girly lesbian romances for once. Reading with audiobook and minimal lookups. It’s going fine. The pace is faster than a lot of other audio I consume, so that’s nice. I may watch the corresponding anime eps alongside it, since this is my fav arc.
Yurihime Jan 2026 - spoilers are blurred
- ひなちゃんが生きてるなら - new ホラー系, I’m really into it, though I don’t care for the love interest is 4 years younger b/c she was spirited away 4 years ago thing. I did like the actually yeah, I am a monster twist
- 君のせいなんだから、責任とってよね。- woman (college student?) & her rental gf falling in love. This one is just fun. It’s a nice balance to Asumi-chan (not nearly as ecchi, and focused on a single relationship)
- 晴れた日のドレスコード - this one is okay. Not super interesting yet
- 私の百合はお仕事です - Great development with all the characters. Everyone considering their futures, Hime and Yano relationship continues to be interesting, Sumika and Kanoko also. It’s nice seeing Hime have to confront the reality of her dream, and she’ll probably realize that what she actually wants isn’t so far away. It’s nice seeing her set boundaries as well.
- ささやくように恋を唄う - this has some great progress & development. It’s really nice to see Shiho’s development, and her being cool w/ Aki being around Yori, but still calling out Aki here and there. Also the tension(?) of Himari being Lorelei’s manager at the end. I love that they’re having this whole discussion about whether or not Yori could/should go into music professionally, and how she’d do it and stuff.
- 私の推しは悪役令嬢。- fine as usual, not much to say
- 今日はカノジョがいないから - toxic as usual. Nanase putting some solid effort in w/ Yuni, but Yuni can’t return her feelings. Yuki(?) realizing she’s lesbian and in love w/ Nanase was an interesting development - I’m surprised she didn’t know this already. Idc about the stuff w/ Fuuko and this other girl, it seems so “what’s the point?”
- 大室家 - I don’t read this
- ゆるゆり - I don’t read this
- ぜんぶ壊して地獄で愛して - idk w/e. I’ve really lost steam on this lately. The stuff with the MC and Isanuma at the end was pretty interesting tho
- キミが吠えるための歌を - just gets better and better. I love the jealousy and communication and intimacy, and slow realization of feelings, all while dealing with this hyper enthusiastic new friend’s NRE, and all the music stuff. I think it’s all being done very well so far
- 春の光に呑まれても - stopped reading, it’s just not interesting to me rn. I’d consider reading it in volume form
- 現実世界でも幸せにしてくださいね？ - the author has introduced another love interest? Just whyyyyyy. I’m still on the fence with whether to drop this one or not. The characters are ok, and I like the vocab, and in a sense the way the harem has a calm co-existence is interesting… I do kinda wonder if it would just go down the poly route, cuz it’s kinda on the border of that. I doubt it will
- 彩純ちゃんはレズ風俗に興味があります！ - on one hand, I really just wanna see the development btwn Asumi & Mai, and where Nana-chan fits into all this… on the other hand, watching Asumi slowly and clumsily exploring topping was reaaaaaally cute - both her and the girl she was with
- アンドロイドは経験人数に入りますか？？ - I don’t read this
- 映しちゃダメな顔 - I don’t read this
- 僕らのアイは気持ち悪い - Suffers from “this would be better to read straight through” for me… but also the yandere girl stirring shit is fun for the moment
- 私だって青春したいですよ、本当は。- continuing to enjoy this. They’re cute
- 玉緒乃恋 - Sal Jiang’s first appearance in YH - great oneshot. Historical drama, wealthy 16 year old who has her eyes set on a 娼婦, and wants nothing to do with her household. They run away together. This was the most interesting in the magazine. I guess the title is supposed to be たまおのこい . Bonus: the 娼婦 character spoke Kansai-ben
- 超深宇宙より愛をこめて - I don’t read this, though might retry it eventually
- 小春と湊 - this month’s was kinda boring
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I just started today 
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Still chipping away at らせん | L36.
It’s been a month and I’m only halfway through
Somehow, every time I pick it up, I just put it down after a few sentences to a few pages at best. (That’s not specific to らせん, I having been feeling that way about nearly everything; even LNs are not really holding my attention right now).
The good thing is that I am still going to manage to finish it in time before the end of the year, so that I can complete my bingo card. (Not sure what I’ll do about “set in a different country”; I can try to read 伯爵と妖精 either volume 1 or 12)
I’ve also read a few manga recently, though.
Following the recent trend of the author, nothing really happens, which is sad. We are getting close to the end, though. I assume there’s only one or two more volumes? I can’t find any info about it through a quick google search though.
One of the manga I had in my 積読 forever (I bought it two years ago apparently). Sadly, the first volume was not up to my expectations. The world seems interesting, but it was soooooo slow. There’s time skip at the end, though (the main character is now 13), showing that it was just a kind of prologue, so maybe it gets better from here? Still, I have way too much stuff to justify buying random manga volumes. (If @Athakaspen or anyone else who knows could tell me, it would be greatly appreciated).
That one is a more recent to the pile. I got it back in March apparently, after reading something about it here (from @cloverff I think?). It’s pretty cute, even though I find the ability of the main character to straight up (albeit involuntarily) steal someone else’s soul pretty scary. The person concerned didn’t seem to mind, though, so it’s all good. The volume is full of extra drawings and info about the characters and setup, which is nice, but made me feel like I didn’t get much story for the amount of pages I went through I’m curious about where the story is going, but [same argument as above].
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I like the drawings, because I’m a sucker for world building stuff like that, but agree it does make the story per volume feel pretty short.
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And created
https://forums.learnnatively.com/t/books-in-the-box-2025/
Anyone feel free to add in your reccs!
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I definitely get this, and I felt the same way. I remember liking volume 2 more as a good expansion of the world but it’s still quite slow. Which is probably why I haven’t read book 4 despite owning it for awhile now…
I really like the art and general 世界観, plus the physical volumes feel super premium, but I don’t really feel a strong draw to read more
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I’m currently working my way through the first 安達としまむら light novel - it’s fairly difficult for me but I’m reading it slowly but surely. I read the novel となりのトトロ before this and 安達としまむら is definitely a step up from that, but not a huge step. I’ve only been reading proper novels for a short while but I’m very proud 
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That is a big jump, actually! You should applaud your efforts!
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The last chapter picked up the pace, so the rest of the book was much more fun to read… until the end. Even if I ignore the problem with the premise (even if you say memory got encoded in the DNA somehow, as the whole book points out, DNA copy isn’t perfect, so you would never get a perfect copy of the original, so that’s just a different being with the memory of the original), why the heck does the main character immediately postulates that she is going to end humanity? Neither her nor the ring virus have any reason to want that. Can’t we just all get along? “‘She’ killed people already”, dude that’s literally not her fault, she did what she had to do to survive. She can literally resurrect a bunch of people she killed too. I’m more concerned about why Ryuji is not asking her to resurrect Mai (I thought that would happen since hair is all you need, and there must be hair somewhere, even if time has past, Sadako herself could have picked it up, since she knew from the start about the mechanism). Anyway, there’s really no reason to antagonize her, yet the character does and the story seems to agree with him? That’s just weird to me.
Anyway, slow start, really nice middle, and disappointing end.
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Thank you
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I started in on 斜陽 | L38 and I’m about a quarter of the way through now. I’ve read a few 太宰 short stories but this is the first novel of his I’ve read. As classic literature goes, it’s a fairly easy read so far.
I’ve also been reading a few of the short stories from 隠し剣秋風抄 (文春文庫 ふ 1-39) | L30?? . So far it’s all been 藤沢 in his downbeat mode…
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Finding it much easier than a year and a half ago, and I love the 4-pg chapter format, bc it makes it so easy to pause. They’re so cute and funny!! I finished part 1, so the gyaru just realized her classmate is her 憧れた onii-san - and not actually a guy . Some of the slang and handwriting are a bit annoying, but not to the point that it interferes with story comprehension
Really cute so far. I love that this old lady knows she’s a lesbian (or at least into women), and like doesn’t have all this cluelessness about her attraction. The love interest is fairly forward to. Also some nice intergenerational interaction with her granddaughter. The fact that it’s all Kansai-ben is a nice bonus.
Oh hey, 花物語 in はなものがたり:
Decided to pick up drawing again. Reading a bit of this each day, and practicing… Well mostly I’ve been free drawing tho. The text is small tho. I wish I had a physical copy instead of tablet
Between that & @cloverff のレビュー… 買ぉてもうた！read a few pages, and enjoyed. Hopefully I’ll get to more soon
Dropped カードキャプターさくら 3 | L20 since I’m reading so much other stuff, and I don’t feel too motivated with it rn. Will pick up again eventually
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I’ve read all three volumes (in English) after you posted about it, and I really liked it! The ending feels a tiny bit rushed, but really, that’s my only criticism; it stays fun and interesting the whole way through. I think if you like the first few chapters you’ll like the whole thing.
Thanks for posting about it!
(Side note: It doesn’t really feel like a 4-koma either. I usually really dislike their rigid “title-setup-punchline every 4 frames” format. Here it’s just the usual manga story progression over many panels with a 4-koma layout.)
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Finished ストーム・ブリング・ワールド1 (MF文庫 ダ・ヴィンチ う 2-1) | L32 - quick and enjoyable read. Will need to read the second one to decide if it’s good or not though, as it doesn’t really stand alone.
Moving on to パラサイトムーン 風見鳥の巣 (電撃文庫 わ 4-2) | L30?? - not sure if they’re justified, but I have expectations of this one. It’s from my favourite era of light novels and I suspect it’s going to be one of those low-key idyllic daily life with occasional high-key horror type stories - but we’ll see. Prologue was tense.
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Whoa, I don’t know if I’ve seen that conversation before in a book. Intrigued!
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