I’m reading わたし、定時で帰ります。and man, it makes me want to slap certain characters. But I also haven’t been able to put the book down…
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There are multiple characters that are slap worthy in there 
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I thought I identified them early on, but I keep relaxing my guard only to have another et tu Brute moment
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Finished ソードアート・オンライン29 ユナイタル・リングVIII | L33 - and I was really disappointed in this book. I’ve left a review here, but tldr: the author is maintaining two concurrent, intertwined settings, one of which (by the author’s own admission) is dependent on an external series (ソードアート・オンライン プログレッシブ | L35 which I do love and recommend) before it’s plot can meaningfully advance. The pacing has a been a nightmare, and after last volume’s big battle taking half the volume, I decided to skip almost the entirety of this boss battle. The remaining 30% of the book would have made up for it, but I don’t care for what the story’s pulling in the end - at least not the way it’s pulling it. Particularly since Mutashiina isn’t the big antagonist/force behind UR this anyway, she’s arguably just a side quest.
Anyway that admission is quite concerning, because the storyline in Progressive has another 2 floors remaining, which means there will need to be at least one more Progressive book (probably more) before the plot of Unital Ring (setting A) can meaningfully advance. So for the first time since I got into SAO, I’m not optimistic about the next release of the main series.
https://learnnatively.com/book/2b04b25eea/ was ok, but a bit underwhelming. I’ll leave my thoughts in the relevant thread
I’m about to do another round of house tidying, since my bf is moving in next month, so it seemed apt
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Sometimes I feel like the author is trying to pull a .hack// in too many ways, and not just the “stuck in a VR Game”.
.hack// is a series of beautifully intertwined stories, but each of them stand on their own, IMHO.
There’s context and details you miss if you don’t know all the works, but it’s not going to prevent from making sense of the story.
I wish the .hack// novels would be available in digital format so I could have easier time reading them than in the book format. Too much to ask for such an old series I guess.
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Finished this, it was pretty good. The one shot in this one and the last one did something interesting…
Thoughts on the oneshots
Based on the character designs it’s normally what I would think to call おねロリ, but there’s no implied romance/sexuality. In the first story it’s a librarian nurturing the young girl’s love for books, while being very entranced by her. In the second an aspiring young animator meets an anime background artist, who both affirms/encourages her, but also gives her the realities of their high stress industry/workplace. The second was very reminiscent of Aoba & Yagami from NEW GAME! | L26 and the young girl comes to work at the woman’s studio after she graduates. So anyway, idk whether おねロリ is the right phrase to use or not, but I appreciated having something wholesome like this.
The other one shot this month was a workplace relationship, and I appreciated the somewhat challenging vocab level. In general I appreciate that there’s a good number of stories based around adult characters these days.
Idk if I’ll stick with it. It’s a lot of effort for a story I already know, but I would like to try to finish it. Otherwise I was considering 声優ラジオのウラオモテ #07 柚日咲めくるは隠しきれない? | L28 as a next novel, even though I think they’re still in an idol unit plotline.
I could also start クラスで2番目に可愛い女の子と友だちになった9 | L27 but given that I was mixed on the previous volume, and just disappointed from the SAO volume, I’m hesitant to start it/just feel like I wanna switch stuff up a bit
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Today I finished クプルムの花嫁 5 | L27 and まちカドまぞく 3 | L35. The former I’ve been reading on and off for two months because even though I like the series, it’s really dense a lot of the time. The latter was really good too. It really picked up in the second half, and hopefully that’s a sign that the series is finally hitting its stride.
I also read all of 【同人版】現実もたまには嘘をつく | L20 over the last month as a quick read at the gym between sets. Each volume is only like 20 pages, so I’d usually read one or two volumes at the gym. It’s basically a “what if” version of 現実もたまには嘘をつく | L21 that can take the plot in directions that can’t reasonably happen in the main series. I think the main series will probably only have one more volume, and hopefully there will be more of these doujin volumes as well. I’ll probably also double dip for the physicals after the series is done since it’s one of my favorites and it’s full color.
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Finished 亡びの国の征服者 2 ~魔王は世界を征服するようです~ | L33 and decided I will not read any more of this series. I already had a whinge about it but I might have another - like, I wish it were just a terrible series, but it’s so readable. It’s not masterwork prose or anything but it reads compellingly. It doesn’t feel like complete webnovel slop, except every now and then you realise that oh, the only purpose of this scene is to show how competent or hot the protagonist is. Or, why is this character being introduced? Well, because she’s a cute girl who will just exist in the protagonist’s orbit. And it starts clicking together that you’ve just been tricked into reading 600+ pages of Gary Stu harem fanfiction.net-tier self-insert bullshit in the guise of an epic fantasy story.
I looked up spoilers to see when the actual plot starts, and feel very good about my decision to stop here.
Started ノノノ・ワールドエンド | L34?? - have high hopes from the first ~20 pages. I feel like I’ve read a novel about a mist that causes everyone to vanish before but can’t place it…
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I started volume 4 of まちカドまぞく, but I’ll have to buy the remaining two volumes when I place my next order. Sadly the manga has been on hiatus for forever, so there may never be a volume 7.
Other than that, I still haven’t started a new novel/LN. Just haven’t been in the mood for anything specific.
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I finished https://learnnatively.com/book/b67acbad74/ which came out recently-ish (last month?). I have to say that I found the first half boring, sadly, but I really enjoyed the second half! And the author really sold me the next part (but it’s expected for 2027… so I’ll just not think too much about it).
Considering the way the plot is going, I expect only one or two more volumes, which is a bit sad. At the same time, I can’t fathom the publisher dropping that IP, so I expect that the author will have to work on some other spin off as well.
I mean, we had the former main character do a lot of things in the background, but the current main character barely learned anything about it, so I feel like it would be perfect for a short 1~2 volume series.
That being said, I’d be more interested in a massive time jump (like 15 years or so) with a series following the next generation.
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Something Stephen King, maybe? 
That also sounds familiar to me…
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I’ve only read The Stand and Carrie, so unless I’ve just picked up on it by cultural osmosis don’t think so. I thought it must be a John Wyndham book, but glancing through the Wikipedia summaries nothing seems to fit.
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His novella The Mist was made into a TV show several years ago, but I’m sure there must be other books with similar concepts.
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I just started reading 生を祝う | L28 because I heard that there will be a lecture about this book (and at the same time about another book, namely 消滅世界 | L32) on Thursday (May 7th) in the University of Vienna (and online, in case you’re interested). Since I happen to be in Vienna on that day, I thought it would be neat if I could take part in the lecture, and that it would be even neater if I had an idea what the book is about 
Admittedly, I haven’t read Murata’s book yet either, but I’ve read some other works of hers, and as her themes somewhat repeat across stories, I might have at least a grasp of what it’s about, while Li’s book was completely unknown to me.
I am now 15% in, the world’s premise has been laid out, and now we’re waiting for the “drama” (admittedly, I find it quite predictable from the protag’s buildup so far, but I’m curious to see how it will unfold and what consequences will arise). Also, if you don’t want to get spoilered, you shouldn’t read the book’s description on the lecture page that I linked above… 
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Apologies for bringing back such an old message, but I finally found the kanji in a place other than a website mentioning its unicode. Old dusty tomes for the win!
Also to keep some relavency to the thread topic, I started 仮面の告白 the other day. Love me some Mishima!
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I wonder if your memory is maybe mixing up The Midwich Cuckoos? There’s no mist but an invisible force field that makes the outside world unreachable for something like 24 hours (and then the pregnancies happen)
I’ve only read a handful of his books but that seems the closest I can think of, and also one of his most famous
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Do you think it was a force field? Northeast blackout of 1965 - Wikipedia
scnr 
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Ooh that looks kinda interesting, and possibly yuri/adjacent?
Reminds me of Brigadoon, though that’s a musical
I can’t see the kanji in your original comment. Could you circle in the graphic?
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Enjoy! I’ve been in the mood for one of his books lately as well, but can’t decide between a few of his that I own, namely 潮騒 | L42 and 禁色 | L44??. Maybe 潮騒 though, since summer is coming and it seems like a summery book!
As for what I am currently reading, I’m slowly making my way through 雪国 | L45. The writing is beautiful but very subtle, meaning you have to pay attention carefully to understand what’s happening or how the characters feel since the text isn’t very explicit. I haven’t had the brain power for long stretches reading that closely, so it is slow going. Kind of reminds me of some old black and white Japanese movies, like Ozu.
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Oops I remember that being an issue before. It’s the kanji right in the middle with 石 in it. I’m assuming that タウ would become トウ in modern Japanese since the similar (maybe 異字体) 宕 has that reading and the info in the screenshot says it’s from 海篇, which is a kanji dictionary from like 1200.
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