My reading for 2022 ended up being way off from what I initially planned. I believe my original goal was something along the lines of “finish all my unread manga” and some sort of nebulous “I really should read more novels”, and I ended up reading very little manga (about 8 volumes, by my count) and 16!! novels! Which completely blows my previous record holder of 2 in a year out of the water, haha.
So now I’m looking at my plans for 2023 and am trying to figure out what direction I go from here. Set a flat goal for something like 30 books? Set a goal to read through my entire unread pile? (Which is hovering somewhere in the 35-40 book mark.) Revisit the manga goal? (That pile never went anywhere… :S) Maybe a little bit of all three?
I’m thinking I will be adding all my manga to Natively going forward as well, to have a more complete record of my reading habits through the years. I apologize in advance to all the update feeds that are going to get taken over, haha.
I have just now completed my goal of reading 1000 volumes of manga in total by this year. I can’t believed I actually managed to do it😂.
I started the year with 398 so the goal was actually to read 602 volumes, but a lot of things happened that took a significant amount of time so overall I’m really happy that I could complete the challenge.
I don’t plan on doing any challenges for the coming year. In the case I fail the N1 exam I did this December I guess I will take it again in July and hope for the best. Also I think I should read more light novels even if they are not my favourite format.
According to my Natively stats page, I’ve read more this year than the last two combined! I also I passed 100 total manga volumes read in September, and I’m up to 124 now. Depending on how I count regular books, I’m at around 26-30 total, plus seven 本好き audiobooks.
Instead of a goal for next year, I have a goal for the next 3 months, because (barring further unforseen global events) I’ll be studying in Japan after that! I want to finish most of my 積読 before I go, specifically 8 novels and 12 manga that I’ve put into stacks on top of my bookshelf. Except for the few books I own that I no longer intend to actually read (吾輩は猫である is fun, but waaay too long and dense for me right now), this will be everything on my shelf. The manga shouldn’t be an issue, but 8 novels in 2.5 months is going to be tough! I’ll try to get back into doing weekly updates here to stay on top of it!
Wow, that’s an amazing milestone! And 600 in one year is crazy, well done.
I want to try this too, just to be able to say I’ve done it! I’ve thought before about trying to read one of the ビブリア古書堂 books in one sitting, since the style is really fast for me. If that doesn’t work out, maybe I can try 推し、燃ゆ instead? That one is high-level on Natively but it’s really short, so it might be doable. Whether or not I succeed, the attempt should help put a dent in my backlog!
The length is deceptive. I only checked the first couple pages when it came out (and realized I probably wouldn’t like that book), but each page was a wall of text.
… I might be remembering wrong (it was a while ago), since the audiobook is only 3.5h long, making it the shortest book I have seen so far.
On a related topic, my last book of 2022 was “本の「使い方」” (not on Natively yet), which says that one should never read books they don’t enjoy (except if necessary for work/school), so I’ll probably follow that advice and not read 推し、燃ゆ myself
For 2023, I’ll probably put more focus on SF
I kinda want to get rid of my 積読 pile, but that kinda breaks the previous advice I just mentioned.
Yes, I just realized I had checked the ebook version, so the text density will be decided by my settings and is not informative of that of the printed book
Well, based books we have in common (or that I know about), we seem to have similar tastes, so maybe I should give it another try?
(Although, you seem to have given it only 3* on entertainment, haha)
It’s not a fun read, for sure. It’s about obsession and parasocial relationships and you are stuck in the POV of the obsessed MC. And she annoys you so much while reading. But it’s an extremely realistic depiction.
If you enjoy realistic, character-driven books with little to no plot, I recommend it. If not, you probably won’t like it.
Finished the book that was picked for me in the “What should I read next?” thread yesterday: 呪われて、純愛。 Having gone in totally blind other than knowing that I found the author’s other series really boring and that the cover was nice, it was more entertaining than I thought at least. Still about as angsty and melodramatic as I was expecting it to be though hah. Nothing special, but luckily I can inhale these angsty rom drams pretty much non-stop.
Probably going to read the second volume today just to clear it off my plate, then move on to something new.
I ended up reading parts 2, 3, and most of part 4 of 夜は短し歩けよ乙女 yesterday. I stopped 20 pages away from the end, which I just read.
Part 2 was better, with a better grounding of supernatural elements. However, those elements were gone in part 3, which is fine, of course, but things were just as weird. Then some stuff were back again in part 4, but without having much impact.
My reaction to most developments was “huh, okay?”, and that’s pretty much how I felt about the ending as well.
In the end, I actually like the “voice” of the author (なむなむ!), but the unhinged randomness of the plot didn’t land. I might recommend it to people who like absurd stuff, but that’s it.
I read 怪談レストラン 2 化け猫レストラン | L22 in basically an hour or so. It’s short at 140 pages and fairly big font, but I cannot recommend it. I really liked the first book, but this was full of animal cruelty. I kept thinking how this could possibly be a children’s book. Gonna console myself with the next 本好き book, I guess.
Today I read chapter 8 of くまクマ熊ベアー 1 | L23 - and then decided to drop it.
That wasn’t an easy decision for me - I can’t even remember when I last dropped a book in any language. But I realized that there’s so much book left, and I don’t really care about what will happen next at all. (And yeah, it’s easy to read compared to other LNs I suppose, but with the hardest manga/book I ever read being L24, I still have to work for it… and I don’t feel like I’m getting much out of it.)
So, 乙女ゲー世界はモブに厳しい世界です 1 volume 1 was free to keep on Booklive…. so I did grab it. There’s 乙女ゲー in the title and (I assumed) the main character is a girl, so it can’t be so bad, right?
Wrong. The girl on the cover isn’t the main character. Instead, the main character is a regular dude who got reincarnated as a regular dude in the 乙女ゲーム he completed (for absolutely absurd reasons) before dying.
The thing that just made me the most angry about this book is that the isekai basically runs on incel logic: girls have all the power and they can go with whatever guys they want. Meanwhile, as a guy, if you are not at the top in terms of wealth, status, and looks, you won’t get anything. Also, in world, guys have to get married before they turn 20 (for reasons). It’s to the point where you would be forced to get married to a widow 40 years older than you if you can’t find anything else.
The thing is… that setting doesn’t add up. If women have all the power, then why is it still a king who rules? Also, why are titles inherited by men? There’s an example where one women marries multiple men, including a title holder. How do you know which son is supposed to inherit?? Meanwhile, you would definitely know for sure who’s your own first daughter.
Also, if women can marry multiple guys, why is it hard for guys to find a partner? Like, mathematically, they should be in deficit??
Other stuff that annoyed me was that the main character has the typical light novel guy attitude. Also, the part where he says that the main character of the game (the one on the cover) is “average” looking, before describing someone supernaturally beautiful. If she is average looking, I guess I’m a pile of sun-dried seaweed.
I started/finished reading 魔入りました!入間くん 1 | L27 yesterday; work’s started back up for me again, and I didn’t have the energy to continue my regular novels, so I figured picking up a manga should be a nice in-between. The volume was super cute, as hoped for; I really love the “too pure for this world” trope in protagonists. Got a few giggles out of it, though I think the language barrier keeps me from appreciating the comedy fully, since that all-important timing gets skewed. I’ve got volume 2 on hand and will definitely be continuing!
I believe my original goal was something along the lines of “finish all my unread manga” and some sort of nebulous “I really should read more novels”, and I ended up reading very little manga (about 8 volumes, by my count) and 16!! novels! Which completely blows my previous record holder of 2 in a year out of the water, haha.
It’s one of the books that stuck with me and I tend to forget most books.
You are basically reading my least favourite and my favourite book of the last year. 
I kept thinking how this could possibly be a children’s book. 
Gonna console myself with the next 本好き book, I guess. 
But I realized that there’s so much book left, and I don’t really care about what will happen next at all. (And yeah, it’s easy to read compared to other LNs I suppose, but with the hardest manga/book I ever read being L24, I still have to work for it… and I don’t feel like I’m getting much out of it.)