What are you reading today?

Remember you can always drop @brandon a note through the feedback button to have him update it; I’ve done so plenty of times.

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I did, together with the info, that there is a second volume, but the genre didn’t get changed. :woman_shrugging:t2: It’s not that important. :smiling_face:

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It sometimes takes him a bit, since as far as I can tell it’s all manual. But if you’ve left him a note then I won’t have to, haha.

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I guess it makes more sense to talk about the book in this thread. I read chapters 4-6 today and boi both the drama and spiciness are ramping up. At this point it might be a tad excessive for recommending the book without proper warnings, but I still think it’s very well written.

I was looking at the author’s massive bibliography on Wikipedia and I can see a pattern of potentially spicy titles in there too. There’s even a short story collection literally titled “少々官能的に” :joy:

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I will get to it soon… but yes the feedback requests are usually less time sensitive so they’re at the bottom of the daily priority list. :slight_smile:

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No worries. Honestly. Take your time. It really is not that important. お疲れ様。:smiling_face:

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I finished this today (just received it from Japan)

Gotta say like the first volume, the art is nice, and the story is refreshing on it’s own way to what I usually read.

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About halfway through 禁断星域の伝説―宇宙史シリーズ〈1〉 | L22?? - started off enthusiastic for this because people doing crimes in space seems fun and it’s a very easy read, but ehhh - there’s something missing. They’re doing all these risky things, getting shot at with lasers, killing people, stealing spaceships, car chases … but there’s no tension. Everything just seems to go well and I don’t really believe that the author is willing to let anything bad happen. Theoretically it’s high-stakes, and from the characters’ perspective I’m sure it is, but it doesn’t feel that way.

Doesn’t seem like a rare problem for light novels to have either. A few things I’ve read recently have this thing where it feels like it’s just a recounting of characters being awesome but there’s no gravity to it. It’s always a shame too because from the summary these sounds like really cool, high-stakes stories and it’s hard to tell in advance whether it’s going to deliver on that at all.

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I envy you. Chapter 3 was a wall I couldn’t overcome in 夜は短し歩けよ乙女. I was really sad I had to stop. T-T but I will get better!

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So I also started reading this at the same time, because, 乱歩 :heavy_heart_exclamation: How could I resist. But after reading 上 + 中 I had to leave for a longish trip, came back to a massive backlog of book club reading, and finally today had some time to read something not an assignment…and I’ve forgotten 90% of the story. :melting_face:

I want to sit and actually enjoy this story, so another day 乱歩, another day.

re: book clubs though I feel like I’m on an oddly good streak?! 半落ち is amazing, この本を盗むものは I’m enjoying quite a bit (though mixed reviews from the club), 七回死んだ男 had a rough start for me but now that it’s in its groove I’m enjoying it, and レベル7 just kicked off to a delightfully mysterious start.

I also started two ‘bedtime books’ (don’t care when I finish them, just something not my phone in bed before sleeping) and within 5 pages of each, a murder! Good stuff.

I haven’t added them to Natively yet but I don’t think anyone is desperately waiting on either :joy:

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Continuing to read JK, this will take more time than すずめ戸締まり due to the type of vocab being used in this. Can already tell my Anki deck is going to get a load added due to this haha.

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I finished the 2017 edition of 西の魔女が死んだ yesterday.
It was okay. Obviously aiming for the emotional response, but that was fine.
What I am more curious about is that, based on the afterwords, it seems that the extra short stories at the end (one about the dog, one about winter, and one about the grandma) are new for this edition?
If anyone has read the old version (the one with the cover shown on Natively; the 2017 version has a solid dark green cover with the extra subtitle “梨木香歩作品集”), were the three short stories in there as well?

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I have the version shown on Natively, and it doesn’t have those extra short stories. There is a related story at the end called 渡りの一日, about Mai and a friend meeting up and going somewhere, but I assume that’s considered part of 西の魔女が死んだ in the larger collection.

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What. No, that was not in there :joy:
That’s annoying. Why did they not put everything in the book, then.

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I finished 泣きたい夜の甘味処 the day I started. I really enjoyed it. Something about Japanese emo literature speaks to me. All the books I rate high, seem to deal with sadness, death, depression and suicide. :see_no_evil: I swear, I am OK. :rofl:

Anyways, I am having a great time with ちょっと今から仕事やめてくる | L27 (again some dark topics in that one) It helps that the level is really low. I was sus of the 27, but it is genuinely easy, which makes it a quick read.

The mystery book club book 七回死んだ男 | L30?? has turned from a mystery into a full-blown soap opera. I am just along for the ride… :rofl: If you go into the book expecting soap opera rather than mystery, you’ll have a much better time, imo. Even the first 40% of character introduction makes more sense that way.

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Finished 禁断星域の伝説―宇宙史シリーズ〈1〉 | L29 - it did not improve, unfortunately. I was expecting a lot of these science fiction books I picked out to be kinda bad, seeing the only reason I bought them was they were on a list of spaceship-based light novels, but I didn’t expect them to be so boring.

Moving on to 僕の愛したジークフリーデ 第2部 失われし王女の物語 | L29, which I have high expectations of. Really liked the first one.

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Oof, I just read your review. That sounds like a pain, kudos for making it through! At least it was short :sweat_smile:

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I was starting to feel bad about not posting an update for awhile, but it looks like I’m not the only one! Everyone must be busy watching anime audiovisual japanese content instead of reading after the new update :rofl:

Since my last post almost a month ago, I’ve read きらきらひかる | L33, 推し、燃ゆ | L37, and 家つくりスキルで異世界を生き延びろ | L30, as well as a few manga. Of these, 推し、燃ゆ was easily my favorite. The author’s style was very engaging, and the way she describes the thoughts of the protagonist really give an interesting perspective on a modern parasocial, 推し活 mindset. きらきらひかる was fine, but I didn’t personally feel attached to any of the characters, and 家つくりスキルで異世界を生き延びろ was an isekai LN from my backlog that tried to do a lot but also didn’t particularly draw me in.

I’ve also been reading though 化物語 (上) | L38 which I’m almost finished with. It’s very good, and I especially appreciate all the wordplay involved, but somehow I don’t think the overall story is quite for me. I enjoy parts of it, but lately I’m becoming less and less excited to start a new reading session. I’ll probably push through the end of the book but I don’t plan to continue the series afterwards.

My goal for the last few months has been to clear out my backlog before I travel to Japan in a few weeks, and I’ve been pretty successful overall. Once 化物語 is done I’ve just got two more ビブリア古書堂 books and a few stray manga in my serious ‘to read’ pile— which is probably as close to a clean slate as I’ll ever get!

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It’s just work in my case, sadly. :cry: I was able to read a ton in January, but all of February and March so far have been less impressive. I’m mostly trying not to fall too far behind with 七回死んだ男 | L34; I think I’m about a week behind the club, which isn’t terrible. I’ve also been reading extras in the FLESH & BLOOD (series) | L34 series before moving on to volume 12. They’re more bite-sized than a full volume, so I can read through a couple with my limited time and feel pretty good. The only downside is that I can’t really record the pages read in Natively, since most of the extras were published in magazines or not for sale pamphlets or doujinshi or such. I’ve been marking my start/end date as a private note, at least.

Wow, that’s awesome! Backlog-clearing pushes are always fun to me; are you hoping to stock up on more backlog during your trip? Any particular picks you’re going to be hunting for?

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Nice, ビブリア is on my mental wish list but I need to power through some other books first before I can buy any more! I am still working on 定時で帰ります - definitely not L36, beyond a little bit of office terminology it is pretty smooth going. Our heroine is very relatable, hates overtime and just wants a beer :grin:
I am dithering over my next read, if a little prematurely - I have bought two books by authors I have only read in English, Shion Miura and Mieko Kawakami. I also have some tried and trusted authors, so the question is will I push myself a bit or stick to something more familiar? :thinking:

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