New Game is lighter on text and generally uses more straightforward language. Bocchi the Rock also has more slang and industry specific words which New Game (surprisingly) didn’t have as much of (at least not in a way that phased me). Plus Bocchi includes more out there scenarios, which can certainly increase difficulty a bit.
I see you recently finished New Game and are currently reading Bocchi volume 1, so have you felt similarly so far?
I’m only on pg 11 of Bocchi, so I can’t say. But I’m surprised that New Game would be lighter on text. Not so surprised about the slang/more out there part tho.
Anyway, I’ll have to get back to you once I’ve read more Bocchi
The most difficult parts of Bocchi were definitely whenever it got into her interiority and/or started ranting to herself because it was like a flood of unfamiliar stuff often mixed with slang. The school/band life stuff by comparison wasn’t as hard even with the larger amounts of industry jargon.
Looking forward to trying New Game at some point
Currently reading あひるとくらす which is a cute short slice-of-life manga about a man taking care of a pet duck. The first chapter is wordless which had me expecting something easy, but after that it reads like a normal manga, though the grammar is still fairly simple. Lots of bird/farming/garden words I didn’t know which is good. The story is very charming and actually seems to be building up a bit of a cast and the depiction of duck behavior and care is pretty realistic. Definitely worth it if you’re a fan of ducks
I finished https://learnnatively.com/book/47eea999c4/ - it was okay, but I didn’t really enjoy reading it and there wasn’t much payoff.
Started https://learnnatively.com/book/e471b466a8/ - saw this highly recommended somewhere (r/LightNovels?). The premise doesn’t especially excite me, but so far it’s a very easy read (or at least feels like it after the last few books I’ve read), and it seems like it has some potential for drama, so we’ll see.
After picking away at https://learnnatively.com/book/053be00c26/ for a long time (and taking a couple of breaks from it), I finally finished it today!
I think it was too hard for me at the beginning, but by the end it was in the ‘just right’ difficulty zone, or at least closer. Glad I stuck with it - being a figure skating nerd helped given that it’s about skaters of various levels - since I learned a ton of words and some grammar points from it. And it was nice to read a sports story where the main character is an adult mostly aiming for self-fulfillment because ‘win the Big Game/make the Olympics’ is just not a realistic possibility for him.
Just wanted to say thanks for the review, both here and on the site. It’s not the kind of book that I’m likely to pick up any time soon, but I really appreciate seeing that it’s there and an option, if that makes sense.
As a way to fight my reading slump, I started reading 薬屋のひとりごと 13 two days ago just before bed time. I thought I just read 5 pages or something to get back into the groove, but I ended up reading 1/5th of the whole book instead and just finished it yesterday.
I really liked it! It’s the beginning of a new arc, so we are getting some new plot points, but mostly it’s about catching up with all the characters we didn’t see during the previous arc. Also, the writing style was quite different from the previous books. We are back to the episodic nature from the earlier volumes, but this time things are told from the point of view of other characters. Often, 猫猫 happens to be involved, but not always.
I usually don’t like collections of short stories, but here there’s a sense that time is moving forward and that it does matter.
Anyway, just like after finishing the last volume of 本好き in a couple of days, I am now back to not feeling like reading anything 
Started reading 嫌いなら呼ぶなよ with @omk3 over on WK and it’s been a riot so far. It feels similar to おいしいごはんを食べられますように, so if you like messed up characters and slightly dark humor you’ll probably enjoy it. It seems to be a short story collection so do bear that in mind - I love short stories but not everyone does
Difficulty wise it’s probably mid to high 30s. I noted over in the other thread that quite a few words I could only find in my JP<>JP dictionary, and I’ve also googled a fair amount to understand everything from types of eye shapes to types of pastries 
I finished 12月のベロニカ - it was very good. Would highly recommend if you like heroic, angsty fantasy.
Moving on to 歌の降る惑星 for the next probably-terrible sci-fi novel. Expectations are, of course, very low - but the writing style so far is decently engaging. Characters feel like they might wear a bit thin, but at least they’re established as having clear personalities, so that’s a step up over comparable things I’ve read this year.
So as other people pointed out that it might happen, I didn’t end up reading much during my trip.
A manga that was included in one app, and that’s about it. I carried with me 異世界のんびり農家 01, but it ended up just being weight in the backpack.
On the other hand, I started reading Blue Thermal manga, due to having watched the movie on board the airplane.
I have started 謎解きはディナーのあとで 2 | L31 (learnnatively.com) and so far it’s living up to my fond memories of the first book in the series, genuinely making me laugh out loud. I haven’t finished the first story, so I can’t comment yet on whether the quality of the mysteries is as good, but I would heartily recommend this series to anyone who likes mysteries and fancies a laugh 
I’ve actually managed to finish a good number of manga since my last update, so I thought it’d be nice to brag a bit~ So anyway, it’s been almost three weeks since my last real update, and I’m pleased to say that I’ve crossed three items off of that “currently reading” list entirely.
Volume 12 ended on an absolutely amazing note; I’m going to jump over and read another short story in Flesh&Blood外伝 女王陛下の海賊たち before I get to volume 13, but I’m extremely excited. ^o^ If the LN club maintains enough popularity I’m super tempted to recommend the first Flesh&Blood as a nominee; I gotta spread the love!告白 is very nearly finished; I’m looking forward to seeing how that ends. The first F&B short story collection will only have one story left before I can finish it off, but I think I need to wait to read a few more volumes of F&B before I can get to it. Dracula continues to be a long-term project; I’m glad to say it’s a fairly easy read in Japanese, at least at my level.
I’m going to try to continue finishing off long-standing manga series I’ve had in my backlog; I’ll probably put a poll up on the “what to read next” megathread for thoughts. And now that F&B12 is done and 告白 is within spitting distance, I plan to finally get to D.Gray-man reverse 2 and cross that off the list. If I’m lucky I can keep momentum and dive straight into the third and final DGM LN after that…
Recently finished the 五等分の花嫁 anime and movie, and started reading the manga. On vol 4 - it’s nice having the time to take things in a bit more slowly than watching it:
Also halfway through with SAO 27, which will be the 3rd LN I’ve finished, once I’m done:
After finishing the bookclub read (告白) early, I got side-tracked by some English books. (Can highly recommend the Daevabad trilogy. Binged all 4 books (trilogy + collection of short stories). 
)
Very slowly making my way through 記憶屋 and looking forward to seeing what the lightnovel pick for the new bookclub will be. 
Just about halfway through 世界から猫が消えたなら. I was excited to read this one, but I’m actually struggling to stay interested at this point. Not really a big fan of the main character, as he doesn’t really seem to think about or care at all about the implications of his choices on other people. Sure, it doesn’t seem like anyone else is aware of what has disappeared from the world, but really? Your ex who you decided to call with your last phone call in the world - her favorite place is the movie theater. Your good friend’s entire LIFE is about movies. Also, both of these people’s employment presumably depends on movies existing. Did you even think about that? I thought the book would examine more of these consequences for other people as well.
Maybe I’ll take a break and spend time with one of other two books I’m reading at the moment, but neither of them are calling my name. The current short story I’m on from カレーライス is a bit harder for me to follow without lookups, and it’s a paperback. The other book I’m reading is a bit too easy, but I started it so I could read along with friends.
Side note, but am I missing something about how to add Natively links that automatically format with the title and level marker?
It was broken up until recently - you should now be able to paste a raw link and Discourse will auto format it for you
Hmm. It didn’t seem to be working on the preview of my post, only when I did a standalone link on its own line. Let’s see if it works when I actually post:
The other book I’m reading now is https://learnnatively.com/book/ce12ae910d/
Very weird. Was working yesterday. https://learnnatively.com/book/ce12ae910d/
https://learnnatively.com/book/ce12ae910d/
https://learnnatively.com/book/aed4c2e81a/
Now none of them are?
@brandon the links are misbehaving again
Test: ログ・ホライズン S2 | L29
Sorry about that, fixed again 
I also cleared the cache, so those previous ones work now: ぼくはイエローでホワイトで、ちょっとブルー | L32
