Well, I kept reading ニャンゴ stuff, but both the writing and the fan service have been getting worse in the web novel, so I’m going to stop now. As I mentioned, there are a lot of differences between the web novel and published version, so I may get back to this series, but we’ll see.
4 Likes
Aw, sorry to read that. “ニャンゴ is almost exactly what I was looking for” sounded so hopeful a few days ago.
(By the way, could you grade the series? I’m curious where it’s standing difficulty-wise.)
2 Likes
Well, that’s kinda what Natively is about! 
Granted, I hope after adding tagging and recommendations, we can start to incorporate personal content preferences as well as popularity with learners in helping your book discovery.
As an aside - I do wonder how unique this aspect is to the Japanese community. There really is a very standard set of recommended books (yotsuba being the most prominent) and I know at least in Korean there’s no such set. It actually made making the grading system easier for Japanese because so many people read those books and compared them to other novels
13 Likes
I did enjoy the (content of) the first two volumes, so that’s still a positive as far as I am concerned. Plus, as I said, the author did apparently put a lot of effort in editing the content for the published version. From what I have seen, the pace seems better at the very least. I don’t know how things are on the romance/fan service front. I hope it got better too, but I don’t have high hopes. Still, just changing the pace could be good enough.
Considering that I just read the content, I won’t go for the published version for a while though, but I’ll keep it in mind.
In terms of difficulty, I just graded it, so it should update soon-ish. The writing style (especially word usage) is the same between versions, so I think my grading is valid.
5 Likes
Thank you for the notes, they line up with my experience perfectly! The narration is cool and detached, and even though it’s in first person, you basically have no idea about the narrator’s motivations and thoughts, which is eerie in itself. The horror (and it felt really spine-chilling to me, as opposed to actual horror books I read) comes from my imagination only, not anything spelled out (or indeed even directly implied) in the text. The feeling was a bit like, I don’t know, you have a neighbour and he seems somewhat off to you, and strange sounds come from his house, and you’re imagining all sorts of things and live in terror of him, but in fact he may be a totally safe and friendly person and you have it all wrong. Or not. (Not an actual example from the book, just the kind of feeling I had while reading).
I know, and I went and voted for it right after finishing the second story 
I thought I wasn’t interested because the subject matter does not immediately appeal to me, but then, nor does a “pregnancy diary”.
You did? Nooooo! What of all that put you off?
The thought did cross my mind, I confess 
4 Likes
If we were just to rely on popularity in a very small community where everyone follows each other’s example more or less, there wouldn’t be much need for Natively, I feel. For me Natively is about giving a learner more choices than Yotsuba or コンビニ人間, good as they may be. We are all learners at different levels here, and presumably we all love (or at least enjoy) reading, but we don’t necessarily all enjoy the same things. Hopefully as Natively’s database gets larger, and gradings get more detailed, new learners will start discovering their own reading paths instead of blindly following a set of inflexible recommendations that don’t take into account personal preferences.
I’m happy to say that out of those I’ve only read コンビニ人間, and it was because I was interested in the author and the premise rather than because it was recommended to me as a good starter novel. And I did enjoy it. I didn’t enjoy my actual starter novel much though - and I did choose it because it was reportedly easy, and because there was a book club at the time.
8 Likes
Oh, 100%. Indeed the reason I started the site is that I found Flying Witch and 黒 1 | L17 easier than https://learnnatively.com/book/830efb7474/, and felt there should be a place that surfaces lots of options! I just meant that in terms of content discovery, Natively is still mostly a place where you just find notes on things from a learners perspective. It’s not really taking in content preferences… yet!
There’s still a long ways to go 
And for the record, Natively has a lot of benefits beyond this too… like tracking & community in general.
14 Likes
Referring to your interview notes (in german, since I will refer to another german thing)
Ich versteh wirklich nicht warum immer alle mit Murakami verglichen werden müssen (es scheint so als ob sich das jetzt mit Sayaka Murata fortsetzt dass jedes Buch コンビニ人間 in einem xyz Setting ist), besonders bei weiblichen Autorinnen find ich das besonders Schade, das Frauenfiguren in Murakamis Romanen ja nicht besonders gut dargestellt werden. Ich muss außerdem immer daran denken: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pwS5g0a8ac haha
(Ich habe Murakami sehr gemocht wie ich noch jünger war und die “problematischen” Szenen/Darstellungen einfach überlesen, aber als ich vor kurzem wieder angefangen habe Murakami zu probieren hab ich es kaum mehr ausgehalten, insbes. weil es einfach so viele andere gute Autor:innen auf Japanisch gibt 
)
Sorry für den langen Rant, das Interview generell war sehr spannend zu lesen, danke fürs runterschreiben.
I am still working through かがみの孤城 and ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖 (2) and making great progess currently, maybe also because I switched my “reading techniques”. I finally turned my back on LingQ and now only reading in https://reader.ttsu.app/ with Yomichan lookups. I also fired up Anki again to put in these words that make me go “omg, how could I forgot this!”
In my other target language, I am reading translated Agatha Christie novels, so I was thinking about maybe also revisiting her in Japanese. 
I also realized there is an Anime about Agatha Christies works, so that could also be a fun activity haha
Also, I have some friends who are currently in Japan, who offered me to buy some books for me, but I’m not sure what to ask from them. Should be popular enough so they can easily find it (only one of them speaks very rudimentary Japanese and can’t really read yet) and also is rare enough that I can’t easily get it here in Austria
5 Likes
If it only has one edition, or a fairly unique title you can probably get away with giving them a picture of the cover to show the book store clerk.
Also possibly better luck at a Kinokuniya than a Book Off as I am not sure how they organize their shelves I found the same paperback book in 3 spots while browsing one store
6 Likes
It led me to a bunch of smaller manga which I would never have tried (as well as Flying Witch) that I really want to recommend for the Absolute Beginner club over in Wanikani … and it’s very satisfying opening a random manga and being like, “hmm, I think this is a new one for the lvl 15-19 pile”.
5 Likes
Interestingly, both of those are graded harder than yotsuba
6 Likes
What anime is this?
2 Likes
アガサ·クリスティーの名探偵ポワロとマープル (Agatha Christie’s Great Detectives Poirot and Marple)
So, as the title says it features Poirot and Miss Marple and some made up character and a mascot, of course. But I don’t know much else about it! Let me know if you watch it
3 Likes
Miss Marple is such an underrated Agatha Christie character. We need more old lady detective content in this world
4 Likes
Ah, that’s good to hear! So far I’ve only read 博士の愛した数式 | L35 which doesn’t fit this description at all (at least to me) and so I was wondering a bit …
I noticed your most recent vote and was delighted 
Oh no, it did not put me off, I was just wondering about the average book club member… you know, maybe they just graduated from Yotsuba or Kiki’s Delivery Service, and then they join the IBC and get confronted with this all of a sudden 
and so I wondered whether the book might be a bit inappropriate after all 
I think she’d be a very good author for such a club. But let’s get going with the 恩田陸 first and then see about another one
Response to yukitanuki (in English this time)
OMG that video is hilarious! I didn’t know that Reich-Ranicki was such an ardent worshiper of Murakami
The interesting thing is that I can see both their arguments, him being literary fast-food and also some beautiful descriptions. Or maybe Ursula Gräfe is even doing a better job than Murakami himself
I think that’s simply because he is just very well-known.
What actually annoys me most with him is exactly what they said in the video: There is nothing Japanese to his writing, it could take place anywhere and could have been written by anyone. Murakami features (praises, maybe?) so many Western tropes like clothes, food, drinks, etc that his protagonists almost become faceless. @Myria once told me that she had attended a class about Japanese literature, and the professor had complained about Murakami’s Japanese being pretty unnatural and pretty westernized (or so I remember)
What you can do is to place an order at BookOff (on their website) and have that order be delivered to a BookOff of your choice for pick-up, free of charge. You get an email and all you need to do is to show it at the BookOff front desk (and pay for the books ofc) in order to pick up the delivery. I did this a few times and it worked very well. That saves your friends from needing to search the whole store (which is a skill in and of itself) and also you can get books that are not in stock in that particular BookOff.
5 Likes
If they vote for it, let em read it! I did not think the oddball wild movie Happiness of the Katakuris would win the first round of the Movie Club but it did - even with more mainstream appealing movies in the mix!
I’ve also heard Japanese people say that Murakami has an unusual writing style. He’s very popular there too, though, so it can’t be too much of a bad thing imo.
3 Likes
Yeah, that’s basically what I decided in the end (or should I say that I simply did nothing 
)
3 Likes
I started reading 異世界拷問姫2 yesterday. I recently finished medium 霊媒探偵城塚翡翠. Finally getting that out of the way, decided to continue with 異世界拷問姫. Huge genre shift but a nice palate cleanser.
6 Likes
Just finished part 1 of ソードアート・オンライン・プログレッシブ 1 - 星なき夜のアリア (Aria of a Starless Night). It’s probably the least interesting, and shortest SAO story (bc things are just getting started), but it’s the most fun version by far.
Now starting part 2: ヒゲの理由 - The Reason for the Whiskers - a short interlude where we find out why Argo has whiskers, and Kirito gains an invaluable skill. Back in May 2022, this was one of the first native level things I tried reading. Suffice to say it was hard… But it’s a fun story, and I’m really excited to reread it!
Otherwise still reading ログ・ホライズン 1, and 本好きの下剋上 1 (which I’ll start ch2 of tomorrow).
4 Likes
You are now reading my goal series, grimgar and log horizon. I loved both animes! And have acquired quite a few volumes of both series. I’m so looking forward to read them (Isekai paradise).
Thanks for all the reviews you wrote, I read all of them. I’m currently progressing through difficulty here and reading 向日葵の咲かない夏. It proved to be a challenge in the beginning but it’s slowly getting easier as I progress.
Out of the three series (SAO x Grimgar x Log Horizon) which one you’d recommend as Isekai beginner, language wise? (I’m currently level 40 in wanikani and have read around 11 novels/light novels between level 21 and 28).
5 Likes
