Today I finally finished volume 30 of さよなら絶望先生 and the ending goes so hard even though I already knew what was going to happen. Sad it’s over now. 
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I’m finally up to date on フライングウイッチ! Really happy, I really loved the anime and being able to read through its continuation on my own is so empowering, even if it is taking me 2.5 hours for a volume.
I borrowed some readers from the local JPN library, so I should probably finish those off before moving on to continue other manga series…
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Alright, I finally went finished おやすみ、夢なき子 | L30 and that was a ride.
In this book, the author is trying to answer the question: how many girls aged 10 to 16 can we get sexually assaulted in ~500 pages? The answer may surprise you!
It was my first book by this author and I’m not sure I like his style, but it sure makes it easy to read on.
I felt the overall plot very weird and I’m still not quite sure how the whole thing with 恵美子 tied in with the rest of the story… I don’t even understand why she had to be there at the big confrontation at the secondary residence, but, whatever I guess? I don’t even understand why 松本 suddenly started to investigate the disappearance again or… generally why he did anything that he did in this book.
Anyway, once I just decided to unplug my brain (near the third rape or so, I guess), it was an okay read, I guess? Strong trigger warnings, obviously (see @cat’s review for minimum spoilers) but it was otherwise entertaining.
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Finished 牧場物語 ほのぼの牧場へようこそ! this morning. On the plus side: this is a slightly easier read than 牧場物語 3つの里の大好きななかま due to lack of dialect. On the other hand…it never really comes together as a story, and I ended up comparing it to 3つの里の大好きななかま over and over as I went (and the only point where it came out ahead was the slightly easier language). A disappointment, but a learning experience all the same.
Time to pivot back to Savior’s Book Cafe Story, unless I get distracted by another shiny book.
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Cool! Grimgar is on par with the anime. The anime added depth via the slice of life elements, but the plot of book 2 is much better. Log Horizon LNs are even better (I’ve finished in EN), since you see more of what’s going on in the world.
Omg thanks so much! I’m glad you’ve found them useful 
I know other people’s reviews have been super helpful for me, when deciding whether to pick up a book, so I try to write them when I can.
Short answer: Grimgar.
Long answer:
Linguistically I think the series’ Natively levels are representative (Grimgar 30, LH 32, SAO 33-34), and I’d probably recommend Grimgar first (though it’s the least interesting of the three). They each have pros and cons.
Grimgar - very austere writing style, and sometimes unreasonably long sentences (and chapters). Balanced out by the smaller range of vocab, much of which is frequently repeated. Yume is often incoherent, but will be translated right after. Ranta is sometimes slangy to a point that’s hard to understand, but it’s not so bad in books 1-2.
Log Horizon - some abstract, poetic imagery and descriptions. Otoh, story introduces fun cast right from the beginning, and the info dumps / interior monologues are relatively concise so far (I’m only on ch 4 tho). Shiroe’s inner monologue is really enjoyable, similar to anime.
SAO - sheer vocab and information density. I find it easiest to understand of the three (helps that I’m a big SAO otaku), but I think for most people it would be the hardest. The writing style is the most straightforward of the three, imo.
If you start SAO, I’d recommend starting with the original Aincrad arc. The first two books are actually a series of short stories (just like the anime), and have a slightly easier reading level, imo. Progressive is much more fun/interesting (and you get Asuna’s perspective at times), but it supplements the original. The writing level is on par with the later SAO books. If you’ve already seen the entire anime, you could also start with Moon Cradle (takes place in Underworld, after the events in the anime) or Unital Ring (which is easily his strongest writing in the main series).
Whichever you read, there is a lot of transferrable vocab between the three series.
Fwiw you are way more prepared than I was when I first tried SAO! SAO first began to feel semi-comfortable btwn WK 48-55. Fwiw my review of Grimgar 1 was written at WK Lvl 55, and it was the 2nd non-SAO LN I completed. At this point SAO feels comfortable, but not quite easy. Grimgar is easier (not easy), but more emotionally challenging.
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I’m going to try to keep all this in mind for whenever I next try to suggest something. I feel like you wouldn’t mind me saying we both enjoy ‘trash’ novels, but I think our taste in trash is very different.
A photo of me reading at home
I debated making my themes unspoiled but since they’re revealed so late in the book I didn’t think that would fly. Debating rewriting my review now though, to emphasis checking the spoilers for squicks and icks.
edit: just lightly edited it to emphasize checking them and also moved one out from behind spoiler tag as it’s not very spoiler-y
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I don’t think so? We do seem to read different stuff, but that’s mostly because I am stuck with whatever recommendation mechanism Booklive and the like are having (and my ADHD seeing colorful covers and being like oooooh shiny). In fact, part of the reason why I spent so much time not reading the book is because I ADHD’d into other series.
I went and check and, so far, I have enjoyed literally all the recommendations you gave me (except technically for コーヒーが冷めないうちに, but I read it before and you did mention that people didn’t like the printed version).
Live Naphthalene reaction
All that to say, keep 'em coming.
In other news, I learned that 女装してめんどくさい事になってるネクラとヤンキーの両片想い 1 | L25 was free for a time thanks to the forum. I knew nothing about that series but the title was enough to convince me to have a look. After finishing the first two (free) volumes, I just bought the rest of the series because why not (mostly because I got a 15% discount coupon from Booklive). It’s not the greatest thing I have ever read, but the shenanigans of the characters are fun.
The series keep handwaving the fact that the two main characters cannot be clocked due to their incredible make-up skills… but when めい gets put into a more revealing costume at some point, (s)he has like a 2 to 1 hip to waist ratio (it’s technically in the bonus chapter section, so it might not be cannon I don’t know). That requires a bit more than make-up skills.
Due to the characters being completely feminine coded, it’s a bit hard to call it either yaoi or yuri, but at least, it’s gay 
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Roger that! I think maybe I took a little bit too much to heart your comments on the general gross and predatory old men that dominate the book and was like, “oh no, don’t do that to Naphthalene again!”
I truly do strive to give people as good of recommendations as I can based on what I know of their tastes.
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Actually, as long as they are clearly labeled as “bad” by the story, I don’t mind. I have read many books where the guy is predatory and it’s considered romantic because he is hot or something and I don’t like that, though. Here, I had a bad feeling because I thought (spoilers from おやすみ、夢なきこ) that the doctor would be on the “good” side… but it turns out everything was okay from my perspective
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Today I’m reading the first Harry Potter book on Kindle. I was reading a few things at once but I’ve decided to focus on just one novel at a time, otherwise I never finish any of them.
It’s been great practice so far, I’m just over half way through.
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I love the anime, but since it’s so good and covers the whole series while being faithful to the source (as far as I heard), I thought I don’t need to read it as a book. But hey, that sounds enticing, so… on the wish list it goes.
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Thank you for your lenghty explanation!
I’ll probably start with Grimgar then as I really liked the anime, watched twice back then.
I remember how confusing she was (at least in the anime), but she is a confusing person, I love Yume xD
She’s a fun character and I think an interesting contrasting pair when pared to Shihoru, makes an interesting dynamic when you put them together with the boys.
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I finished
It took me a lot less than the last volume, but it was probably largely due to the part I skimmed through.
I found this Volume to have both, better moments than Volume 1 and also worse moments.
Also it’s one of those that suffers from too many introductions at once, and gets you lost.
When you need to reference a character table in a series, in the second volume, something is going very wrong.
I’m going to give Volume 3 a chance, as the series has potential for being my ally.
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I’m listening to it as an audiobook, it’s giving me major nostalgia 
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Uh, apparently I don’t like having more read than unread books. At least most of the ones I bought recently were manga…?
Anyway, I’m making progress on Penguin Highway. I’m about 1/3 of the way through and will read some more still today, and I’m planning on not starting anything else until I either finish it or end up dropping it, but I feel like I will be able to finish this one. Yeah, I don’t like it. I feel like I could though if the MC weren’t so dislikeable and weren’t obsessed with おっぱい and the word たいへん (I never had anything against it before, but when he keeps using it at least once a page…)
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I finally started reading コンビニ人間 which I already recently finished in two other languages, so I am pretty comfortable with the plot (also, it’s short, haha) so I thought it would be a great candidate for extensive reading along with the audiobook.
Buuut the audiobook is… really not as enjoyable as the かがみの孤城 audiobook Although the かがみの孤城 audiobook is sometimes a bit much in terms of overacting (?), it’s still highly enjoyable to me. Oh well.
Other than that I really enjoy コンビニ人間. I wrote some comment about the first page in the wanikani forum, how in the original version, repetitions in words are way more common than in the translations that I know of – it seems like this is common occurrence throughout the book and I think it adds more layers to the prose.
I think this is a book in which the original language makes it so much better. Might be like that with every Japanese book, I haven’t read that many books in comparison with their translations yet!
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I ended up bingeing all available volumes of 女装してめんどくさい事になってるネクラとヤンキーの両片想い (series) | L26 in 3 days (which is a feat, considering I am reading on my tiny phone, so I literally have to zoom on each bubble to be able to read… and when I get too close to the border it flicks to the next or previous page; really frustrating).
The next volume is expected in Spring 
I have some issues with the story (one of them being that cross dressing is necessarily a hobby, being trans is not a thing; I can’t help but think that it’s because the author wants to force the story to be yaoi) but I still enjoyed it a lot (as the bingeing implies).
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Been a while since I said… anything at all. But I’m still alive! And reading!
I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to read since I started a new job some weeks ago (and I’m glad I don’t plan to stay there for long) but I’ve been slowly reading some of https://learnnatively.com/book/2c1e37ec2e/ while commuting. I think it’s okay so far, though I’m not too fond of the “childish” writing style and would much rather finally continue reading 予言の島 | L35 but my brain doesn’t like that when I’m tired and exhausted so I have to take it slowly.
At the same time I’m already contemplating what to read next… I have at least 3 different ideas already but that would get way off topic XD
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This post is more about “What will you be reading tomorrow” though, sorry for that
I couldn’t find the posts where we discussed this but iirc @Biblio we were planning to read きらきらひかる together from the end of this month, do you remember that too? 
If so, what are your thoughts now that the date is approaching soon?
If you’re still on board, I would set up a discussion thread for us and we can have a discussion with everybody who is interested in reading the book. What do you think?
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Not much time to read yesterday, but I noticed that the first manga volume of 婚約破棄されまして（笑）(not yet on Natively) was free to read until… that very day, so I read that.
I was curious about the light novel but kinda expected to be disappointed, so the manga was a good way to test the water.
And, yeah, it’s another meh series. It might be because of the format or it may pick up later, but there’s not much to it. It’s one of those “I’m going to revolutionize the food culture thanks to the knowledge of my previous life”.
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