I mean, adding lots of books to their library is all in a day’s work for a bibliothecary.
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I think we are both guilty of spamming the feed 
You just missed that time, where I added all my series within an hour or so… 
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Finally finished 魔女の宅急便 2. And now I can compare with the first volume of the series. I really got better: 2.7 look-ups/page instead of the 5.5 of two years ago, and 19.5 pages/day instead of 7.4 (only counting days on which I actually read).
But now to something completely different, a story - also by 角野栄子 - set at the time of WW 2 in Japan トンネルの森 1945. The MC is a 5 years old girl at the start, at 1940, same as the author BTW, and the story (here I am guessing because of its title) continues to or even centers on the year 1945.
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I am plodding my way through 島はぼくらと | L32 (learnnatively.com) - it’s my back up for when I finish the book club each week. I was looking forward to it as a coming of age story, but I haven’t been able to get into it all that much. It seems to broken up into sections of roughly 100 pages that accord to the seasons, and there’s a main storyline for each section. However I’m finding it a slog, the author loves their world building and for me there is far too much context about this island! I really don’t care about their island cooperative or their subsidies for parents using the ferry to the mainland with their sick children 
I was a bit surprised to find this so un-engaging, given the author wrote かがみの孤城 | L28 (learnnatively.com) which so many people seem to enjoy! There are too many characters which never helps, in my opinion.
@Naphthalene I saw you finished this one - what were your thoughts? I hope you don’t mind me tagging you!
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I agree completely with you. It did feel like a slog from start to finish. However, I feel like the more pieces fall into place, the more enjoyable it got and I think I liked it best once I was basically at the end.
It’s one of those books that I am glad I read, but did not enjoy reading, if that makes sense?
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Every time I read a book from 辻村美月 I feel like it’s a slog during some parts of it (why does she love details so much?! Always feels like an info dump), but then she always redeems herself with a great ending where things come together so I keep returning to her books and have read a bunch of them now. It’s a love hate relationship!
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Not me starting a book because someone else is not enjoying it and now I am interested. 
And no, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. 
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Misery loves company? 
Actually it’s very nice to feel that another person will experience this book with me! I will be interested to hear how your impressions develop.
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Oh that’s encouraging! I will persevere
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I see you’ve read 傲慢と善良 | L32 (learnnatively.com) and I’m currently debating whether I want to read this with the WK club. Would you say it follows the same pattern of feeling like a slog but rewarding you at the end? For reference I’ve only read かがみの孤城 | L28 (learnnatively.com) and I didn’t particularly like it, but I’m guessing it was more to do with the age gap separating me from the protagonists, plus the overenthusiastic audiobook production, so I may not be entirely fair in my judgement. I also have 闇祓 | L30?? (learnnatively.com) lined up for sometime in the future, and I suspect I may like this more (hopefully).
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BW’s freebies! 
It’ll just be a handful of books per day from now on, though. 
Including ~BL vibes~ is winning in the poll, so you definitely should for the next round! 
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I am listening to the audiobook and L32 is kinda a stretch with audio only, me thinks, but so far it’s OK. But I reserve the right to be not good enough and having to DNF. 
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傲慢と善良 was suuuuper long and there were parts where it just felt like she was into dumping 心理描写 with zero subtlety or room for interpretation, but it was also a weirdly compelling read and totally captured the psychology of people doing 婚活 or trying to date in their 30s. The ending was also really satisfying to me personally and I thought the character growth was well done, but the reading experience will depend on you as a person and how much you like character studies or psychological descriptions. It is definitely way more “adult” than かがみの孤城, though.
For me it was a really solid, enjoyable 3 out of 5 stars and the only thing I would have “changed” was some of the pacing.
I love 闇祓 though, and would say it’s my favorite 辻村美月 read so far so I recommend that to you more! 
It’s just really fun and I liked the horror element and the way she still managed to explore some social issues within the confines of the story.
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So she’s the opposite of 恩田陸 
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I actually haven’t read anything by 恩田陸 yet! Looking forward to when that book club kicks off.
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She’s very no information / vague and loose ending, at least for the two of her books I’ve already read 
And yet I keep going back…
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That sounds fun too, though as long as the stories are good!
As an aside, the only Japanese authors I have hated on my reading journey so far are 青山美智子 and 町田そのこ… sorry for anyone here who likes them, since I see a few of us enjoyed their books. 
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I think for me it’s 夢野 久作 and Yoshi so far. Wildly different - one writes gore and the other writes trash for teens
I also really don’t get the appeal of 芥川 despite loving many of the winners of the prize named after him
To be fair, I’ve only read his children’s stuff and his 遺書
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I found 木曜日にはココアを | L29 (learnnatively.com) by 青山美智子 really sweet 
but no book should be for everyone! Case in point, 今村 夏子 - I read 父と私の桜尾通り商店街 | L30 (learnnatively.com) and it just wasn’t for me, although I know others like her work and I could see that it was well-written.
My worst book so far on this Japanese reading journey (excluding a DNF) was MIST | L33 (learnnatively.com) - I think 池井戸 潤 is well known and quite prolific but I found the book infuriating, I can’t think who it’s for when the twist happens at the end and the culprit is revealed, I had straight up forgotten who he was in the middle of a million truncated story lines and characters who only show up for a single line, yes I am still salty
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Thanks, I’m looking forward to it (whenever that is, I have a tsundoku that’s constantly increasing). I think I may possibly like 傲慢と善良, so the question now is, will I have the time?
That’s a very good observation actually! From the two books and the several reviews of other books of hers I’ve read, you don’t read her for her endings. The journey is worth it though, at least for me 
And now, much like @biblio before me, I find myself intrigued 
(Luckily I don’t think I can possibly add another book to my reading schedule right now)
Edit: And no ebook, so there’s definitely no danger of me reading it.
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