I used Stopped for that sometimes, if I know I’m definitely not coming back to it soon. My DNF (ie, no intention to finish) pile is pretty small though, I imagine if someone has more of those this strategy might not work as well.
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I think having so many books going at once isn’t good for my attention span. Or it may be just the phase I’m in right now. But I start reading one book, then decide I’m in the mood for a different one, and again and again, and then the day goes by and I’ve hardly read anything because I couldn’t concentrate on any of my current options. It’s ridiculous.
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Re 島はぼくらと | L32
I… am bored… I have 0 interest in any of the people or any of the happenings. I usually really enjoy light-hearted, slice of life stuff, but this feels so tedious. 
Still have like an hour left of the audiobook, so I’ll probably finish it on my walk later… finally… this feels like I have been listening to it for ages.
I might simply not enjoy 青春 stuff. 
I think it’s a very Japanese genre.
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I finally finished it last night! I didn’t find the characters especially interesting and I don’t think the very episodic style worked for me. The ending is nice. I found 衣花 the most interesting character as she subverted my expectations - of all of them, she seems the most like she’d want to go to the city at the start. 新 on the other hand struck me as a bit unrealistic I simply don’t believe anyone would be ok with someone else nicking their script and winning a prize for it!
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I’m currently reading ふらいんぐうぃっち. But come across a character that seems to speak in an unusual way that they represent by using ひらがな. I think the purpose is either to be ambiguous so you don’t know what he’s talking about or it’s just represented that way to show a different dialect, similar to how a Scots character ‘s speech might be written in an English novel.
Does anyone that’s read ふらいんぐうぃっち know if what the character says is actually accurate? Or if it’s just supposed to be a mystery?
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I am pretty sure he is speaking dialect. 
and it seems it’s 津軽弁
the first bubble: “Why don’t you use the field(s) behind our house?”
and I don’t quite understand the second bubble, but I think he is listing all the things wrong with the fields, but concluding it’s better than nothing. 
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I thought that might be it. Is it Kansai ben or something different?
My translation apps made no real sense of it
sorry, I edited after your post apparently. It seems to be 津軽弁. 
Edit: Japanese were also struggling, so someone from the area put a “translation” on twitter:
「あぁ、それなら 家の裏にある畑 使えば良い。草が伸びてしまっているので、いくらか片付けなければだめだが、あそこなら良いだろう。」
(I am a bit proud of having understood as much as I did. 
)
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Wow, thank you 
Now I’ve got a goal for after I get fluent enough in standard Japanese; learn the difference between dialects 
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That’s 東北弁. Later on his son will jump in at times and “translate”. She also understands almost nothing, IIRC.
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Yeah, Makoto didn’t seem to understand anything so I think in that scene Chinatsu translates for her shortly afterwards.
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That reminds me that one of the novels cited for interesting use of furigana in the history of furigana I’m currently reading is 吉里吉里人, where a part of Tohoku declares independence and uses 東北弁 as the new national language; the dialogue in the book uses furigana to indicate the pronunciation of the dialogue. Apparently it won the Nihon SF Taishou award in 1981, so it’s vaguely tempting, except I dunno if I could deal with a whole book worth of dialect conversations 
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Naphthalene: “I really need to focus on non-LN books to reach my yearly goal!”
Also Naphthalene: “Oooooh look at that shiny 聖女の魔力は万能です 9 カド | L29 on my bookshelf!”
I still read some 白昼夢の森の少女 (I don’t think it’s on Natively yet; I need to add it)
It’s a collection of short stories by an author I do like. Sadly, having checked the あとがき, it turns out to be a bunch of stories the author didn’t really know how to publish otherwise… so they are a bit substandard compared to the other stuff I read from that author.
The titular story was pretty good, but too short (~50 pages). It contains a bunch of interesting concepts that would have deserved to be explored in more details… That story would have deserved to be 2~3 times longer.
Oh well. It’s still fun and it gives me a lot of breakpoints.
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I also like that author so it is good to know that about 白昼夜の森の少女. A bit of a disappointment but I hope you’re still enjoying reading the stories in there.
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I am enjoying the book, overall. I read 7 stories so far. I really enjoyed one, found 2 more pretty good (including the titular story), and thought the rest was meh. There are 4 stories left, so hopefully some more good ones in there.
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Other folks mostly covered this, but it’s the Tsugaru dialect (Tsugaru dialect - Wikipedia) - totally different region than Kansai (very far north vs southwest). If you google it in English, a scene from the anime is actually one of the results, so I guess he’s semi-famous for it? If you google in Japanese, some conversion charts show up, as well as this phrase list 津軽弁紹介 – 一般社団法人 五所川原市観光協会
Anyway, the gyst is that it’s a really thick accent and Makoto can’t understand a word. One of the siblings always translates it for her/us. Nice touch, imo.
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Finished up with 少女地獄 | L44 finally. Most (all?) of the stories are from 1936 and had an older style, so it was on the demanding side as far as language goes. I was also reading the paperback copy which didn’t help. In short, it contained six short stories about women who were wicked in one way other another. One thing I really appreciated about it was that each short story had a completely different style depending on who the narrator was, so there was a lot of variety. The easier to read stories were also conveniently inserted between those that were more dense, which was nice. It kind of reminded me a bit of old detective/mystery/horror fiction from other authors such as 江戸川乱歩. If that’s your thing or you really want to read something by 夢野久作 then I guess I’d recommend this, but otherwise it wasn’t my favorite.
(@cat you had wanted to know about content warnings - I can offer up good old murder and a bit of suicide.)
I’ve pulled 嫌いなら呼ぶなよ | L35 off my TBR shelf and will now be starting it next. @cat and @omk3 both called it mid so let’s see how I feel about it! I must say though, the 単行本 is very cute and I like that it opens up with an outrageous Paris Hilton quote on the first page:
「知らない人から嫌われるのは、あなたが素晴らしい証拠。」
What?! 
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I’ve just started おちくぼ姫 | L30?? which is a classic Japanese Cinderella story from the Heian period. It has been retold for modern audiences, so there are some explanations of Heian customs and the language is accessible. Very early days but so far it’s nicely done!
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Ooh that sounds pretty interesting
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I think I’m late to this conversation too, but 津軽弁 in particular is known (among 標準語 natives) for being one of the hardest-to-understand dialects of Japanese. This video where the showmakers are searching for the thickest Tsugaru accent they can find has some really fun examples:
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