Japanese Book Recs

[Jade]

I know we have a Resource Recommendation thread, but I figured a thread for Japanese novels/books in general wouldn't hurt.

Recently I started attempting to reread 赤い糸 again, I thought it was ridiculous the first time and never bothered finishing the series, and I'm slowly getting through Harry Potter in Japanese, and the Durarara!! light novels as well.

Anyone else reading any Japanese books? Got any recs?

[Jembru]

Reading is getting easier for me all the time, but I still don't know enough kanji to read novels. I have a stack waiting to be read once I'm able though. I'm hoping to eventually stop studying and just read and use Japanese as much as possible to improve, so I'll definitely be watching this thread closely!

I've started reading the short stories in my parallel text and particularly like the style of Otsuichi (he's also the author of the story we're translating about the girl getting a mobile phone). I'm interested in seeing what I can pick up of his next time I'm in London.

I have some teen manga because it's easier to read, although I'm reading them more for the reading practice than the stories. The one I'm currently dipping into when I have time is called 片翼のラビリンス, and I chose it purely because I liked the free gift... a bracelet that is meant to improve your social life depending on how you use it.. it went with my new bag ^^

There's a non-fiction book I'm reading now and then. It's about Japanese history, culture, politics and just about everything between. It's very dated now, on account of being published in 1993, but it is a parallel text so I can refer back to the English when I get stuck. It reads like an encyclopedia, so has short paragraphs about such topics as 'commuting', 'Kabuki', 'Bunraku' and even 'Nobel prize Winners'. The cultural stuff is really interesting, especially when you compare to Japan today and see how much has changed and how much is still very much a part of Japanese life. It's definitely helping me to brush my knowledge of Japan a little, which I always felt a bit ashamed for not knowing more about. The formal literary style is also helping to fill that gaping hole in my language knowledge too! It's called 'Nippon, The Land and it's People' ISBN4-311-70028-8. Worth a read if you can get hold of a copy. I found it by lucky chance in a second hand book shop, way way back when I was first interested in studying Japanese. Then it just turned up at my mum's again a few months ago and I was like.. 'I'll be taking THAT thanks...'

[Bokusenou]

Great thread idea, Jade!
Hmm, Well, I'm currently reading a dystopian fantasy book called 新世界より, which is really hard to put down! The problem with recommending it though, is that it's huge: almost a thousand pages in the hardcover edition (and that's with the split-page layout long Japanese books use to save paper by putting double the amount of text on a page), and split into three volumes in paperback. It also uses a lot of uncommon kanji for words, with no furigana. I'm currently almost 700 pages into it (I think this is the longest Japanese book I've ever read), and I'm still really liking it though, so I would recommend it if the things I mentioned above aren't too much of a turn off.

japanesebookrec.livejournal.com is also a really nice site to browse through when you're looking for something to read. The site is pretty inactive, but they have a lot of good older reviews posted.

[chocopie]

I'm currently reading book one of 星界の紋章 which is SF/space opera. It won a prize for best SF novel and I really like it! The science seems well-thought and explained which is a relief. I tend to stay from SF because of poorly thought up science. Recently I finished a murder mystery but I can't recall the title... I'll write about it later.

On reading in general, the best thing I did was buy a kindle. I can read any word, buy books from amazon jp instantly (this is the best part!), look up words with the installed J-J or J-E dictionaries, easily look back through the words I looked up... I'm definitely reading far more than I used to from paper books.

[Princess]

..I read....a baby book.....and kind of understood it xD I'LL GET THERE SOME DAY!

No seriously, I love reading, so as soon as I can read on a basic level I'll buy all the kids books I can hahaha. Then manga, then novels! <3