I'll expand on what @Lily-Garden said here and one non-light novel. I'm assuming a big draw for you is good world building.

Dahlia in Bloom: Crafting a Fresh Start with Magical Tools
As the series progresses we're learning bits and pieces about how the society in which Dahlia lives functions. A lot of it is, fittingly, focused on industry and commerce as Dahlia becomes and independent business woman and craftsperson. She has to deal with issues like securing a supply chain for goods only harvest-able from monsters and the increasingly severe socio-political ramifications of her inventions. Much like Myne people recognize the value of her innovations and the world is responding accordingly. With so few volumes under its belt it's hard to judge if this world building is going to be as thorough as Bookworm's is but I think it could proudly claim to be an adequate peer.

Min-Maxing My TRPG Build in Another World
While the world building in this series is great its strongest point is its cast of characters. Erich, the lead, isn't a generic protag-kun isekai cutout. He has a distinct personality, responds to situations with vibrant emotion, is keenly self and socially aware, and rambles on about the minutiae in an endearing way if you're the type that can handle a complex, meandering prose. A word of warning: in addition to being the author's love letter to table top gaming it's a vehicle where the author gets to profess their adoration for "step on me" monster girls. Its fetish fuel is not an insignificant component. Also if you're an arachnophobe you might struggle as the designated childhood friend is half spider.

And for my non-light novel recommendation we have:

Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder (Part 1 of the Virga series)
A steampunk sci-fi series set inside a fullerene dysonsphere where cities generate artificial gravity via centripetal force and the interior is lit up by small artificial suns. Whereas Bookworm excels at micro-world building this series excels on it at a shallower macro scale. Being a series of essential adventure stories we get a taste of numerous locations and each one is expanded upon just enough to feel worth your time and each polity seen makes sense within the context of the unique physics of the world. It also does an excellent job building a meta-arc by dropping hints about Virga's place within the greater universe, outside the walls of its sphere.

The nice thing about stuff like the wiki and the primer is that they’re accessible to non-JNC-subscribing Bookworms, while forum threads are not. Which is fine for discussions/debates/random tidbits of info from Quof/etc., but for something like what you’re suggesting, I don’t know if the forums are the best place to organize all that info.

@ю-р-ktyyixo So, that fixes some issues with Damuel's potential future, since his brother "got the family"...

Already sent this to support, but I thought that I’d post it here, too:

Given that the printed version is out already, better late than never?

Reading version 1.1 via the “Books” app on an iPad.

At pg 82/271 - “we should be able to finish much quicker than last year” ->
“finish much more quickly than last year” reads/sounds better to me, especially
coming from Ferdinand.

At pg 90/271 - “the small feystones dotting its hilt” -> This is in reference to
Leidenschaft’s spear. I think of a sword having a hilt, but a spear having
a shaft.

At pg 115/271 - “That’ll give us less problems in the future, too.” -> “fewer problems”,
although I could see Sylvester not caring about grammar when he’s not in Aub
mode.

@loreamire-nhymryedel said in What happened to Giebe Joisontak?:

Is Viscount Joisontak and direct family get punished or all nobels in the giebe? Is the land now available to be gifted to a noble in Florencia's faction? Or does the map not change as it gets left to a distant relative with same name

His immediate family and his servants were executed I imagine. Who took over is a good question, one that will likely be answered in some way later.

Note however, that Joisontak is the name of the province actually, not necessarily the family name. Brigitte's family's name for instance is Ambros and Count Haldenzel's name is Gutheil. The province's name doesn't have to change just because another family took over. Only the aub's family name determines the name of the duchy, like when Eisenreich became Ehrenfest.

Well the poll wrapped up a few days ago and, as expected, 1st place goes to "when Schwartz and Weiss' outfits are changed". It was a surprisingly close contest with Hildebrand getting bored and visiting the library being in 2nd at only three votes less.

Philine being just the cutest at 3rd indicates that there is indeed a semblance of justice to the universe.

@thegrimlich and several seasons later there was a scene that involved a giant onigiri rolling down a hill and they couldn't limit themselves to changing the dialogue in a way that didn't make sense so they also edited every frame to replace the onigiri with a submarine sandwich. The sandwich about an axis perpindicular to the way you would expect a submarine sandwich to roll

@killerrin said in How do hidden rooms work?:

@anonymous0070 said in How do hidden rooms work?:

Person A registers room.
Person B is captured and locked in hidden room.
Person C re-registers room.
No body, no evidence.

DnD logic would specify that when the magic runs out, anything inside the room that doesn't originate from the same spell is forcible tossed and piled out the front door. Which can lead to some hilarious shenanigans when roleplaying.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's a similar situation here.

In the White Cat series, there's actually a being who oversees all the 'pocket dimensions' used as storage space.

When the individual a given storage space is registered to dies, effectively their 'access code' is retired, and that space becomes available for reuse.
When it does get reissued, the contents of the room are lost forever; they just go 'poof', as it were.
The storage spaces don't get reissued all that rapidly; there's a period of time where it exists with the items stashed in it prior to being reissued, and the entity overseeing all of this sometimes says, "This item is neat, I'm going to toss it into some random other person's space."
Thus, sometimes stuff just miraculously appears within your storage space.
She also sometimes goes, "Urk. I don't want this to go 'poof', but don't want to shuffle it randomly into an existing space just now," so adds it to the space she dwells within until the proper opportunity arises to gift it to someone specific who would appreciate it.

Something like that, anyway; it's a long time since I was reading that series, I really should pick up where I left off sometime.

Due to the one-week gap in Bookworm pre-pub I've continued my manga story reading, this time on Google Play (goodbye Comixology!).

My thoughts, reactions and observations from volumes 8 (AKA Part 2 Volume 1):

spoiler

@arghc
It follows someone else. it's extremely spoilery since it takes place after bookworm, so i'd suggest you not read it yet.

@pinkshinyrose said in As of P4V5, who do you think will be the next Aub Ehrenfest?:

However, if she gets picked up by another duchy, they may have enough leverage to negotiate access to the compression method based on their magic contracts with Rozemyne. Since Rozemyne would need permission from her Ehrenfest guardians to teach the compression method in her new duchy. The other duchy will likely try to keep any third parties out as well, so it would only spread to her new duchy and no further.

The contract only binds those who learn it, in no way does it bind who Rozemyne can teach it too. The approval process is separate to that, but she can teach people that her guardians don't approve of.

As to the OP, I think it's worth expanding to general printing/art related questions, since it's semi-related, and the old convo is ended.

@jon-mitchell said in Is bookworm the runaway hit on J-Novel Club?:

I think it is safe to say that AoB is the biggest 'breakout' hit among JNC's series- popular both with media-Japanophiles and also has a following outside of the anime/LN/manga fandom at large.

Bookworm definitely got me in to reading light novels, saw the anime at one point when looking for some inspiration in my own writing (rpgs and the like) and thought, hu that looks neat, hey the book is on Amazon, “I wonder what else the publisher does” and so I ended up here with a premium membership now reading like 6 or 7 series and any catchup that interests me when they come up. Im now a bookworm I guess.

@ineluki said in Family in Ehrenfest:

The most glaring hole in the 'Myne was brought up in the temple' story is the THIRD FLOOR of the temple.

If I may interject, I think that there are a ton of holes in the story - it wouldn't withstand any real scrutiny. But also, that one of the themes of the series is how little nobles know or care about commoners (or about the temple) and how large of a blind spot that can be.

@rahul-balaggan Sorry, guys; I just joined this forum this week (second week January 2022) and forgot that this thread was not specific to part 4 volume 5.

Apologies.

@brentru said in Why Bookworm is better then most webnovels lightnovels:

Honestly I said lightnovels/webnovels but there aren't many authors willing to just have their MC fail. If they do fail they always seem to have some caveat. Some secret information was gained. Some new macguffin is found.

I want to poke at this point a bit, as I think this misses things she is gaining.

First, while it may not be "secret" information, she is gaining information. Knowledge is an accretive process; we build off the prior state. But we often discount the steps involved more generally, and especially so when those steps are about winnowing back the possibilities of things that don't work.

Edison, in varying statements over decades, repeatedly pointed out that the thousands of failures he had in his experiments constituted evidence and experience that he could apply to later experiments. This is no less true with Myne failing with papyrus, then clay, then mokkan. She learned ways not to make those things; she also learned from the processes, both the parts that failed and the parts that worked, for when she made paper.

Second, and it's a bit of a stretch but I think it's worth it, is the value of the speedbump that failure represents in overcoming future challenges. When the story starts, she's a bedridden girl who can barely do anything. Each setback runs the risk of being an effectively insurmountable obstacle. However, every time she manages to not let it hold her back, she becomes stronger - both in the literal sense of being more physically capable (even if not by much) and more importantly in the metaphorical sense that each time she persists it motivates her a bit more to not give up next time.

Recently, another series also lauded for its worldbuilding, Mushoku Tensei, had a similar inflection point in the anime's final episode. The MC had a major setback at the end of the penultimate episode, but the final episode was about him overcoming that in exactly the way that his "loser" pre-isekai self would never have been able to. Part of that change was the positive impact of those around him, but a concrete part was also the changes he had gone through individually by facing smaller obstacles - some of which (like a person dying because of his poor decision) were clearly failures on their own - and becoming stronger and more confident for it.

What I think we're really talking about when we see series like bookworm get recognition for things such as a character having a loss that doesn't feel like a victory is that the character's growth more realistically mimics the kinds of little victories and losses, and the resulting gains in oneself that we don't always adequately recognize, that we in real life go through daily. When we see the big victories, a part of us can tell that it wouldn't have been possible without all the successes and failures that came prior, but when we look at those successes and failures individually we often lack the vision to see how it fits into the overall growth.

@kuali said in Why Bookworm is better then most webnovels lightnovels:

None of us will have a very satisfying diet if we just eat our favourite foodstuff on it's own for every meal. Indeed, we'd all get bored of eating only one thing pretty quickly. Then die of nutrient deficiency.

Try telling that to Ferdinand, who seems to have leaned in a bit too heavily on the consommé...

The Bookworm Fan Plushie Collection was a small production run organized by members of the western Bookworm fandom of three designs; Lessy, Schwartz, and Weiss. A total of 100 sets was made, making it one of the rarest Bookworm paraphernalia ever merchandised, however unofficial. Attempts to get a second production run have been stymied by how the person responsible for making them gets all glassy-eyed and insists, "Never again."
-On the Antics of the Bookworm Fandom - Western Edition