So... I randomly read this when I don't have anything I'm reading and since the author decided to bring up coffee... I decided to take a look at how they should have done it. Apparently the most likely reason for the extra bitter coffee is uneven grinding and the solution would have been to brew the whole beans sans grinding. If your curious you can see for yourself how to do it here: https://realgoodcoffeeco.com/blogs/realgoodblog/making-coffee-from-whole-beans-101

Why does this author even try to write in a harem when every attempt at creating an intimate scene is just bulldozed by a jealous rival storming it or a random monster encounter. We have zero reason to care about these relationships. This gag is super old. I don't want to read about some woman staring daggers at the main character because some other woman is trying to make progress. Instead of focusing on these character developments, we're just waiting for the moment to be ruined because the author has an unoriginal sense of humor and keeps reusing the same old gag so many other Japanese authors use. /rant

Thanks to all those commenting, it gives me the entertainment value of the book (in MST3K form) without having to actually read it :)

Oh god how I hate the whole "I, -insert name- yadda yadda yadda". That's the absolute worst part of first person perspective, it's an immediate immersion break. It just screams that he's knowingly talking to readers, and explaining to us who we are currently following. It feels totally unnatural.

I hope Ryuto isn't going to pull a Sekiya and distance himself from Runa to study. He should be aware it's not a really good move.
We didn't get to learn what are his dirty fantasies, but I still hope he's going to lose his virginity in the near future.

Currently on part 9, and it had an unusual amount of typos I noticed. Though nothing atrocious, the worst was only a wrong name being used. Eva instead of May.

Though in all fairness, it only made me read one sentence twice in order to clear the confusion, so no biggie. And I'm assuming most of them will be fixed by the time it gets released as a full volume.

But it did feel unusual because it's rare for there to be this many.

@LightningLeaf said in Young Lady Albert Vol. 7 Discussion!:

A wet nurse breastfeeds the baby, I would be astonished if either Alicia or Parfette could manage it.

Apparently wet nurse is sometimes just used to describe someone who takes care of a newborn baby, even though it's not what the term is supposed to mean. It might be a translation thing; maybe Japanese has a term for "moist nurse"?

@SalmonJones yeah I was kinda glad that the twins have been mostly silent though I do not mind when they are around and help out a bit as those interactions at least are a bit fun.

@Zubonjin I am elated. Thank you!

Finally have money for a subscription again. Not enough to get caught up on the series I was following before, though. Anyway, onto my commentary (spoiler-tagged since there’s a lot of it):

Been putting off reading this volume, even thinking of dropping the series, but really happy with how it turned out. Had a few late nights because I couldn't put my phone down.

With that being said, I don't think I'll be coming for more. Besides being uncomfortably pro-nobility, which it always was but it kinda escalated here, it's also falling more and more on that specifically Japanese style of humour where the same thing happens over and over and over again but it's supposed to be funny (and often the same thing is person A being horrible to person B and always getting away with it, or two people being horrible to each other in turn), something that I never managed to enjoy.

This is mostly due to a shift in the cast - Mary, Adi, Alicia, Patrick together are playful and silly. Mary, Adi, the twins and Roberto together tend a lot more towards mean, one-sided, and one-note.

E.g. Alicia glomping Mary is a constant, but it leads to different resolutions or new banter. Meanwhile, the twins secretly not being interested in taking over the house is a joke that always has the same resolution (Mary is too stupid to notice or gets distracted), felt old in the previous volume already, and was the most common joke in this volume too.

It's too repetitive for me. The joke of "it's a tourist brochure with a stern looking cover" alone got how many repeats, six? A dozen? More?

@Rahul-Balaggan So sorry for the trouble. Thank you for the quick response. You can just shove the comment aside with the rest. Hope you're having a good day. 😁

@kuali said in The Apothecary Diaries Vol. 11 Discussion!:

Jinshi and Rikuson sharing a father seems quite unlikely

More to the point, Rikuson being the emperor's son is physically impossible. Rikuson is 13 in this flashback, making him 30 in present day, 9 years older than Jinshi. The emperor had Jinshi when he was 16. 9 years before that, the emperor would have been 7.

@kuali said in Taking My Reincarnation One Step at a Time Vol 5. Discussion!:

From everyone's expressions on the front cover, I can only assume that Sara's outfit is the result of Nelly winning a bet against her, and taking the opportunity to extract revenge for the time Sara forced her to join in with the clothes shopping...

And instead, it was a scene from, like, the second-to-last scene of the whole book.

I can't remember the last time I saw a LN cover doing a scene as specific as this - usually they're a lot more generic "here's the characters doing some poses on a vaguely related background".

I like the bucket

Am I the only one that thinks the mithral vein should be called McGuffin Mine?

Loved the butler's reaction when Bruno made him come along. Now I'm waiting for the almost inevitable gaff of the butler calling him "Young Liam" or "Young Master" purely out of habit.

So as of part 4, the villainess and the heroine are both shipping each other with the prince. Which of them will succeed, or will they just end up going Yuri?

Part 8, right after saying that the prince is emboldened by a girl playing hard to get, she plays hard to get.

I often tell to myself that the only real differences between me at 15 years old and me at 45 is that now I have a car instead of a bicycle and I wake up to go to work instead of school. So I can totally relate with Yuki not seeing himself mature enough to form a family and raising a kid. Now he gained more confidence and the family is going to expand in the future...we'll see how the little girls will adapt to a new role as big sisters.
Speaking of expanding families, I hope the author won't make us wait too long before having Leila becoming a wife.

@LightningLeaf said in Villainess Level 99 Act 5 Discussion!:

@Pieta
If you like funny things, you should read Two-bit Baddie too.

Thanks, it's on the list, but I only pick them up when they're complete.
Between here and webtoon I'm always in the middle of several dozens stories and it's sometimes getting hard keeping them apart, so doing them in volume-sized instead of chapter-sized chunks helps. :D