General Reading Recommendation Thread (Not Series License Requests)
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@Shenrai said in General Reading Recommendation Thread (Not Series License Requests):
Hello again! I was hoping to get some recommendations on any romcoms. My main requirements are that there shouldn't be any form of harems involved, and that the MC should actually be tolerable. I am primarily avoiding those that self deprecate themselves constantly, and are always amazed that someone could even fall for them in any way, shape, or form. Its just frustrating. Thanks for all your time.
I'll repeat this one:
JNC's Why Shouldn’t a Detestable Demon Lord Fall in Love?! is complete at four volumes and the sweetness will give you cavities and/or diabetes.
and add:
JNC's How to Love Your Elf Bride has an MC who isn't self-deprecating, he's just painfully innocent about romance. There are some fun running gags about the couple's childhoods that I won't spoil. (Note: the original title is ...Slave Elf Bride, but he never treats her as one. This is 100% not the isekai trope of "good master" and it isn't an isekai.)
JNC's Welcome to Japan Ms. Elf is another sweet one but with more adventure than Detestable Demon Lord.
JNC gave this one the harem tag, but it really is not. Harem fans would be shaking their fists at the false advertising ;) : Now I'm a Demon Lord! Happily Ever After with Monster Girls in My Dungeon
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@Shenrai Tales of Marielle Clarac has a female MC who sees herself as plain and a bit of a wallflower but actively leans into those traits to take full advantage of them. She is a noblewoman who is secretly a novelist so her response to other nobles being nasty is "Great! I could use this in my novels!" She is a woman of action and self-assured with full confidence in herself
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Hey,
Would appreciate everyone’s help. I’m looking for a light novels with an elf as the main protagonist. Elf or High Elf MC, please. I’ve read In the Land of Leadale and Enough with This Slow Life! I Was Reincarnated as a High Elf and Now I'm Bored. Thanks!
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@nohashtag The main perspective character in To Another World... With Land Mines! is technically an elf, but it's not very relevant to most of the story.
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@nohashtag - This is a spoiler since it doesn't come up until volume 4?, but the MC of
and the series has an ongoing focus on elven society.
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@nohashtag said in General Reading Recommendation Thread (Not Series License Requests):
Hey,
Would appreciate everyone’s help. I’m looking for a light novels with an elf as the main protagonist. Elf or High Elf MC, please. I’ve read In the Land of Leadale and Enough with This Slow Life! I Was Reincarnated as a High Elf and Now I'm Bored. Thanks!
Are you looking for a specific book you remember from the past that you don't remember the title of and want to find again? Or just looking for stuff covering that topic? If the former, a little more info about any plot you remember might be helpful.
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@pcj I’m looking for recommendations. Sorry if I wasn’t clear enough.
@myskaros I love Land Mines! I hope we meet more elves.
@HarmlessDave I’ve watched the anime and tried this but sadly wasn’t for me. Thanks so much though!
Finding novels with elves as the main protagonists is hard. Honestly, this is Enough with This Slow Life! I Was Reincarnated as a High Elf and Now I'm Bored fault.
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@nohashtag - it's western fantasy not a LN, but C. J. Cherryh's The Dreaming Tree is good (originally published as The Dreamstone and The Tree of Swords and Jewels).
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@Shenrai it’s not JNC, but the 10 volume Toradora! is the best romcom not just in light novels, but in all of romcoms (and my wife loves romcoms so I see quite a few). Such great characters! So many heart warming moments, so many laughs, so many tears! No harems either. Plus it has what few light novels do, a brilliantly executed definitive ending.
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I reading so you want to live the slow life? a guide to life in the beastly wilds. I am also reading Expedition Cooking with the Enoch Royal Knights, Vol. 1
I be buying Wild game soon but what else is there?
I would like to tress that Expedition way to handle romance is been pretty annoying to me. Which is weird since I tend to enjoy all kinds of romance. So light novel that does the same with food but not the romance would be great. The slow life remind me lot of Spice And Wolf. So been really enjoyable. Any like this one would be welcomed. -
@JRPG-Nation - I've enjoyed the first 4 volumes of Since I Was Abandoned After Reincarnating, I Will Cook With My Fluffy Friends and am looking forward to volume 5 next month.
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@HarmlessDave That look very interesting. Is it chill series or more serious one? Either it look very appealing to me
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I hope I'm not out of line here, but I wanted to recommend a non-Japanese work that currently sits at two books. It's by, I think, a Canadian author and is an isekai into a China analog where you can gain a huge amount of power through meditation or by consuming pills derived from ingredients filled with Qi.
The MC is an adult who falls into the body of a failure of a monk who has been beaten to death by a higher level monk in his sect. He promptly decides that this is an awful place, packs up, and heads for the place with the least available Qi to become a farmer.
It's basically about good people learning and growing and is overall pretty cheerful with some good world building and character growth.
The title is Beware of Chicken. Which sounds ridiculous, but I figure people who read light novels aren't likely to be put off by ridiculous titles.
I'd love to create a discussion thread about it if that would be okay even though it's got nothing to do with Japan.
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@JRPG-Nation said in General Reading Recommendation Thread (Not Series License Requests):
@HarmlessDave That look very interesting. Is it chill series or more serious one? Either it look very appealing to me
It’s chill, the romance is nicely done, and the promised fluffy friends are there.
There is a little drama at the start to set things up but it’s over quickly and doesn’t return. If you get a sample chapter to read it might give you the idea this is a "villainess" story but it really is not.
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@LightningLeaf said in General Reading Recommendation Thread (Not Series License Requests):
The title is Beware of Chicken
It is great on Audio as well.
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@Mimiga I literally didn't like light novels before Bookworm. Couldn't stand them. Still don't enjoy 98%. But I was converted readily, and Bookworm has cemented itself in my top ten favorite stories ever lol.
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@Mimiga Pretty please list those josei masterpieces for us? I need to have something on deck for when the eventual end of Bookworm leaves a hole in my heart.
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@Mimiga
You might enjoy Tearmoon on this site, which also has an unreliable narrator driven to improve her country, because she knows she will die if she doesn't. It doesn't have quite the depth that Bookworm does, but the heroine is spunky and good hearted. There's no harem, she's pretty devoted to her guy once she settles on him. She can still appreciate a handsome fella but she remains sincerely attached. There is a lot of friends and companions and some basic politics.For more English language novels I mostly know older stuff. The first five Amber books, Brust's Dragaera books, Andre Norton's Witchworld books, The Bridge of Birds, Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, the Discworld books. Those are plenty to start.
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@Mimiga
I would also recommend the Liaden Universe books by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Andre Norton has classic style and her Witchworld books are well worth it. There are actually quite of few classic sci-fi authors. I will admit this is my first LN that I read and it remains my favorite. So many options for further spin-offs, and the characters that would each have their own series. I hope that this world continues, either past or future timelines would be fine by me. -
@LightningLeaf Thanks for the recommendations! I'll go take a look. I'm not actually really particular about genre, it's the writing that really, really gets to me and it just seems to me that josei are written with more care.
It's just that a lot of LNs here are written so pretentiously, as if they intentionally used the most pompous words they could find despite it not fitting the dialogue as if the author wanted to show off their vocabulary by channeling Shakespeare, random British terms are inserted when the story is mostly in American English as if they just chose a random synonym without thinking if it fit the speech, the random switching of narrative perspective back and forth as if the author didn't know the difference between first, second, and third-person perspectives, the lazy exposition when characters just tell you stuff via dialogue when it could've as easily been told in an immersive way through narrative, my pet peeve when characters just randomly break the fourth wall to talk to the reader directly for no reason, among other gripes. It just really seems to me that the vast majority of LN authors don't understand what immersion is or that it's the point of telling stories.
@DNADame said in Bookworm Part 5 Vol. 4 Discussion!:
@Mimiga
I would also recommend the Liaden Universe books by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. Andre Norton has classic style and her Witchworld books are well worth it. There are actually quite of few classic sci-fi authors. I will admit this is my first LN that I read and it remains my favorite. So many options for further spin-offs, and the characters that would each have their own series. I hope that this world continues, either past or future timelines would be fine by me.Thanks for the recommendations, too, but I'm all good on English fiction recs. I haven't read Liaden as I just can't get into scifi but the fantasy elements do intrigue me so I do have that on my list to try. 😁
