General Reading Recommendation Thread (Not Series License Requests)
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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. 😁
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@Mimiga
Of my recommendations, only Tearmoon is a LN, the others are fantasy. -
@Mimiga I can heartily recommend the Liaden novels. But, read them in the publishing order. ;)
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I second the recommendation of Tearmoon Empire, particularly if you are looking for a LN that is well written; it has the most creative use of language and the best turns of phrase I have ever seen in a LN and like Bookworm the world gets deeper as the story goes on.
It is my favorite series here and is a comedic delight
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Ah, that was great but more an intermission than anything else, and it has left me hungering for more.
Can anyone recommend similar series? I've tried going through J-Novel's catalog, but it's chock-full of crappy fan fiction that somehow got published. This and Bookworm are the only two I know that:
- don't take themselves too seriously;
- have the decency to at least try hiding the wish fulfillment behind fun characters and an engaging plot.
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@verified_tinker said in Min-Maxing My TRPG Build Vol. 7:
Ah, that was great but more an intermission than anything else, and it has left me hungering for more.
Can anyone recommend similar series? I've tried going through J-Novel's catalog, but it's chock-full of crappy fan fiction that somehow got published. This and Bookworm are the only two I know that:
- don't take themselves too seriously;
- have the decency to at least try hiding the wish fulfillment behind fun characters and an engaging plot.
I recommend: Tearmoon Empire, Sometimes Even Reality Is a Lie (manga, contemporary setting), Apothecary Diaries, Altina the Sword Princess, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! (A.K.A. Bakarina. Triggered an entire subgenre. In my opinion, went from brilliant to meh after the primary plot arc finished in vol 3.)
Dahlia in Bloom didn't quite hold my attention, but others like it, and it fits your criteria.
The Scholomance series is brilliant and has a light novel sort of flavour, but is English language original, and not on JNC.
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@Libri-Liberorum Thanks for the list! I did go through a few volumes of Apothecary Diaries and Dahlia in Bloom, but as you said, they were too plotless to hold my attention. Tearmoon Empire was fun, and so was Bakarina, but not quite what I'd been looking for. I recall taking a peek at the Deadly Education because I enjoyed another of Novik's books but didn't keep going. Will give it another try, though.
As for Sometimes Reality Is a Lie and Altina the Sword Princess, I've never heard of them. I'll give 'em a look.
Thanks again.
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Wondering if anyone has series recommendations for isekai'd or fantasy that MC deals with gods of their world, challenging them, becoming one etc.
Without specifically getting into titles that I've been reading that dabble in those themes due to spoilers, it's a theme that has given me more interest than others and curious what sort of stories might be on jnc or other places.
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@Asthma_Queen well the only thing that comes to mind right now is
