What's the American equivalent of a light novel?

What's the American equivalent of a light novel?

/r9k/

Comic books.

Teen Drama

Those books you get at airports, or that get donated to charity shops after dead old lady house clearance.

The English translation.

YA

specifically the yearly installment distopian ya series

There are none. A light novel is just a novel with illustration accompaniments for 'important' scenes.

They are kind of shit honestly. When you read LNs you'll build up a nice picture of what a passage looks like in your head, then flip the page and get a canonized version made by some half-bit artist.

i dont think there is such a thing in written form, since the pace of american life is too fast to include a written form. maybe the 30min sitcoms of tv would be the equivalent idk.

I believe the reason that anime and manga are so popular is because there isn't an american equivalent.

Isn't Welcome to NHK not a light novel?

John Green

It was a light novel that got adapted into an anime and manga. I own the English translation. There aren't enough official American releases of light novels, and that really bothers me. I'd be much more interested in buying them than the manga.

the novel

Not a fan of LNs, but that shit is heavy. Made me sad as fuck, great story, prose is good enough, a little repetitive at times

i was able to get a copy too. is it really worth reading though? i was thinking of keeping it as is and not hurt the spine and just sell it. never read more than a page because the prose was god awful

The prose isn't great, but it's a good story, it'll give you the feels

there's no illustrations in the novel.

Trainspotting, or most Bret Easton Ellis books that feature new adult protagonists

Game of Thrones is marketed as a light novel in Japan.
Has pretty GOAT covers, desu.

Probably YA

Light Novel is not a very rigid category, it's more of a marketing term than an actual genre or medium. Not that it really matters since NHK is the only one of the many I've read that wasn't shit.

I still want to hate fuck misaki.

It's not a light novel. It was a novel that got a anime adaptation which then got a release that made it look more like a light novel because that's the market for anime.

Light Novels originated from japanese pulp magazines, which tried to imitate the american ones. Later (around the 70s) they added pictures, mostly in the typical manga-style. In the 90s the darker, hardboiled-detective style got popular again with stuff like Garden of Sinners and Boogiepop (although there are not many detectives in those stories, they imitate many detetives, there are lots of elements of american pulp fiction again). With the success of Haruhi Suzumiya, Light Novels effectively became otaku bait, except for some things like Kino's Journey, Welcome to the NHK and All you need is Kill. Some novels like Teito Monogatari are also considered prototypes of today's LNs.

So Pulp Fiction is the american equivalent to Light Novels. That's what I wanted to say.