Light Novels

Can we have a light novel thread? What are you reading right now?

Last one i read was mondaijii, stopped at volume 6, some day i will finish it.

Decided to actually read Durarara after watching the full anime. Just finished the first volume. Not sure how I feel about what seems to be a common light novel tendency to switch between present and past tense on a whim.

This is the worst about light novels.

I have read welcome to the NHK. Its a great book but most lighnovels look like typical ya trash.

Suggest me some good light novels

Why don't you just read some japanese books if you don't like the LN style?

Jintai is decent. It does a much better job than the adaption.

It's not as common as you may think, though Durarara is definitely guilty of that.

Why wouldn't you just go to the one in /jp/?

Here are some-- David Garnett's Aspects of Love and Lady into Fox; Anthony Powell's Venusberg; Truman Capote's Grass Harp; Ronald Firbank's The Flower beneath the Foot; Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill; and any P.G. Wodehouse novel you can lay your hands on. Some women authors-- George Sand's The Haunted Pool; Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy Night; Collette's works esp. Cheri, Gigi, and the Claudette books. Last but not least, many of the books of Ivy Compton-Burnette. These are the first to come to mind. One more: Max Beerbohm's Zuleika Dobson.

>all these are literary, but light in the way I hope you mean

My god, I just read volume 3 chapter 2 of Ero Manga sensei. That scene holy shit, my heat was literally pounding.

Spoilers!


Emily just won my heart, the proposal, the story of her parents, how it all builds up, I felt like I was there in the forest at night watching the reflection of the fireflies in the water as she psudo proposed. The way she stumbled with talking normally instead of using her ojousama tone, just everything, just EVERYTHING. I want to marry Emily. I'm going to be soo mad when she doesn't win.

Please don't do this to me again Tsukasa Fushimi. NOT AGAIN! YAMEROOOOOOO!

Hakomari was alright

I read all of Spice & Wolf because I wanted to know what happened after I finished watching the show. This was back when I was like 17 though. It started off good but the end was such a cop-out it put me off reading any of the author's other stuff.

I've not read any other light novels, is there actually a small collection or series of light novels actually worth reading literary wise? The business model is interesting but they're always geared towards generating 20+ books like comics do to extract maximum $$$

If you can recommend any that are modern urban fantasy like Durarara but more competently written, I'd certainly be interested.

Youre wrong.

My sister paid for bizenghast. Real money.

what exactly is a "light novel"?

Coiling Dragon is a pretty interesting insight of how it's like to be a complete psychopath.

A normal 300-500 page novel split up into smaller 50-100 page increments, generating more money. What tends to happen though is they just keep going with a series until they've bled it dry of all content after going through 20-30 books.

They're basically literature versions of comics

It depends on what you mean by small, but I have always liked Kino no Tabi and Jinrui. The later only applies if you can read Japanese. Only the first volume of Kino was ever officially published in the west. You will have to pirate or import the rest of the volumes of both series if you want to read them.

Go here

LNs are not literature and they are the bottom tier trash even among otaku media.

What irks me is weebs scramble over each other to be the first one to translate the trashiest light novel that came out but won't touch the vast library of literary essays and other work of Japanese masters like Mishima that will never be published in english

Learn Japanese yourself then.

Yeah, it's shameful. But really, Japanese light novels are pretty much their version of YA shit. It's no surpirse weebs would gobble this crap up.

Also, OP, post this shit in /jp/ from now on, please.

Most of those weebs have nowhere near the knowledge the understand and translate the difficult language of literary works.

>wanting to read a shitty translation from a weeaboo struggling to comprehend concepts they'd never even entertain in english nevermind japanese

And the people who do don't waste their time on LN trash but go into translation business to Japanese companies or serious publishers.

>wasting years to master a language that's useless unless you have a specific job in store for you
>wasting years on the retarded kanji system

Nah I'd rather learn literally any European language, even Russian has a sensible alphabet.

That's too hard :^( It's more a complaint of Otaku's having no taste really. I'd tolerate shitty translation over nothing

LNs are pretty simple as far as the language goes and are easy to translate as a result. It helps that they are put out like comic books so they can be translated in bite sized chunks. There are tons of official translations to other languages as well, so you see Chinamen translating LNs from Chinese. Few of these guys would be competent to the point where they could give those essays what they deserve.

I'd rather they spent their energy on translating more visual novels myself.

I agree with you.
Every LN I've ever read has been absolute garbage whereas every VN I've ever read was hit or miss (mostly miss). At least VNs have the potential to be decent.

Is NHK a light novel or just a regular novel?

I think that the real hurdle for VN translations is the hacking aspect. Translating anything else uses standardized tools.

Youjo Senki, Overlord, Goblin Slayer

All pretty great one problem I have with japanese Media is forgetting characters names because they aren't easily to remember.

inb4 muh pleb

go to /jp/

LNs are anime in book form, that's why people consume them. In theory, you could have well-written LNs, but I imagine people who were raised on anime, manga and related otaku culture are unlikely to cultivate the writing skills needed to make something with literary value. Even then, it would be literary but with an anime feel, if that makes sense.

almost everything considered good is translated or expected to be.

The American code translators in WW2 learned Japanese in two weeks. If burgers in the 40s could do it, what's your excuse?

I still don't see any Jintai translation on the horizon. There is a lot in the way of decent LNs, and especially VNs that have no imminent translation, much less a complete one.

Is all in japanese ;_;

How bad of a cop-out is it? Is it still worth it to read Spice and Wolf assuming I'm the kind of person who would post on Veeky Forums and/a/?

You obviously have never read Sca-ji.

>Mishima
The writing of some loser that was soo butt hurt that he killed himself after a laughable 4 man coup. Even the Japanese knew they were brain washed by the imperial family, no one wanted to go back to that garbage.

>Be free
>nah I'd rather be a slave to a king

Subahibi is at least getting translated in our life times, right?

You think Sca-ji's beautiful prose and poems will be replicated by some no name fan translator? Might as well not read it.