I know most of you have read books that are translated into Japanese (from English or whatever language). Maybe you did it for the sheer pleasure of reading, maybe some of you intended it to help with your Japanese study.

Whatever the reason, I would love to hear your suggestions on some titles I could read in Japanese. I only read Harry Potter (because I am a fan) and I would love to read others. Thanks!

Hunger Games.

The Alchemist!

I second the Hunger Games. The story is good, and it seems to repeat a lot of the same vocabulary. Now if I can get past the hump where it takes me forever to mine a couple pages worth of vocab...
There's also *cough*Twilight*cough*. If you're a bit of a masochist, it's an entertaining series of books, and the vocab should be pretty simple. She just basically repeats how Edward is a 'marble Adonis' and how sparkly and dreamy he is. Simple!
Aoi Tori Bunko and Tsubasa Bunko also have a collection of English-language books. You could try Anne of Green Gables, Little Women, the Secret Garden, or Alice in Wonderland. Those books also have furigana if that helps at all.

Thanks for the suggestions!
So Hunger Games and The Alchemist. The classics would be good too. I've only read the first Twilight book and never finished it LOL. Maybe for the sake of learning Japanese, I will read the entire series!

Btw, I found an Anki deck on the Harry Potter vocabs for books 1 & 2. Really useful.

I ALWAYS wanted to read Sex and the City in Japanese. Haha .

Onara Wrote:I ALWAYS wanted to read Sex and the City in Japanese. Haha .

That's a book?

tashippy Wrote:

Onara Wrote:I ALWAYS wanted to read Sex and the City in Japanese. Haha .

That's a book?

Originally, yes, though the book that inspired the TV series isn't even the main link in wikipedia, nor on the first few pages of an amazon search... there is still some record that it's the original work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_the...%28book%29

Zorlee Wrote:The Alchemist!

Awesome book! Can't wait to try it in Japanese.

^ Yeah me too. When I read it in English, I used to write down quotes from the book. Will do that in Japanese too.

Sorry, a silly follow up question: have you gotten used to reading tategaki? I haven't. Even my Kanzen Master and other school reading texts are written horizontally. Reading tategaki for long periods gives me a headache. (So that being said, I haven't finished Harry Potter).

I think I'm starting to prefer it! If you lead with your finger, just remember to drag your finger along (or skip/bounce your finger for even faster reading with a little double hop at the end to finisht the line) the right side of the text. I learned when I was showing a line I was unsure about to someone that apparently the Japanese point to a sentence or word in tategaki from the right side of the line it's in