Endless free stuff to read,
http://estar.jp/.pc/_novel_top
The 小説 section is also available on iPhone as a free app called ラノベ ; I haven't been able to find an equivalent android app.
I enjoyed the first volume of 白銀の鳳蝶 but haven't yet been back to finish the series. A little rough around the edges, and I definitely felt like some stuff at the very end was kind of forced in order to ’set up’ for where the author wanted to go for the second volume.
I read a good chunk of パラレル・アイランド and it was fun, kind of a spin on the Sword Art Online idea. It did however constantly bother me that the characters don't seem to take the risk of dying very seriously. Anyway, lost my bookmark on iPhone when I moved to Android and haven't gotten back to it.
京都寺町三条のホームズ is a great set of short stories, I want to recommend it without reservation. However, some stories will challenge your vocabulary pretty much no matter who you are. Each story is a 'mystery' of some kind to be solved. The main character is the son of an curio shop owner, and expert in all kinds of cultural history and artifacts which always ties into the solution to the mysteries. And as you can guess from the title it's all set in Kyoto, and the author includes lots of colorful detail.
The net result purely from a reader's perspective is a very compelling portrait of a segment of Japan that is quite different from the usual Tokyo neighborhoods. Without having been to Kyoto (or Japan at all) to know for sure, it -feels- very authentic when reading it, and as a reader of fiction that is what counts most.
From a student's perspective, well, it depends on how much you mind being exposed to obscure terms relating to cultural traditions and cultural artifacts that may be only passingly familiar even to many Japanese.
There are other good ones in there too, but being free amateur works, well, some are more amateur than others. If after ~20 pages you feel like a story is bad, it's probably not going to get better.
If anybody else has recommendations on estar books, I'd love to hear them.
Also I've been reading books on google play. Just finished 東森クリン子の冒険, which was a lot of fun. There's some free books (including all or most of 青空文庫, and also loss-leader first volumes for some series and stuff like that.) Searching books out is a pain though, I need to figure out some way to set my Android as a whole or Google Play in specific to be in Japanese because all the 'search by genre' stuff only gives me English results. Type a little Japanese text into the search bar and I can find stuff but only kind of at random.
Anyway, any recommendations on Google Play books I'd also love to hear.
Edited: 2015-11-06, 12:06 am