To give あたし彼女 some credit, it eventually evolves into more complete sentences I only read a few pages now and then when I'm waiting for a train and I have no Anki reviews due.

Here is the twitter 小説 compilation: http://www.amazon.co.jp/Twitter小説集-140字の...4887597509

Only 470yen used!

http://japaneseliterature.wordpress.com/...ed-to-you/

Title: Chain Mail: Addicted to You
Japanese Title: チェーン・メール―ずっとあなたとつながっていたい
Author: Ishizaki Hiroshi (石崎洋司)

Product Description
Four disillusioned Tokyo teenagers who have never met are suddenly drawn together by a mysterious chain mail message sent to their cell phones. In the tradition of classical Japanese tanka poetry, each teen takes on a role in the intriguing and absorbing narrative: the schoolgirl stalked by an older boy; her mysterious stalker; the schoolgirl's boyfriend; and the female detective. Written from each character's point of view, Chain Mail carries the reader on a suspenseful adventure juxtaposing teenage angst against a colorful Tokyo backdrop in an unforgettable tale that blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Richly plotted to play on the love young adults have for thrills and chills; not a single weak link binding it together.

Amazon Japan:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E3%83%81%E3%82%...623&sr=8-1

You can find lots of books with furigana. Go to (Japanese) Amazon and go to their teens section. In fact, that's where I bought my first books. I bought 3 books for 30 dollars with a whopping $30 shipping fee.

thanks i'll search those up now. But shipping for amazon is crazy........

Use kinokuniya!

In fairness to あたし彼女, the caveman style writing is intentional. It's a technique similar to the language change in Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, though the author's writing skill is far from the level of Nebula award winner. The gradual change is kind of subtle and difficult to notice if you're not used to the fake Tokyo dialect by a young girl from the countryside. Actually anti-あたし彼女 people often make fun of the extremely frequent use of みたいな, but the change in how and when the protagonist uses the phrase is one of the most interesting points of the story.

Also, it has another strong appeal to a certain type of audience, though explaining it would spoil the appeal to an extent. Oh, you say you already read 150+ pages, Jarvik? If you don't find it enjoyable yet, you're not the target audience.

The biggest problem is the author's amateurish writing. Also, it takes more than 50 pages for the novel's appeal to kick in when the introduction part is rather extreme, so a lot of readers drop it before it gets interesting. This is both a strong and weak point at the same time though.

Certainly it's not a story you'd want to reread. The author's writing doesn't meet the professional standards either. But if you fall into the target audience, it's at least enjoyable. And if you can also enjoy the slight change in the protagonist's language, it can be worth reading. Then again, it's not a novel I'd recommend. So...

I bought some novels recently, no furiagana of course. Here they are.:
I bought random books, that interest me, But I intend to buy japanese history books, books talking about samurai/ninjas as those generally interest me. And fantasy and of course more manga.

調査報道
秘境駅へ行こう！

have 3 more but feel lazy to input them.
all fiction.

Wasn't the last post made, like 3 months and 18 days ago?

Yeah, and apart from that, all he said was "i got books. but i'm too lazy to tell you what they are"

Dude, ta12121, I highly suggest starting a blog. A great number of your posts are just you posting about yourself, without regard to the discussion at hand.

Well to somewhat defend Ta in this instance. It was him who started the topic. And he was asking about what books he should look into. And now he's posting the books he in the end did purchase. So it does pertain to the topic.

arch9443, I agree that in this case, it does more or less pertain.

However, let's take a thread that you started asking some, in my opinion, good questions. Furigana oddities... And a Kanji Question

This is the response you get from Ta:

ta12121 Wrote:

Womacks23 Wrote:Iron Man movies had some fun furigana

戦略国土調停補強配備局 (S.H.I.E.L.D)

i could read all of that!!!!!!, but still stumbling on some readings here and there.
that was fun to read, I gotta read more kanji nowadays, feels awesome.

Yeah I'm not disagreeing with you when it comes to responses like that. I remember letting out a sigh the first time I saw that.

arch9443 Wrote:Yeah I'm not disagreeing with you when it comes to responses like that. I remember letting out a sigh the first time I saw that.

lol, sorry about that.

Asriel Wrote:Yeah, and apart from that, all he said was "i got books. but i'm too lazy to tell you what they are"

Dude, ta12121, I highly suggest starting a blog. A great number of your posts are just you posting about yourself, without regard to the discussion at hand.

I was thinking of starting a twitter account or something. Feels appropriate i guess

The kids' section at kinokuniya has some really easy stuff in anyone lives near one. The translation of Dear Dumb Diary even had furigana. I'm pretty sure they ship anywhere in the United States (Continental at least) for pretty cheap if you don't live near one.


Edit: Wait, Dear Dumb Diary is something else. It was some diary style book with a stick figure on the cover. I think it was made into a movie recently. Guess I haven't been keeping up with children's literature.

I'm not really into literature (I read like 5 books lol), but at least with japanese I want to start reading, because I enjoy so much reading the news lately that I want to try real books.

I'm intermediate level. I want to increase my reading and vocabulary skills.

Could you give any recommendations for my level? I don't really know what kind of books I'm into. If the story of the book takes place in japan than I think I wouldn't mind books with long descriptions and details. other than that I don't want to read depressive stuff, so please don't recommend things with many deaths and things like that.

I could try manga, but manga has so many onomatopeias that I don't understand that I get frustrated.


I'm going to buy something from BK1 soon, that's why I'm asking, please help. I want to order as soon as possible.

Thanks!

@CarolinaCG
I think Chobits would be an appropriate manga for you. It doesn't have tooo much onomatopeias.

And I'm reading Andersen's tales, they are one of the easiest free books that I have found, but quite hard as compared to chobits.

Asriel Wrote:Yeah, and apart from that, all he said was "i got books. but i'm too lazy to tell you what they are"

Dude, ta12121, I highly suggest starting a blog. A great number of your posts are just you posting about yourself, without regard to the discussion at hand.

I'm glad I'm not the only one, I'd like an "ignore this user" feature solely so that I don't have to read ta12121's posts but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be one.

CarolinaCG Wrote:I'm intermediate level. I want to increase my reading and vocabulary skills.

Could you give any recommendations for my level? I don't really know what kind of books I'm into. If the story of the book takes place in japan than I think I wouldn't mind books with long descriptions and details. other than that I don't want to read depressive stuff, so please don't recommend things with many deaths and things like that.

I started with Yoshimoto Banana; キッチン is I think the best of hers I've read. Generally a pretty easy read, dealing with people's everyday lives so you probably have a chunk of the vocab already. Or you could try うたかた／サンクチュアリ, which is two half-length stories and so might be easier to get through than a full novel (review here).

If you want something that's a bit more action and a bit less relationships, Akagawa Jirou writes (lots of!) mystery/suspense novels that are pretty easy to read; あなたも殺人犯になれる！ is one about a group of young girls on a "become a manga artist!" course who get mixed up with a murderer. There are deaths (obviously) but Akagawa's style is generally fairly light and it's not a depressive gorefest.

More generally, I'd suggest, if you can, ordering several different books; then if you find one you do like you can look for more by that author or in a similar genre. Conversely if you find a book hard to get into you can put it to one side for a bit and try another.

pm215 Wrote:I started with Yoshimoto Banana; キッチン is I think the best of hers I've read.

I second that.

Although I don't know how intermediate it is.

jettyke Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:I started with Yoshimoto Banana; キッチン is I think the best of hers I've read.

I second that.

Although I don't know how intermediate it is.

Mm, somebody pointed out in another thread that "intermediate" is nearly as slippery a word as "fluent" :-) I certainly read うたかた／サンクチュアリ when I was still studying for the JPLT2, if that helps, and I don't think キッチン is harder, just a bit longer. The amazon.co.jp page for キッチン has the look-inside feature enabled, so the OP can read the first few pages and decide.

キッチン seemed reasonable when I was at that sort of stage. It starts off with news of a death and probably has the most 擬態語 I've ever seen in one book though. As far as the plot goes, don't expect absolutely anything to happen, and you won't be disappointed.

I read a bunko called 陰日向に咲く around the same time that was a lot more interesting. I think it's been made into a film as well, which is always good to reinforce what you've learnt from reading. デスノート might be a manga worth trying, since it uses "proper" language, but in easily digestible コマ format, so you shouldn't have trouble with onomatopoeia, slang etc.

pm215 Wrote:

jettyke Wrote:

pm215 Wrote:I started with Yoshimoto Banana; キッチン is I think the best of hers I've read.

I second that.

Although I don't know how intermediate it is.

Mm, somebody pointed out in another thread that "intermediate" is nearly as slippery a word as "fluent" :-) I certainly read うたかた／サンクチュアリ when I was still studying for the JPLT2, if that helps, and I don't think キッチン is harder, just a bit longer. The amazon.co.jp page for キッチン has the look-inside feature enabled, so the OP can read the first few pages and decide.

I think this site explains "intermediate" very well
http://www.jlptbootcamp.com/category/n2/

JLPT 2 would be upper intermediate, and I think that Kitchen is of an upper intermed. level.

EDIT:

JLPT 5 Beginner/rookie
JLPT 4 Basic
JLPT 3 Intermediate
JLPT 2 Upper intermediate
JLPT 1 Advanced

Thanks for the suggestions!

I ordered うたかた／サンクチュアリ. For now I will only buy this one, if it all goes well and I get hooked then I'll start reading more stuff

(Btw, the other stuff I ordered was unicom's 2kyuu vocab/kanji and dokkai books.)



Can't wait to start reading yoshimoto

fakewookie Wrote:

Asriel Wrote:Yeah, and apart from that, all he said was "i got books. but i'm too lazy to tell you what they are"

Dude, ta12121, I highly suggest starting a blog. A great number of your posts are just you posting about yourself, without regard to the discussion at hand.

I'm glad I'm not the only one, I'd like an "ignore this user" feature solely so that I don't have to read ta12121's posts but unfortunately there doesn't seem to be one.

sorry if I come off a boasting my ability but I still suck, so I'm sure it's alright posting my progress here and there.

If I did come off as boasting my skills, then I'm sorry.