This week I read three* volumes of manga and started a new novel.

First up was 古見さん vol. 20, which I really enjoyed (they need to release these faster! seriously there are like six months of chapters that haven’t been collected yet). I think I picked up a bit of skiing-related vocab and that’s about it. I liked how they subverted the typical ski trip disaster and came up with something a bit fresher. Also Hitomi needs to be nerfed.

Next was ヨコハマ買い出し紀行 vol. 5. Still really good. It’s surprising how understated the “post-apocalyptic” elements are; it’s a real slow burn and I have a lot of respect for the way the storytelling and worldbuilding is done.

My last manga of the week was 罠ガール vol. 1 (I’ll actually finish it as I fall asleep tonight). It’s pretty interesting; set in a seemingly realistic 田舎町 and written by an actual farmer apparently. Each chapter has to do with trapping animals in various ways, and then (more often than not) actually killing and eating said animals. It’s definitely not the standard fare for a cute-girls-doing-cute-things manga so the incongruity was a little odd at first, but I’ll probably keep reading it at some point.

My next novel is 雷の季節の終わりに, which I’ve been wanting to read for a while. For some reason I had a really hard time getting started with it though…not sure if it’s just more difficult than I’m used to or if I’m still in a bit of a slump. I was planning to read it at a pace where I would finish it by the second week of April but I decided to slow down and take the whole month. Reducing my daily goal down to 8 pages helped me feel a little less overwhelmed and I actually ended up reading a little over, so hopefully that fixes things. I’m only about 55 pages in, but so far the worldbuilding is interesting and that’s the main appeal of a 恒川光太郎 book to me, so I’m looking forward to the rest of it.