I’m living in Japan and have recently been going to my local library and checking out books to do more input studying but there are so many books I don’t know where to begin. I’m hoping to build vocabulary through input in a more relaxed way, so my ideal book is something of moderate difficulty and relatively short (100 – 200 pages). I also prefer more realistic fiction as opposed to fantasy settings because I’m trying to make my Japanese sound more natural.
For reference I found 魔女の宅急便 to be a bit easy and recently have read 花のベッドで昼寝して and レキシントンの幽霊 and thought those were a good level of difficulty for me. Does anyone have any recommendations for novels.
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These were my highlights of 2022: https://dokushoclub.com/2022/12/27/top-japanese-books-of-2022-my-highlights/
I can honestly recommend them all to intermediate to advanced readers. All of them except for my number 1 are also on the shorter side.
I like the recommendations u/dokushoclub offered quite a bit.
I’d also like to suggest that if you’re still in the relative early stages of breaking into reading Japanese, short stories are always a great option.
When I was just starting out, I devoured pretty much every short story collection I could by both 村上春樹 and 筒井康隆 and can’t recommend them highly enough. 飛浩隆 is another great science fiction author, though his works may present somewhat more of a challenge.
Look up https://learnnatively.com/
Have you tried looking up Japanese translations of popular English novels?
キノの旅 is a great set of short stories. It is an excellent N3 level book. And every story is in a different country/environment so it means the vocabulary changes from one chapter to the next.
and the stories make you think/reflect.