The difficulty ranking system used on their site has been amazingly effective for me at gaging level-appropriate reading material. I can’t get enough of it. There is a lot of data (ratings/rankings) available for the most popular series that learners use, beginner/intermediate-level light novels and manga, etc. …But when it comes to less popular series or more difficult material, the algorithm often just doesn’t have enough data to give a proper ranking yet. Also, I find that even when people do rank a more difficult book, they often don’t leave a review which is disappointing. 🙁
If you don’t know how this site works, the difficulty levels aren’t just an arbitrary number that users select. Instead, **users simply compare any two books that they’ve read** at a time – you select which book is more difficult than the other, or decide that both books are around the same difficulty. The system will then do the rest of the work by compiling hundreds of comparisons to create a ranked hierarchy, which is expressed in levels. The more books a single user has read, the more that person can contribute to an accurate overall hierarchy.
In addition, they’ve provided a rough estimate as to which JLPT level a book might be considered a good challenge for, which I’ve personally found to be accurate (knowing that even if you have passed that jlpt level, you will still need to supplement additional vocabulary, as always).
Levels 0-12\~JLPT N5
Levels 13-19\~JLPT N4
Levels 20-26\~JLPT N3
Levels 27-33\~JLPT N2
Levels 34-40\~JLPT N1
Levels 41+\~JLPT N1+
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I wanted to ask the more fluent readers out there… Do you use any website to track your books? Do you use this site? If not, is it missing something that you want? Do you use a different site??