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Olly Richards: Short Stories in Japanese for Intermediate Learners (2022, Hodder & Stoughton) 4 stars

An unmissable collection of eight unconventional and captivating short stories for young and adult learners …

Good book for learners

4 stars

The book contains a set of 8 short stories of different genres (SF, history, slice of life, fantasy, ...). Each story is structured in 3 chapters whereas the chapters contain a summary, vocab, and questions for reading comprehension (solutions are at the end of the book). It uses Furigana throughout the book for about 95% of the Kanji. For my taste, it was too much. Difficult words are marked in bold and are translated at the end of the chapter.

The stories were ok - but it was still engaging to read as you are exposed to different genres. I am at around N3, though I think the book is also appropriate for N4. The reading comprehension questions were good as they helped to enforce the understanding. Overall, good structure. I can recommend it.

@coucou@bookrastinating.com I'm really excited for the Genki readers to come out because it'll be vocab I definitely know at my level, and good practice for reading. In English I'm a speed reader and definitely look more at the shape of a word vs registering each letter. I'm so, SO far from being able to do that in Japanese. I need to remember to slow down, sound out each individual character.