So I recently entered a period of hard-core reading and it got me wondering about which kind of book would be ideal for immersion.
I mean, while I used to read only manga/light novels for immersion, I thought it might be a good challenge to start reading actual literature. Thus, I read my first Murakami novel. Even though he has the reputation of being among the easiest authors to read in Japanese, it was much more challenging than the light novels I used to read. I feel like at the end, my abilities to understand had progressed a lot.
Thus, I chose to follow up by reading Osamu Dazai. It is much more difficult than Murakami but I feel like I'm getting used to his style. However, I'm also doubting the usefulness of reading such an author for my immersion. As a matter of fact, this book is filled with vocabulary and grammar that seem like they would unnatural in modern conversational Japanese. Thus, I'm wondering if knowing all this stuff will actually be helpful to improve my fluency. Like, sure, those are fun insights to know about, but shouldn't I focus on mastering to the perfection more down to earth language before moving on to that type of stuff.
Hence comes my question: do you guys believe that reading light novels would be better for my immersion? Because as they are closer to the modern Japanese language, and my level of comprehension of them is higher than for literary books, maybe they could help me more. However, I also feel like reading challenging stuff can be difficult at first, but in the end it can also actually increase your level of comprehension. I used to struggle at the beginning of my Murakami novel but I stuck through it and at the end I could understand without that much effort/dictionary use what was going on.
by GibonDuGigroin