世にも奇妙な商品カタログ 1 インスタント死神・友だちクジ他

Good choice for a first book but...

First off: I picked this LN as the first (non-manga) book to read in japanese, kind of as a test to see if I'm ready for this kind of material. And I think it was a decent choice for that.

Due to this being a children's book the grammar and writing style are easy and straightforward. There's no long metaphors or unusual kanji usage (and since this is a Tsubasa bunko there's furigana anyway). So language learning wise this is really helpful, especially if you want a chill first read, just looking up a word here and there.

Speaking solely as a reader, not as a learner, though, I sometimes had trouble keeping my motivation up to finish this. This is likely because I'm really not the target audience of this book (and that's fine). The short stories were still fun overall, but it often dragged on quite a bit, though that feeling was also enhanced by the writing being quite repetitive at times.

I would recommend this to people who want to test the waters of native material outside of manga, or anyone who likes odd stories and isn't bothered by reading something intended for younger audiences and the at times monotonous prose.