Snippet from the third Marimite novel on light novels
A sort of companion to Okazu's recent post on light novels.

This is from Maria-sama ga Miteru: Ibara no Mori by Konno Oyuki. The translation was done by me.

My favorite part is where Yumi compares Tsutako to a snowball rolling down a hill, but there are some other nice moments in there too. :)

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"This is it!"
The bookshelf Tsutako suddenly stopped in front of was packed with paperbacks. Yumi was reminded once more that bookshelves differed in things like depth and height depending on the size of the books they held. The difference in size between the bookshelf holding encyclopedias, its massive bulk fixed against a wall, and the one holding paperbacks was akin to that of a sumo wrestler and a newborn baby.
"The book you saw was something like this, right, Yumi-san?"
Looking at the book Tsutako-san had casually plucked from the shelf, Yumi nodded firmly. The cover was beautiful: it was adorned with a pale pink flower pattern that was nothing short of striking.
"Wow, Tsutako-san. You saw the title?"
"...How could I have? Even with my glasses, my eyesight is only X/7 for both eyes."
Indeed. It wasn't like her trademark glasses were just for show, after all.
Answering Yumi's question of "Then, why?", Tsutako-san pulled two more books off the same shelf and handed them to Yumi, saying "Here."
"Oh?"
They all looked like the book she'd seen Katsura-san with, but when she took a closer look, she saw that the titles were all different.
"They all have the same cover?"
"I think they make them in about four different colors. You really didn't know?"
"No."
"They're put out by Cosmos Bunko. It's a little surprising that an ordinary high school girl like you wouldn't have heard of them."
Tsutako-san grinned at Yumi. Yumi wished Tsutako-san wouldn't look at her as though she were some rare species of animal Tsutako-san had just discovered.
Being ordinary just meant she didn't stand out much. Of course there were some areas she wasn't good with!
When she asked, Tsutako-san told her that Cosmos Bunko was a division of Kyuuteisha, a publishing company, that focused on shoujo shousetsu.
To be precise, the covers weren't all exactly the same: they were color-coded based on genre, with the possibilities being pink, yellow, blue, and white.
I always thought shoujo shousetsu usually had covers with pretty, manga-esque illustrations, but maybe I was wrong.
"Hey, Yumi-san. Do you want to know why Cosmos Bunko goes against the norm and doesn't go all-out with illustrations?"
Was Tsutako-san a mind-reader now?
"It's true that illustrations are important. They help to invigorate young girls' dreams."
"......."
Yumi thought to herself that Tsutako herself was around the age where she would be considered a "young girl." It was the sort of expression someone a decade or two her senior would use.
"And for girls who are reading these books for the first time, the illustrations serve as clues as to what the books are about, don't they? Even if they've never heard of the author, they might pick up a book if they have a good first impression of it based on the illustrations."
"Um...... Tsutako-san-"
The discussion had turned into a pretty technical one.
Because she had such a way with words, Tsutako-san tended to take a topic and run with it once she started in on it. The longer she went on, the more scope and momentum she gathered, like a snowball rolling down a hill.
"I understand that the cover illustrations are important," Yumi chimed in, barely managing to get that in before Tsutako-san could continue. She figured she should stop Tsutako-san now, while she had the chance.
"It isn't just the cover illustrations, it's the ones inside too. Here, look."
Tsutako-san flipped through the book, showing Yumi the contents.
Oh, no. She thought she'd managed to divert Tsutako-san from the topic, but it looked like she hadn't been successful-- the snowball seemed to be moving again.
"There are no illustrations inside either. Now, as to why..."
Roll, roll.
Yumi resigned herself to hearing out Tsutako-san's theory. She realized that her clumsy attempt had only ended up giving Tsutako-san a new topic to talk about. She was the one who'd brought up the new topic, so she couldn't just say she was hungry and cut off the conversation.
Tsutako-san's explanation was quite long, but the gist of it was that Cosmos Bunko put out shoujo shousetsu that were actually meant to be read by adults, or that they were trying to help out more mature girls or something similar.
Quite a few people read in front of other people, on commutes and during breaks and whatnot. But they didn't really want other people to know what they were reading. With an ordinary paperback, just a brief glance wouldn't be enough for someone to make out the title of a book, but with a shoujo shousetsu, full-page illustrations would pop up from time to time. The illustration might not necessarily let it slip to people what the book was about, but at the very least, it would let people know that the book was a shoujo shousetsu. And if the picture were one of two men engaged in a love scene, that would certainly be inconvenient.
And so Cosmos Bunko threw caution to the wind and cut the illustrations. Descriptions of a book's contents would be limited to the catch phrases printed on the mini sleeve covering the bottom part of the jacket and the summary printed on one of the inside sleeves of the jacket. Colors would be used to designate the different genres-- for example, the convention would be to use blue for boys' love works.
People who didn't know about Cosmos Bunko probably wouldn't even know about the difference in color of the covers, and most people probably wouldn't care if someone familiar with Cosmos Bunko recognized the type of book they were reading. If they did care, they could just put a different jacket on the book.
"......That's why I don't know what book Katsura-san was reading." After having digressed for quite a while, Tsutako finally brought the conversation back to its original topic.
With no illustrations or recognizable cover to go by, the only thing they could know about the book was that it had been put out by Cosmos Bunko.
...Geez. That was a really long explanation.
"But we do know that the book doesn't belong to Rosa Gigantea. She doesn't read novels."
"How did you know that?"
"There was an interview with her in the Lillian Kawaraban back in May or so. It said she doesn't read manga or novels very often."
"Hunh."
It had been soon after she entered the high school division. Since she hadn't been interested in anything but Sachiko-sama at the time, she had no memory at all of the article.
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