Very good. Never imagined what's happening in a book store's backyard. It was quite interesting to know how hard actually working in a book store is. Great prot as well. Loved it.
Way smarter, funnier and sillier in its meta approach to creation (writing), Japanese society (and businesses/corporate), relationships, bookstores... "新! 店長がバカすぎて" has Hayami in one of those touched-by-the-gods moments where nothing goes wrong. It is not perfect, but it is so much fun that you won't care.
The best: the humor and the stories within the stories that stories and...
The worst: some changes in pace are a little bit grating
Alternatives: read the first one, Shion Miura, or one of those quirky Japanese novels set on convenience stores, etc.
I suspected this might be the sequel but found no indication of such from the blub so I borrowed it anyway. Unsurprisingly, my suspicion was correct. Not having read the first book made the first 20% of the book much harder to understand as characters just keep popping up without any introduction. I didn't grasp the age/sex of some characters until almost the end of the book. What made it worse was since the title "tencho" or "ex-tencho" could be used for 2 different people, I had a hard time distinguishing who the MC is referring to. This certainly detracted from my enjoyment of the book. Whatever the author was trying to say about books and life and philosophical ideas, it all went over my head as perhaps the cultural difference between Japanese and my experience is far too great. I can say the book is interesting, but didn't instill any other feeling in me.