Part 1 Volume 1

This is the first volume of Ascendance of a Bookworm light novel series.

Synopsis
A certain college girl who's loved books ever since she was a little girl dies in an accident and is reborn in another world she knows nothing about. She is now Myne, the sickly five-year-old daughter of a poor soldier. To make things worse, the world she's been reborn in has a very low literacy rate and books mostly don't exist. She'd have to pay an enormous amount of money to buy one.

Characters
Characters are listed in order of appearance.

Contents

 * Prologue
 * Chapter 1: A New Life
 * Chapter 2: Exploring My Home
 * Chapter 3: Exploring the City
 * Chapter 4: Books: Unobtainable
 * Chapter 5: Lifestyle Overhaul
 * Chapter 6: Neighborhood Boys
 * Chapter 7: Paper: Unobtainable
 * Chapter 8: Learning to Respect Egyptian Culture
 * Chapter 9: Winter Preparations
 * Chapter 10: Stone Slate Get!
 * Chapter 11: Beaten by Ancient Egyptians
 * Chapter 12: The Sweet Taste of Winter
 * Chapter 13: Helping out Otto
 * Chapter 14: Tuuli's Hair Ornament
 * Chapter 15: Bring Me to the Forest
 * Chapter 16: Long Live Mesopotamian Culture
 * Chapter 17: Clay Tablets Won't Work
 * Chapter 18: Tuuli's Baptism
 * Chapter 19: I Love You, Yellow River Culture
 * Chapter 20: I Want Ink
 * Chapter 21: Intense Battle with Food
 * Chapter 22: Mokkan and a Mysterious Fever
 * Chapter 23: The Road to a Meeting
 * Chapter 24: Meeting with the Merchant
 * Epilogue
 * A Day Without Myne
 * Unchanging Daily Life
 * Afterword

Summary
After Urano Motosu dies during an earthquake beneath a bookshelf, she reawakens inside the body of a girl called Myne in a different world as the daughter of a soldier and a dyer. Her new environment is less than spectacular, and she is forced to confront uncleanliness, an inability to communicate as she doesn't know all the words of the language, a weak and feverish body, the love of a new family that she doesn't know at all, and, worst of all, no access to any books. Though at first discouraged, she quickly regains her spirits upon seeing the world's written numbers and a book in a case as well as finding out that paper is too expensive and decides that she will make her own books and paper from scratch. She begins by organising her environment for cleanliness, inventing the “simple all-in-one-shampoo” from crushed fruits, avoiding more visits at the babysitter Gerda's place, and cleaning the bedroom from dust, dirt and cobwebs. However, thanks to winter preparations taking up a lot of her time, she is forced to lay aside her dream of making paper for the present importance of preparing for winter. She passes out during Pig Slaughtering Day and ends up at the gate, where Gunther's subordinate, Otto (a former traveling merchant), gives her a slate and shows her how to write her name. The first task is to make paper, and the first try features papyrus. When, during the winter, she finally begins, she finds out that it isn't working and that she doesn't have the patience for it, so she gives up and helps her sister Tuuli to make baskets. In the spring, she plans to try the Mesopotamian tactics of clay tablets.

During a winter parue gathering, she is left at the gate again, and accidentally helps Otto with his financial mathematics work. Hesitantly, Otto asks for her help and she accepts, provided she is paid with slate pens for the slate Otto gave her earlier. Otto agrees, and also promises to teach her letters. As Tuuli's baptism is coming up in the summer, Myne also crochets her sister a hairpin. She also creates new food with the parue fruit and shares the recipe with her neighbours, Lutz's and Ralph's family, earning Lutz's eternal gratitude. Meanwhile Myne tries to persuade her family to let her go to the forest. She receives requirements she has to fulfil. So, she decides to get healthier and increase her stamina by walking to the gate to learn letters and her parents accept her plan. Though she is very slow, after three months she is finally ready to go to the forest. When spring arrives, she is finally allowed to go to the forest.Plan two, making clay tablets, begins. Lutz agrees to help her find clay and she begins making clay tablets and wrote a story on them. However, an unfortunate misunderstanding on unruly neighbour Fey's part ends with Fey destroying the tablets. Myne loses her temper. She tries again, but rain destroys them. The final try ends up with the tablets exploding in the oven, causing a huge mess and she has to give up on them.

After Tuuli's baptism, Myne receives a knife so she can go gathering in the forest for food and she decides the knife is better put to use by making mokkan. She cleans the chimney to gather soot and make writing utensils for the mokkan. She also agrees to set up a meeting between Otto and Lutz, who wishes to become a traveling merchant and creates more tasty foods. Unfortunately, Effa, her mother, mistakes her mokkan as firewood and burns them and Myne collapses, both due to illness and despair. She pulls through thanks to remembering the promise she made to Lutz. Finally, the big day has come, and after cleaning Lutz's hair and her own, they go to the meeting. Otto swiftly destroys Lutz's dreams of a traveling merchant while offering an alternative: becoming a merchant. Benno, Otto's friend and a successful merchant asks Lutz what he wants to do as a merchant. Lutz quakes in his feet but pulls through thanks to Myne, who offers him the opportunity to help make and then sell the things she makes. Benno is only slightly impressed, and Myne offers him plant paper as a way for Lutz (and herself) to get the apprenticeship. Benno agrees to the provisional apprenticeship, as he sees the business opportunity of plant paper.

Adaptation Notes
Differences from the original web novels: