Session 4 and DONE
This is from my pre breakfast session in my final hours!
I started with a chapter from the mermaid and sea-themed series アビスアジュールの罪人 in Harta and then read more from セロ弾きのゴーシュ for the Aozora Advent challenge.
- 40 minutes, 26 pages of アビスアジュールの罪人 (Ch 4) from ハルタ (#81)
- 35 minutes, 2000 characters of セロ弾きのゴーシュ (Aozora)
Results
I read a lot more this time than in previous challenges. The timing was pretty good to fit more and longer sessions in, and this time I alternated between more sources and I feel like that increased my stamina and enthusiasm to keep going.
Total: 4 hours 22 min - 83 pages and 7800 characters from 5 sources: 
Harta 81, 
KKLC-GRS sets 6-7, 
ゴン狐 (Aozora), 
Desert Survival club, 
セロ弾きのゴーシュ (Aozora)
Nice job everyone who finished, and everyone else still reading, have fun! 
It was great to join and I love the atmosphere of everyone posting updates from all types of reading, from every place (or in between places @Malinkal) and seeing lots of people around that I haven’t seen in a while or from past clubs. It’s really fun to get a peak into everyone’s life and reading for one day 
Thanks for hosting @taiyousea and I was so stoked to see you joined team Slam Dunk!!
And @Akashelia omg how did you keep your eyes on the page that whole time 
Update 4 & ~Results~
Woke up so much earlier than expected this morning, so got a lot more reading that expected to. My timer beeped on the last sentence of ハクメイとミコチ chapter, which is pretty good timing.
| Name | Pages | Time (m) |
|---|---|---|
| 指先と恋々 Ch5 | 42 | 23 |
| こぐまのクーク | 17 | 15 |
桜井さんは気づいてほしい  |
60 | 10 |
| 安達としまむら Ch2 | 32 | 12 |
| 三ツ星カラーズ Ch10 | 16 | 7 |
| ダンジョン飯 Ch2 | 24 | 32 |
| ハクメイとミコチ Ch2 | 21 | 22 |
| Subtotal: | 212 | 121 |
| Total: | 623 | 509 |
指先と恋々
帰りたくなんてないよ - just thought this sentence interesting for how the なんて goes between the たくない.
逸臣 doing the shadowing I only heard of on this website. I tried it once and did not like it at all XD
Hmm, did not like him holding her head so she can see (and therefore can’t “hear”) him talk to the other guy.
安達としまむら
Hmm. “I dreamt I kissed my friend. Clearly this is just a sign that I want to be better friends with her, there’s no greater meaning to it.” Okay. Sure. If you say so.
優先されたい = want to be prioritised, first time I fully understood the conjugation without needing to mentally or physically work it out.
ハクメイとミコチ
So many details in the drawing of the city!
So, there is (was) a singing competition and the winner is being announced. Winner decided by votes. This コンジュ is the winner who entered, but ミコチ got the same number of votes despite not entering the competition.
Yikes she is not happy, I do not blame her. Tieing with someone who didn’t even enter the competition? Ouch.
Oh she’s even more pissed that ミコチ doesn’t want to have this attention. The frustration is palatable.
There are spirits of all the old tools people stopped using and were forgotten about, but the 歌姫 tradition is to sing to them during the festival, or at least they come to listen to the song.
Oh no, コンジュ wrecked her voice practicing too much. That’s gotta be mortifying.
Okay, the medicine jam ミコチ gave her has helped. コンジュ can’t speak in a high voice, but her singing voice is low so that’s not a problem! Hooray! And ミコチ has a high singing voice, so they could compliment each other well.
D’aw, it’s sweet that they have become friends.
My timer beeped on the last sentence of the wordy page at the end, I don’t think it’ll be a problem that I count it.
So, 623 pages in a minute under 8 and a half hours? That is a lot better than I was expecting, especially considering how little I’d been reading the past few months.
Last readathon I did (summer '25) I read 587 pages in 7hr56, and last winter was 231 pages in 5hr37. This isn’t a record as in spring I read for 8hr31, 2 minutes more than today, but only 418 pages.Unclear how much is due to choice of reading material, I did barely any prose this time and absolutely no 薬屋 which is a low page count high time one. I read 桜井さん as fast I could to get it over and done with (it’s just too horny for my taste, the less I have to look at the pictures the better) and that definitely bumped my page count way up.
But, also, I read for eight and a half hours despite having read so little recently? I can take a months long break, struggle to get back into reading and study in general, read literally 0 Japanese for over a week, then show up to the readathon and read for eight and a half hours? I’m feeling very competent. I can feel my ego swelling up by the minute XD
Update 5: Finish?
Time: 5:28
Pages: 100!!!
Had enough energy to rally for a few more pages of かわずや but now my brain is swimming. These pages were a lot simpler with less text per page, but lots of contractions, dropped particles, and idioms kept me working.
There’s a chance I’ll have some time tomorrow morning, but I think this might be the end for me. This was my first and I had a lot of fun. Thank you to @taiyousea for putting this together and to all of you for being inspiring!! I have so much yet to learn but it’s awesome to see so many people here reading at such a high level!!!
This is incredible. I don’t think I could read in English for that long!
Nice result @RebBlue ! I just saw we were editing the results post at the same time and I tried to discard my changes and close my edit window so we didn’t overwrite each other but it looks like it saved my results and I don’t see yours, maybe try again now!
Hmm, I see mine but not yours, lemme refresh
Update 2
More bacon this morning and more reading. I intented to get some more reading done last night but I was too into FF12 to tear myself away from it 
Time: 1 hour 49m
Manga: 0 pages
Book: 13 pages
Total Time: 4 hour 18m
Total Pages: 92 pages
| Book | Level | Progress | Goal |
|---|---|---|---|
 嫌だと言ってモラトリアム |
L24? | 100% | 100%  |
 ブルーロック Vol 14 |
L24 | 64% | 100% |
 図書室の怪談 悪魔の本 |
L25 | 58 → 64% | 80?% |
 ファイナルファンタジーXVアンソロジー |
L24? | 12% | ?% |
 怪盗レッド Vol 1 |
L23 | 50% | ?% |
I reckon I can fit another hour in before I call it, will try and finish Bluelock off
Oh how strange now I see yours and not mine I I’ll put them in thanks for the heads up!
I think I ate your results, sorry!
Update #2
Finished ch. 1 at 97/270 (ebook) pages. Total time: 2h 28m. Time left: 20h. It’s going surprisingly well.
I’m feeling better too, slowly getting nourishment after barely eating half a cup of noodles yesterday. Suddenly had a nosebleed in the middle of reading tho (maybe from all the sneezing), and that’s the second time today.
| End | Duration | Pages | Page count | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 国宝 (上) Ch.7 end + 8 start | 2025-12-21T10:57:00Z | 1 h 24 min | 180-201/280 | 21 |
Eat and drink break first, to not be sleepy.
The order of the results table is getting weird. It’s not supposed to be alphabetical, but chronological.
Final Update
Going to call it done, I’m out of steam.
Not managed quite as much as I aimed for, but I made a good dent in a few things and overall I’m happy. When I compare to my summer results, it’s exactly the same amount of pages, but in 40 mins less time. Considering I also read more prose this time, that feels like a nice little speed improvement.
Time: 31m
Manga: 20 pages
Book: 0 pages
Total Time: 4 hour 49m
Total Pages: 112 pages
Oops, then mine should go after RebBlue
Daijoubu. The table definitely needs a lookover post-readathon.
cc @taiyousea
12:40 UK time, time to stop for lunch.
That’s 2 hours and 55 minutes of reading so far, with 36 pages read (it would appear I am a veryy slow turtle but that doesn’t bother me). I finished the first volume of 安達としまむら and I’m a little way through the second one. I’ll keep going after this break and see if I can get at least another hour in.
Exactly 
Surprisingly, after the first power nap, it was never a problem. My eyes and brain understood that “this is my life now”. Could probably have kept going if not for the 24 hour limit xD
Should have put you in my acknowledgments too :x I had no idea how much you had read since I didn’t check the forum to maximize my time, but when I went to bed at 12 hours, almost 13, I had a feeling that you had probably read a lot more than that. Then when I naturally woke up at 6, I hesitated if I should sleep or not, and my brain screamed BUT IF YOU READ FOUR HOURS NOW FOR SURE YOU WILL BEAT BIDOOF, best motivation I knew there were 0.00000001% chances that you would get up that early xD
yep, that definitely tracked xddd
i take the fact i was able to hold the record for a few hours at least and i’ll gladly confer the title to you ^^
competetive spirit and so on, but i think that me getting to your time would most likely sacrifice multiple things from my side, mindful eating, mindful sleep, talking with people, so for now i’m not planning to adjust the circumstances (at least for the next year xddd) to be able to get anywhere close to even 16 hours, at one point in time one needs to say “enough” xdddd
(though it does itch indeed, but not now ^^)
time to join the frieren book club then! i need to catch up on the 8th volume, might do it in the christmas-new year’s break ^^