[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

Why not split the difference and go with 18 then?

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Since I noticed Bookmeter keeps track of how many books you have read during the year, I have been neglecting updating the big table… until today. My read count went from 55 to 62 in one go :rofl: I’ve been ignoring it for longer than I thought.

Also, my most read authors list is kinda sad:


It’s 90%+ light novels…

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Is it bad, though? I think having fun is more important than forcing yourself to be ambitious :sweat_smile:

Meanwhile - while I do enjoy HameFura, it was nice that it was predictable until now and not overly gripping, because my reading speed isn’t suited for twists and such.
And now - 2nd volume spoilers - with secret character and dark magic reveal - I actually did manage to get overly invested :sweat_smile: But since this chapter is ridiculously long (around 40% of the whole volume) it will probably take me at least a few days to finish this part of the plot. :sob:

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Sounds like there might be an interesting goal for 2021 hidden inside somewhere… :thinking:

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I got this exact advice almost word-for-word somewhere else too :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: That would be one book every three weeks which is about where I’m at right now I think (for normal-sized books anyway).

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I probably won’t set any kind of hard goals this coming year, just like I haven’t in the past. I prefer to just read whatever I want whenever I want without worrying about things like this, especially because I have no idea what I would read to hit lofty goals like that.

I do I have plans to read some specific books though, namely 本好き books 4-7, 狐笛のかなた, and probably 博士の愛した数式. I have absolutely no idea what to read next year beyond those though.

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Oh, I should mention that I’m now caught up on two ongoing manga series. The first, which I caught up on in January, is ご注文はうさぎですか. The next volume of that is coming out December 25th, but I’ll read it within a month or two of release. The second, as of this afternoon, is こみっくがーるず. The next volume of that one probably won’t come out until at least April 2021, if not a bit later.

I think my new まんがタイムきらら series is going to be ブレンド・S. It’s not nearly as good as ご注文はうさぎですか or こみっくがーるず, but it’s pretty good overall, and it’s better than the other series I’ve tried. I’ve only read the first volume so far, but I’m going to order two or three more volumes towards the end of the year.

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Just as expected, now that I am done with 本好き, it feels hard to get invested in anything I try to read.
If I had kept reading at the same pace, I could have reached 72~75 volumes for this year, but it’s already been a few days of basically nothing, so I don’t think I’ll get there.
Still, I’m planning to catch up with two book clubs this month (intermediate, advanced) and finish books that got completed (kiki and 獣の奏者).
Even just finishing two books this month would still get me to 65 books for the year, more than 5 times my original goal :sweat_smile:

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Out of curiosity, I figured out how many words I looked up in one of the last books I read (鍵のかかった部屋).

It is 332 pages, and I looked up almost exactly 500 words, so about 1.5 words per page. (I also had 4 accidental look-ups that I deleted while skimming for misparses.)

More detail

Out of those 500 words, 301 of them are still in my kindle staging deck, which means they are words I hadn’t added before. These I won’t prepare to be learned until I see them again somewhere.

Of the 193 in my main deck, 25 were ones I’d already learned. For these I added the new example sentence and made sure the card had a good Japanese definition, etc, to try to avoid looking it up again in the future when I’m supposed to know it. (Depending on how much time and motivation I have, sometimes I skip copying over the sentence.)

Of the 168 in my main deck that weren’t ones I’d already learned, I probably already had the cards ready to go and unsuspended for a third of them. (This is a guess, because I didn’t track this and can’t distinguish it at this point.) These ones got the new example sentences added. (Here as well, depending on how much time and motivation I have, sometimes I skip copying over the sentence.)

That leaves (an estimated) 112 cards that got newly finished, unsuspended, and in the queue to learn. \o/ (The current queue of beautiful cards with words I’ve seen in the wild multiple times is 2,105, and I’m only learning 4 a day… but it’s not like I’m in this for the short term, so, deep breath, this is good.)

What really would have been fun is I’d done this for the first book I read in the series, which was two years ago almost exactly. I have to think that since then, or even just since the beginning of this year, the number of words I’m looking up per page has gone way down. Hopefully I can read a ton again next year and (enjoy that for itself and also) bring those numbers down some more!

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And now I’ve finished Volume 2 of 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった… .
Regarding my previous excitement, I was actually a little let down by the further course of events, but thanks to the excitement itself, I think I managed to up my speed somewhat.

Comments (with spoilers!)
  • I really liked calling a vegetable field a flower bed as vegetables also have a flower phase. Also the vegetable bouquet was adorable. I love the practicality.
  • I still appreciate the warm, fluffy, healing atmosphere.
  • I’m disappointed with the development of how Sophia is actually Atsuko reincarnated. I dislike such important thing being turned into deus ex machina and then abandoned. I really hoped she would function as Atsuko from now on and I guess I still hope for that in one of the next volumes.
  • I started rooting for ジオルド just because it feels unfair how everyone else united themselves against him.
  • And well, it is starting to get exhausting with how カタリナ is so oblivious and innocent (even if it is a genre characteristic) and I’m hoping for a little character development somewhere.
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Yes discussion

I’m 100% rooting for him too! He does have an unfair by being her fiance, but at the same time he is (as far as I am concerned) head and shoulders above the rest, so I’m fine with that.

I have good news, and I have bad news. But they are all spoilers, so, hm, maybe I said too much already.

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Re: discussion

Yaaaay, ジオルド faction :star_struck:

Well… at least it’s not 100% bad news, so I’m relieved. I was afraid I wasn’t gonna get any of these.

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image

I’ve had a lot of fun reading the first 2 volumes of Asadora! by Naoki Urasawa yesterday/today. Been looking forward to read it ever since it was announced, and since 4 単行本 are out now, I finally decided to get started.

It’s a story that apparently spans a period of decades – from 1959 to the 2020 Olympics (wonder if they will be held in the story). It starts with the 1959 Ise bay typhoon, the most devastating typhoon in Japanese history that left 1,6 million people homeless and killed thousands. It is told from the eyes of 12 year-old Asa who is kidnapped by a shady man, a self-proclaimed “hero of the skies”, who turns out to be a fairly decent guy. After a few events that venture into supernatural/mystery territory (it’s Urasawa after all!), the story skips to 1964 with 17 year-old Asa training to be a pilot.

Great art and very well written, さすが浦沢先生! The local dialect also makes for an interesting read:

And now excuse me, I’ve got 2 more volumes to read.

P.S.: The title is obviously a reference to the famous Japanese morning dramas (asadora) – also called 連続テレビ小説 – that are typically about young girls growing up in turbulent times, turning into strong young woman. However, the title is written as あさドラ, highlighting the name of the heroine, and instead of 連続テレビ小説 Urasawa calls it 連続漫画小説.

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I’ve been reading 安達としまむら and now I have kind of finished the series and kind of not. Kind of because the “main” story ended with volume 8, kind of not because there are still new volumes being published, but it seems like they mainly will be stuff like short story collections or things that the author couldn’t fit into the main story. I also noticed that volume 9 doesn’t have any illustrations, so I guess it’s possible that’s going to continue with the future volumes too(I don’t mind that much though, it’s not exactly like I read books for the illustrations).

I quite liked it :slight_smile: Reading a mostly kind of realistic(aside from the time-travelling alien character, though it’s not like that was too important in the grand scheme of things) romance after just having read fantasy stuff recently before that was definitely quite a change of pace :laughing: Of course, most of the volumes had weaker parts(I think I liked the entirety of volumes 3 and 8 though), but overall the series was definitely good enough to keep me reading. There were also some developments I was about uneasy about in volumes 5-7, but ultimately the story went in a direction I was pretty happy with. I also found most of the comedy elements of the story really funny, and other than that I learned which kanji 所謂 can be written with.

Comments and stuff(a bit long since it's about a whole series instead of just one book)

I think the scenes that stood out the most to me were Adachi’s almost chapter-long rant in volume 5, the one short story about if they hadn’t met until several years later(since both of them ended up with pretty sad lives and Shimamura especially seemed pretty severely depressed) in… I don’t remember if it was volume 6 or 7, the mist scene in volume 8(volume 8 was probably my favourite one overall, it was just generally nice that Shimamura’s narration felt noticeably happier and less annoyed at everything compared to some of the earlier volumes), and the interactions between Adachi’s and Shimamura’s moms(Shimamura’s mom is really one of the best characters in the series aside from Adachi and Shimamura), as well as the whole Christmas date which was all around hilarious (must have been incredibly awkward for Adachi and Shimamura to have the parents there during the dinner at the end of it though) in volume 9.

Other than that it probably took me waaaay longer than it should have to realise that Shimamura probably is somewhat depressed. Looking at things from that perspective also makes some of her behaviour from early in the series that seemed weird at the time feel like it makes a bit more sense in hindsight(for instance, while she seemed pretty uninterested in Adachi at first, looking back she still actually thought and cared more about Adachi than many other things in her life). That said, I guess it didn’t ever get that bad for her in the actual main series, but based on the “what if?” side stories it seems like her life(or rather her attitude to it) eventually would have become extremely bleak if she hadn’t met Adachi when she did(to be honest it was mainly that one side story that made me realise that there’s actually at least a few signs throughout the series Shimamura was initially headed in the direction, though since she actually met Adachi fast enough I assume that ensured it didn’t get as bad as it could have).

One thing that was a bit weird but also kind of impressive was that the author threw in a time-travelling alien just to establish the fact that the process of Adachi and Shimamura meeting, Adachi becoming a catalyst for Shimamura changing, and the two of them falling in love is something that’s literally such a strong fact of the universe they live in that it’s going to happen even in timelines where the world is ending(that was a really sad concept for a short story - meeting the love of your life two days before the world ends can’t exactly give much time to be happy together) or they live on different planets, or at least I assume that’s what the “what if?” stories and the dialogue at the start of volume 8 was implying. So apparently Adachi and Shimamura falling in love would happen no matter what else changed… the most impressive part is that I realised that particular development was foreshadowed all the way back in the second chapter of volume 1 :laughing:

Actually, related to that, as inconsequential as it was(since it wouldn’t really affect anything except the side stories), I have to admit I couldn’t help but think something like “So, if Adachi and Shimamura are going to meet no matter what, wouldn’t an easy way to change the “the world is ending” timeline from that one side story just be to put them so far apart that they can’t meet before the world ends? In that case the world would have to stop ending so they could meet”(or based on how the other stories went, maybe Adachi would end up saving the world to be with Shimamura). On the other hand, since it’s not explained exactly what powers Yashiro actually has I guess it might just have been easier to make sure that the world wouldn’t start ending in the first place. Especially since if the only constant is Adachi and Shimamura falling in love, I guess another possibility would just have been that the two of them somehow would survive just long enough to meet and fall in love while all other living beings die, which… would be even sadder than the actual concept of that side story.

While I’m talking about that kind of stuff anyway, I also kind of want to know what the big event that would happen 16 years later that Yashiro mentioned in volume 9 is(the character seems to show up in some of the author’s other books too though, so I guess it could just as well be related to one of them instead, there’s already been many references to anime and manga(even if I personally only managed to get the JoJo and Demon slayer ones), so wouldn’t be too weird to have one to the author’s own works too)

Regarding the ending, I was a bit surprised that the author decided not to deal with some things. For instance it seems like Adachi probably won’t ever fully learn to interact with people other than Shimamura completely “normally”(including with her own mom based on the epilogue, but I did also get the distinct feeling that Adachi’s mom wasn’t trying especially hard to understand her throughout the series so that outcome kind of makes sense) or how some trace of the jealousy thing still was still there(albeit much weaker than in the main story, but it makes sense for a ten years older Adachi to be more mature), or how Shimamura still seemed weirdly tired for how much she sleeps, but in some ways it also feels more right for those things to not magically change, especially since Adachi and Shimamura clearly are really happy together despite their individual flaws and problems.

As a closing comment, while I liked the series a lot, I’d say there were two main negatives: one is just how slow-paced the series is sometimes, the other is that it sometimes feels like the characters have to take turns getting development. That said, each individual volume was a quick enough read(it took me about 4-6 hours to read each volume) that I didn’t mind either of those things too much overall. Being able to read through it pretty fast also made it easier to remember stuff like idioms I looked up while reading.

Now that I’m done with that, I’ll probably continue reading 本好きの下剋上 next. (I’m also noticing a downside with catching up on a lot of ongoing series: the amount of new volumes of series I have to wait for the release of is slowly increasing :laughing: For now 安達としまむら is the only ongoing light novel series I’m completely caught up on though, but when it comes to manga I can think of at least two series I’d really want to read the next volume of as soon as possible)

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Which series?

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I forgot to mention it in the long post so I’m saying it now instead: I’ve also noticed that Adachi’s hair is blue in a lot of official illustrations, which feels weird when it’s consistently only ever described as black in the actual text.


不可解な僕のすべてを and まちカドまぞく. Other than those ささやくように恋を歌う has also been pretty good so far, but a new volume of it wouldn’t be quite as exciting to me as for the other two.

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In case anybody missed out on it: Voting is up for the next book in the Advanced Book Club!

If you’re interested, hop right in to cast your vote:

If you’re not interested: Sorry for disturbing! :bowing_woman:

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This is one reason I feel I wouldn’t be able to watch the anime adaptation of 三ツ星カラーズ. Although Kotoha’s hair is blue in the manga cover artworks, it’s always pure black on the manga pages. The anime goes with a very blue blue.

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They’d hardly be Mittsuboshi Colours if they had monochrome hair. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Reached my goal! 42 hours of reading across 6 weeks. I did not complete the tadoku series but came close; a little more than one volume to go. By deep into level 4 my comprehension was noticeably down, but I was able to follow the major contours of the stories, which was encouraging. I am going to take 3 weeks off from any formal study requirements to attend to year-end festivities, but look forward to coming back in 2021 with a new reading goal. Have a great holiday season, everyone… :snowflake:

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