[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

I hadn’t noticed, but after you said it, I had to fix it. Done. :ok_hand:

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You’re so much more ambitious than I am. I don’t have a goal, but I guarantee you it’ll be less than that.

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Don’t they? :smile:

I definitely think my goal is a bit scary. I was originally going to go for one/month, but then 20/20 seemed appropriate for 2020 because of this:

Thanks. :stuck_out_tongue:

I figure if I read enough kids’ books and count magazines as well I should be able to make it? :sweat_smile:

And then you see people with goals of 40 books, haha.

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Schweet, a reading challenge! I am going be reading my first book in Japanese this year. Its on its way to me as I type. It will be なぜ?どうして?科学のお話 2年生 and I’l be reading that with Absolute Beginner Book Club starting in February. I will do my best to keep to the page day goal. after getting through that book book, I will start another one. I just don’t know what it is yet.

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I sure wonder which people that could be referring to :thinking: :slight_smile:

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Well I decided to sign up this year! Currently shooting for 5 manga and 1 book. I suppose it’s up for debate whether that qualifies as 多読 ;). But after all, I’m the guy that wrote the slow-goer post, so even this goal won’t necessarily be easy for me.

I’ve never been a big reader in English, let alone Japanese, but I’m really hoping to get into it this year. So far the only other JP things I’ve read are volumes 1-12 of よつばと.

I had baby #2 in the middle of last year and have barely had free time to do anything, but towards the end of last year I did get through 3 manga completely and read bits and pieces of several more. I’m not planning for any other huge life changes in 2020 so I’m hoping I can reach and surpass my goal!

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I got to page 190 today! I am very obviously still counting my progress in pages every time I read even the tiniest bit. I think that alone already shows that I still haven’t gotten used to reading in Japanese at all. I have to put in so much effort that I wonder when it will be as comfortable as reading in English! I remember the first time I read in English, the difference between then in English compared to now in Japanese is EXTREME. If I keep reading regularly, I really hope it pays off. I’d be so happy if I could look back on this post in one year and think “wow I couldn’t even really enjoy the novel at that time, but look at me now!”

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I’m looking forward to reading more this year with you all! I read 22 manga and 6 books (5 with book clubs, 1 without) over the past year, which all varied in difficulty. I’m so grateful to have found the Wanikani forums and all you wonderful people last year, since it encouraged me to start reading books in Japanese. キノの旅 was my first!

Unfortunately, I hardly read at all from mid-November to mid-December. I ended up reading キッチン week 6 to week 13 over the last two weeks of December in a more 多読 fashion thanks to several days off. This year I’m hoping to read 10 books and 20 manga. I have some easier books to read as well as some that are more challenging, so hopefully that goal will be attainable.

よろしく!

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Yay! @quadban! Welcome.

By the rules the originators of the concept defined, probably not. But screw the rules, we have money Japanese media!

It did for me, at least. Speaking of which, I’m quite excited about the 獣の奏者 group starting soon! The first (half of the first) part was the first book I ever read in Japanese, 5 7.5 years ago (where did all that time go). 56 full-fledged books (and a lot of study) later, I really want to see how far I have come…

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I’m equally excited because it’ll be my first true fantasy book in Japanese. As long as I stay disciplined, I think I’ll do fine. Ideally I want to stay disciplined on both the “read consistently” front as well as the “learn new words” front. If I keep up with the latter, it should make the second book easier.

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My book reading progress so far has been inconsistent due to some hard days. I learned that Japan had flush toilets in the early 700s though so that’s something. I’ve been finding myself reading more and more visual novels though, flying through scenes way faster than I normally would.

I find it interesting that different people here have different takes on tadoku. For some it’s about the volume of reading material and for others it’s more about the reading with ease without looking things up. It’s cool that everyone can find an approach that works for them :+1:

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Joined up, yay! As long as I read about half an hour every day I’l be happy, but more is better. I’d love to read more this year than last year, and the idea of checking in every once in a while might keep me going a few more pages some sessions.

I’m reading a few different things and about to start a couple of others.

Books:

  1. (paper, from the library) ブリジット・ジョーンズの日記 (p.365/410)
  2. (on my kindle) ぽっぺん先生の日曜日 (21%; taking a bit of a backseat since I’m close to finishing #1)
  3. (on the computer when I have snatches of time at work) ハリー・ポッターと不死鳥の騎士団 (0%; I just finished the fourth one today)
  4. (on my kindle) starting 氷菓 on Jan.11th
  5. (on my kindle) starting 獣の奏者 on Jan. 25th

I’m reading #1 at a quick pace (for me), #2 at a slow pace, #3 (the entire HP series, really) at a super super slow pace because I almost never have uninterrupted reading time at work because work, #4 and #5 at the book club’s pace, which I don’t know if I’ll find slow or fast. I’m definitely hoping to have #1 done before starting 氷菓, perhaps #2 as well.

Manga:

  1. (paper, my copy) 花ざかりの君たちへ (3) (not far in)
  2. (on my tablet) よつばと! (6) (perhaps a third through)
  3. (on my tablet) 美少女戦士セーラームーン (1) (finished act one)
  4. (on my computer) 名探偵コナン (1) (64%)

I’m reading #1 at no pace (haven’t touched it in ages but want to finish it so here it is for motivation), #2 at a quick pace, #3 with the book club, so at a very controlled pace, #4 was started because it was temporarily free on amazon and I tried to read quickly because I thought it would disappear but it hasn’t disappeared (yet?) so my pace has slowed back down.

Goal #1 is to finish ブリジット・ジョーンズの日記. Hopefully I can check back in soon to say I accomplished it!

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I’ve been thinking about making an entry in the “other” category with something like “いろいろな漫画.”

I’m not going through any specific manga series at this moment. Reading around at random on Pixiv, and random volumes here and there from a colleague of my wife.

It would be too much of a hassle to change the title of what I’m reading for every short thing I check out, but as @Naphthalene said:

So I might just track number of pages read on here, so I know by the end of the year around how much I read.

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「イルーゾォという地獄の底の魔物以下の最低最悪のゲズ野郎がね」

How-you-really-feel

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That’s good to hear! When did you start noticing improvement?

I finished the first book🥳 on to 風の中のマリア, a book about a paper wasp called Maria, as far as I understood from the first 3 pages. Seems good, but there’s a lot of vocabulary I don’t know. I wonder what’s the best method to keep track of vocabulary. I think I’ll just look things up and write them down later.

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About ~10 manga in, back when I was still N4, after that, I felt improvement for a while but it plateaued somewhere are 100 to 200 (first batch of manga I sold to book off back in the days was 250 manga strong, collected over a couple of years; I plateaued before that is all I can say for sure).
Then I couldn’t really manage actual novels until ~N1but at that time, it felt fairly easy. Obviously, people can (should?) start before that; I just have a very low pain tolerance. From there on, I read regularly. I saw a lot of progress over the first couple books, but plateaued again. Last year’s push (30 books) helped me get again a sense of progression, somewhere around the 20 books mark. So, I guess I never really stopped learning from reading; it’s just super slow so I had to do a lot of it to feel improvement.

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I see what you mean! I also read a couple of manga (waaaay less than you though), but did not notice a lot of improvement. My pain tolerance is also low but I really have to get through it now, I don’t know how else I would start reading, my Japanese is definitely not getting better at the moment. I’ve been thinking my level of grammar may be too low, so I’ll study that a bit more actively again🙏

It’s really interesting to read your experiences, how you hit a plateau multiple times, but somehow felt improvement again after! Super cool, it gives me some hope :stuck_out_tongue:

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Learning grammar helped with the first one. I had actual classes that got me up to N3 and then studied grammar on my own for N2 and then N1. (I mentioned it in other threads already; I wasn’t very diligent about it so it took forever). At some point, learning more grammar felt really ineffective (around the time I was learning stuff for N1). At that point focusing on vocab is what gave me the biggest boost in ability. Again, looking back, I just wish I had been more consistent in my studies. But, hey, I had a lot of stuff to read anyway, so stuck or not, it wasn’t that bad.
(There have been times when I thought “welp, that’s the best I’ll ever be at Japanese, guess I reached my limits”, but eventually always moved past that)

Also I’m rambling and should probably go to bed.

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Your rambles helped me a lot though, thank you! I think I’m still behind on N2 and even some N3 grammar, so I should put some more time into that while I continue reading! I’ll have to find a way to regularly practice grammar, so maybe I can practice writing sentences a bit more as well.

I think this will also help making the whole reading process more enjoyable for me, so thank you for the rambles!!

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I swear, I’ll never understand how authors decide when to use furigana. I’m reading a sample of 空ろの箱と零のマリア (sample) because the premise sounds interesting. They introduce a character as きりここ, then use 心音 in a sentence within the same paragraph without furigana. And then again with furigana in the next paragraph. And then doesn’t use it again a few times before moving on. But a quick scan ahead shows them using furigana again. Super weird.

Also, they put furigana on 今日 for some reason… every time… Maybe this light novel is just being somewhat generous with furigana, because 他, 奴, 真っ直ぐ, and 俺 all have furigana, even though most kanji still don’t have furigana and the book seems to use kanji normally.


Anyway, I’m pretty interested in reading this series because it has something with time looping built into the premise and I love time travel in general. The first volume (for some odd reason) isn’t in print anymore even though the other six volumes are, so this may be the thing that finally gets me to buy a kindle paperwhite and try reading something digitally. But I’ll worry about that after I get through the first volume of 獣の奏者. :sweat_smile:

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