OK, added them to my long list of recommendations! Plus I discovered there are some other books by the same name (no surprise given it’s a popular plot device), so even more books to check out
To answer your question by the way, I’m currently following the usual book clubs (Hakase, Snow Country, Fruits Basket, Flying Witch, mainly). Also, I finally managed to finish Kiki the other day - I actually started reading it with its original book club that ran almost 3 years ago, but back then it was simply hopeless for me. Now it had turned into a nice evening entertainment To celebrate that, I continued to read さくらえび - an autobiographic-sounding book written by さくらももこ, the author of the apparently very popular manga ちびまる子ちゃん. She casually talks about funny events around her family and her company. I don’t get everything because she sometimes talks about famous Japanese people that I don’t know, but I like her refreshing and casual writing style. When I learned that she died about two years ago at age 53 (of breast cancer), I got really sad.
Apart from that, I have some half-started books lurking in the shadows Hmmm… I think I should make it a goal to clear them out until the end of the year. I’ll keep y’all posted how it went!
Kinda fell off the face of the Earth the moment I started working alongside uni
Now I’m trying to catch up to 魔女の宅急便 before it’s over and then to 獣の奏者… Will probably have to drop 博士の愛した数式 unfortunately unless I have some unexpected free time, which it doesn’t look like I will.
On the non-bookclub front I was finally reading 乙女ゲーム。。。at a nice speed until I dropped that too. Going to need some effort if I’m to finish that one and another book before the year is over to make my goal. We’ll see about that.
Before this mess I was also finally reading a few free manga I’d come across with an ease that finally didn’t feel like I was studying, so I’m hoping to pick that back up as well.
If I somehow manage that, I might be back to make some goals for next year. Still kinda proud I didn’t drop WaniKani as well again…
Homework: don’t join so many bookclubs if you don’t know how busy you are going to be
So it’s almost December (I’m sorry, wHAt?) and I fell wayyyyy off the reading consistently horse. This year has been an absolutely insane ride since corona hit, and honestly I feel like the entire past 8 months just disappeared.
I’m in the middle of 獣の奏者 and also 魔女の宅急便 (oops, what’s a book club) and if I finish those, that’ll at least put me at one book short of an average of one book a month this year, with what I would consider a solid variety of books mixed in. I set a stretch goal of 24, which would maybe have been doable if I had cut a ton of social stuff out of the equation months back, but 12 was the actual minimum goal (I haven’t read for leisure since I graduated high school 8 years ago, starting reading at all was and still is a challenge for me at times).
If I can finish the 2 books I’m reading now, and then throw in just one more before the year ends, I should be able to hit 12 pretty easily and I’ll be satisfied. Especially since I ended up reading the entirety of 鬼滅の刃 (which will be 23 volumes once the final one comes out in two weeks), in addition to 四月は君の噓 for what will be a total of 34 volumes.
Next year the goal is to stick to books, not manga, and try to read things that are a bit higher on the difficulty scale so I can get more exposure to higher level grammar and vocab.
Here’s a random post because scrolling down to this topic when I want to update the list is taking longer and longer
To keep this more on topic, I bought the five currently available volumes of the manga まちカドまぞく because I liked the first season of the anime, but I’ve read four of them now and I’d say I like volumes 3-4 a lot more than the part that has been adapted in the anime so far(I’m guessing volumes 3 and 4 will be covered in season 2).
I especially liked (volume 3+4 spoilers) how the risky plan that miraculously worked at the end of volume 3 actually ended up having at least some small consequences for Momo, and also just about everything involving Momo in that chapter. Actually, I just like everything involving Momo’s dark form, it’s just a lot cooler than the magical girl one and also matches Shamiko better.
That said, even if it’s good so far I kind of wonder if volume 5 is actually going to be able to keep it up because of all the new characters that have been introduced (I wonder why 4koma manga almost always seem to have tons and tons of characters) and how my favourite scenes mostly just focus on Shamiko and Momo but now there might be less time for them. Guess I’ll find out soon
Edit: volume 5 was also pretty good. The (attempted, at least) confession at the end of it was nice, even if it was pretty obvious how Momo felt before that already based on… well, a lot of stuff Now to wait for the next volume to be released.
One thing I especially like about the manga is that it feels like it has way more of an actual plot than the other 4koma manga I’ve tried reading so far.
It’s getting close to the end of the year and I’ve been thinking about what I want to do for goals this time around. Lately I’ve been on pace to double my initial goal for manga (currently at 92/52, so I have 4.5 weeks to read 12 more volumes), and of course I’ve smashed my goal of one novel (planning to wrap up 本好きの下剋上 vol. 2 around Dec. 29 or so for a total of 7).
I’m thinking I might not set a manga goal at all this time, and just read stuff as it comes out or strikes my fancy. The main thing I’m going back and forth on now is: do I set an easily achievable goal for novels or should I aim high? 1/mo is quite doable at my current level and (assuming my reading speed continues to improve) I feel like reaching an average of 2/mo is not unreasonable, but I’m not sure I want to set a goal of 24 novels right out of the gate
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 I’ve been ignoring it for longer than I thought.
Is it bad, though? I think having fun is more important than forcing yourself to be ambitious
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 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.
I got this exact advice almost word-for-word somewhere else too That would be one book every three weeks which is about where I’m at right now I think (for normal-sized books anyway).
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
To celebrate that, I continued to read さくらえび - an autobiographic-sounding book written by さくらももこ, the author of the apparently very popular manga ちびまる子ちゃん. She casually talks about funny events around her family and her company. I don’t get everything because she sometimes talks about famous Japanese people that I don’t know, but I like her refreshing and casual writing style. When I learned that she died about two years ago at age 53 (of breast cancer), I got really sad.
Hmmm… I think I should make it a goal to clear them out until the end of the year. I’ll keep y’all posted how it went!
I’ve been ignoring it for longer than I thought.
That would be one book every three weeks which is about where I’m at right now I think (for normal-sized books anyway).