[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

Nah, don’t wait up for me. :wink:
I’m prioritizing some other books I borrowed and the other book clubs I’m already a part of and that’ll be starting soon~ I don’t have the time to make good use of the 2month Unlimited Promotion that’s happening right now. :cry:

It’s seriously good to know the quality stays consistently ‘not bad’ though, haha.

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Also, if anyone is interested in hoping on board, it seems we finally have enough momentum and community interest to establish an advanced reading club. It’s looking for book proposals now.

Advanced Japanese Book Club

oh great durtle in the sky, forgive my proselytizing *prostrates*

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I saw ぬし used as “you” for the first time this morning when reading 狼と香辛料. And just now I saw it in a manga (此花亭奇譚) as おぬし. What an odd coincidence. :sweat_smile:

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Sometimes I feel the various manga I’m reading are secretly working together to help me learn things.

Like, this week I saw 前略(ぜんりゃく) in AQUA, and then in 美少女戦士セーラームーン, I saw 前略. The latter lacked furigana, but context helped me recognize it. (I don’t know the second kanji yet.).

On the same page in 美少女戦士セーラームーン was 修業, which I had to look up just to be able to read, and then later in 三ツ星カラーズ, I saw 修業(しゅぎょう). (I don’t know the first kanji yet.)

Of course, I’ll promptly forget both of these, because they each have a kanji I don’t know yet.

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Native reading SRS at work. :slight_smile:

I learned (this reading of) 主 and 汝 in a game. I feel so validated in my hobbies.

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I saw 汝 in まちかどまぞく, but I only read the first chapter before stopping since it was so hard. I did remember the kanji and meaning since it’s so distinctive, but I forgot the reading.

Oh, I’ve also been seeing a lot of 沢山 lately, plus some 折角 and 流石, all in kanji. Thankfully I know all those now and it didn’t even slow me down.

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流石!

To add to the ぬし list, there was a character in a manga I read some time ago (can’t even remember the title) who used ぬし for “you” and うぬ for “I”. I mostly remember because the main character was as confused as me and had that character explain what those words mean, leading to the amazing line: “(while pointing at the MC) ぬしはぬし。(While pointing at himself) うぬはうぬ。” :rofl:

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The 汝 I saw was read なんじ. I wonder if there’s a difference.

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I’m not 100% sure, but I think the kanji was 己 in this case :thinking: At the very least, 汝 wasn’t in there.

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In the game it was used to mean ‘you’, not I, but I’ve been reading it なんじ. There was no furigana, but I’m sure I did the research the first 5 times… :thinking:

I love when the same kanji can be used for both ‘you’ and ‘I’. By now it sort of feels like it’s all of them. :sweat_smile:

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Yeah, 汝 was “you” where I read it too. I misread what Naph put.

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Well, to be fair, 汝 is a possible kanji for うぬ (although it’s not frequent? Not sure; I also read it なんじ by default). うぬ can mean both you or I, same as おのれ or ぼくfor instance.

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List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia Ba da ba ba da ba!

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Just don’t go around saying Baader–Meinhof is alive and well, as I did after seeing 「有り難う」 in a manga soon after learning it via WaniKani. Apparently Mr. Baader and Mr. Meinhof weren’t a couple of scientists who studied frequency bias.

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Mrs. Meinhof though :eyes:

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4 items after ‘Baader Meinhof’ we get ‘Gender bias’… :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I finally finished 氷菓, a book I originally started with the intermediate reading club but fell behind, took a break, then finally picked up again. It was slow in the beginning, but the latter half had me hooked. I thought the ending was extremely satisfying.

Also, I learned it’s pretty famous. When I mentioned I’d finished it, my husband had heard of it. I just watched the first episode of the anime by Kyoto Animation.

Now I need to get back to reading more manga. The schools I work at changed, and now I have more free time than I did before. Hopefully I can read more Japanese novels now.

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Having reached the year’s halfway point (plus some days), I’m taking a moment to review my progress.

Manga: I’ve completed 20 volumes out of a year’s goal of 30. Looks like I’m upping my goal to 40. The latter half of the year will be more difficult as I’ll soon be finishing up all the “easy” manga I’m reading. However, based on my progress on everything I’m in the middle of reading, I expect reaching 40 volumes is viable for me.

Picture Books: With my focus being on manga, I’m inching toward falling behind on my goal of 5 children’s detective story picture books. But, I know the next time I sit down to read one of these, I’ll make good progress. I’m keeping my goal at 5, but I’m hopeful to complete 6 by the end of the year.

Novels: I’m ambitious that I’ll finish one!

Double all those goals to know what I’d be achieving if I weren’t lazy.

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I noticed quite rapid progress in my reading ability over the last few months. I guess one the reasons is those 30+ hours spent playing Persona 4 which is pretty text heavy and uses a variety of styles. I was also reading manga on the side but it feels pretty easy now, so I want to get into reading novels.

Thus, I ordered a few novels in Japanese for the first time. Super excited to get them and start reading :grin:

By the way, I was a bit disappointed that most of the books are in the bunko format. Some even where available in hardcover but they don’t ship outside of Japan…
仕方ない :frowning_face:

I hope the text isn’t too tiny! (I avoided digital editions to give my eyes some rest…)

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Pheeeew, today I managed to finish 鹿の王 (I - IV). What a strange story! Also, I found the end a bit weird, but probably it is simply very, very Japanese.

Summary, no spoilers

The whole story revolves around the case that occurred in book 1 and the various attempts to deal with its effects and to solve it. While I found this extremely entertaining and nice to read in the first two books, it turned into long conversations about the case with various persons, and I probably did not understand every detail of these conversations, but they felt really redundant to me, with either only small details being added each time, or with even more twists and theories being heaped upon each other. In summary this made the conversations really hard to track for me, and thus made them very much not fun to read. I was actually thinking about dropping the book several times while reading book 3 and 4, but luckily the conversations stopped just in time, and something happened again. Book 3 even ended with a nice cliffhanger, so I thought I’d give the last book a chance. And it was fairly ok, but I must say that those dragging and repetitive conversations (mainly in book 3 and 4) really killed the joy of reading it for me. I’d be interested to hear what a reader thinks about it who is better at Japanese - I wonder whether it was really that repetitive or whether I missed lots of stuff…

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