[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

Bookwalker is a site where you purchase digital books, soo… shipping will be free, I guess

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Oh shit, really? TIL

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Second book done! :partying_face:
I guess reading 5 books won’t be as hard as I thought :grin:

コンビニ人間 thoughts (Spoilers!)

It started out peaceful, yes, Keiko was a misfit but she was fine with herself, and I was fine with that. When she started to get questioned, and in a way was forced to change, I started to feel sorry for her, and thought about what would be the best for her to do. I couldn’t find an answer, she couldn’t either, at least found a really bad one. It made me feel really sad when I was reading through her pathetic life with that useless parasite Shiraha. And the fact that she couldn’t realize her situation made it even sadder. Ending is good but still sad :slightly_frowning_face:, now she knows where she belongs but I’d like her to get more support from others.

I don’t know what to read next, I’ll probably choose from book club’s previous reads. I have no idea how difficult advanced book club’s books are, I didn’t have much struggle reading this one. Kindle’s dictionary also makes it easy to look up words. What should I expect from those books?

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Many of the “advanced” books are similar to the intermediate books in terms of difficulty. They just read at 2-3 times the pace. The advanced book club indicates which books will be read faster versus which books are deemed harder and will be read slower.

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Oh thanks. I started コンビニ人間 with the repeat club, they are now at week 3 of 13. So I guess I’ll join an advanced book club if I decide to read along with one.

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We just started the current Advanced Book Club pick on Friday, so you are not even late if you decide to join now :wink:

It is a criminal story, and so far it has been a very nice read.

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Thanks! I love criminal stories, I’ll take a look after I take a short break.

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So I’ve finished the second volume yesterday and I like that series a lot. Thanks for the suggestion :smiley:

I find it to be a tougher read than what I’ve been focusing on recently, since the author doesn’t present the story in a pre-digested format. The trick of having a character say “do you mean 〇〇?” is absent, instead, the other character will say “Got it” and 猫猫 will internally monologue “it’s great to work with people who understand quickly”. Sometimes, I need to pause a bit to get it myself :sob:
My favorite example so far (not a spoiler since it’s basically impossible to get it without the context of the previous paragraph):

大陸の中央に位置する、とある大国。どこから漏れたか、そこのやんごとなき貴人が霊薬ばかりかき集めると噂になる。 壬氏の執務室が、見舞いの花でいっぱいになり入れなくなったと知ったのは、午後の茶会のときであった。猫猫は桃饅を食みながら、「ふーん」とやる気なく言った。

It took me 5 solid minutes to get the connection between those three sentences :joy:

Another challenging thing about this book is that they tend to use Chinese-ish reading for words (e.g. 薔薇 read as そうび) and Chinese (inspired?) word construction (the main example being the usage of the prefix 小 instead of the suffix ちゃん) with the actual Japanese word as furigana.
Meanwhile, at some point a character describes a kanji by using the modern Japanese terminology (and some katakana words do creep up in the text). I wonder if the author thought it was a bit too extreme to keep the setting or if it’s the editor who put their foot down.

Anyway, I love 猫猫. She is exactly the type of crazy I like to see in a character. The relation with the love (?) interest is also pretty nice and there’s good drama. The end of volume 2 was a bit cliche but I still cried. What do you mean this is a mystery series?
(That kinda reminds me how I’ve been told I played the game Mass Effect wrong; basically rushing through the missions so that I could spend more time romancing the characters Sooo I heard you’ve got reach; I’d like you to know I have flexibility for days)

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Just finished reading 俺を好きなのはお前だけかよ 2. Jesus christ man, this series…

I’m actually having a hard time telling if the author is the greatest writer who has ever lived or is a complete idiot with the story writing skills of a literal eggplant. Like this series is just so many levels of dumb that its impossible to tell where the irony stops and it’s no longer a parody.

The whole thing is like meant to be a parody on tropey school harems which are already plenty dumb, and it just took it to the next level without actually being a harem. The thing is…now its actually kinda becoming a harem and now I can’t tell if this is going to become another layer of irony.Part of me feels like it wont become an actual harem and will stick with just the one main love interest. Like the second girl who ended up liking the main character attempted to basically isolate him from everyone else in the school with literal libel so she could have him all to herself and he told her to fuck off for all of eternity basically. The new girl who just got introduced is a bit tougher. She appeared out of thin air and is the main characters ideal female. The epilogue makes it seem like she literally may not be materialized from the power of god (there was actually a scene earlier that called upon the power of god), but who the hell knows anymore.

I believe this marks my 4th book done this year and I’m 150 pages into my next book, so maybe 24 books for the year is a bit low. Eh, who cares

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Finally finished 獣の奏者 Volume 2 after looks at notes scribbled on hand
oh, uh, two weeks? Loved the book, but it definitely had its moments that left me scratching my head wondering if I’d actually understood the chapter (sub-chapter?) that I’d just read.

Now I’m torn between continuing on with the 3rd book (very likely) or taking a break for some other single-volume story as not to rush through the series (unlikely). I’ve had loads of free time lately and I’m hoping to make reading more of a habit so I can beat last year’s number of books read (also this year’s goal, for now) while still upping the difficulty. Considering 獣の奏者 II was a nearly 500 page and fairly difficult book, it’s looking like that should be very doable as long as I can actually stay on top of reading (and stay off of all of my distractions).

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I’m glad you liked the series. I remember you said you liked 紅霞後宮物語 and I thought they were kind of similar. That was the basis for my suggestion. I guess it sort of worked? Or, which is more likely, 薬屋のひとりごと is just a good book.

I’m also happy to hear a confirmation that even you had some difficulties with this book.
Recently I started to really question my Japanese reading ability because I’ve seen people referring to the books I had difficulties with as “fine” or even “easy”. Now I know that at least with this one it wasn’t just me. :relieved:

I really want to read other books in the series, but the first one was a bit too hard to be a pleasant read, so I didn’t continue reading the series then. Maybe I should give it another try. :thinking:

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I feel like the history and politics got a little complicated at times, but I really liked the book overall.

I’m not going to keep reading the series for now at least. Instead I’m reading 狐笛のかなた with the new book club, though it’ll be a slow paced read, like intermediate book club pace. I might go back to 獣の奏者 at some point, but maybe not.

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These were definitely the times that gave me trouble. Between trying to remember who is who and where everything is, it gave me some real trouble. Also that one scene with シュナン and セィミヤ really threw me, I actually had to check the book club thread to make sure I understood it properly.

I’m definitely going to continue with it, it’s got me hooked in a way a book hasn’t in a long time, I just don’t know if it’ll be immediately or not yet.

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I am thinking about starting my own book club on this site once I reach level 60. But I don’t know if I will have enough time to run it properly.

Didn’t manage to read much this year but at least I started コープスパーティー2. The game is two hours long so I may finish it this year. :rofl:

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Man it feels like I’ve been pretty bad about reading lately. I’m a month ahead on my manga goal but still haven’t finished any novels, which means I’m about to be behind schedule in just a few days. I’ve been trying to read one chapter of 本好きの下剋上 vol. 3 per day to somewhat catch up, but it’s been hard to motivate myself for some reason :sob:

Nooo, I don’t need more novels to read!

I’ve had my eye on this one for a while (actually picked up vol. 1 of one of the manga adaptations at one point and found it too difficult to read at the time). Something about it just really intrigues me. I should at least get back to the manga soon (except I’m not allowed to read any more manga until I finish a novel or fall behind on my manga schedule, life is hard)

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Now imagine reading it over several months instead of in two weeks!

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Yes to all those things. :grin:

Hm, I feel that, in the case of this series, it’s mostly the case that you need to get used to the vocabulary. The third volume is feeling way easier to read, even though there’s no change in the writing. If someone came to this series after reading various 後宮 stories, well, they’d probably find it easy too. In my case, since I only read one volume of 紅霞後宮物語 years ago (… it’s already been years?), the effect was not that strong; I still recognized immediately the word 宦官, so that’s one word less to look up :stuck_out_tongue:

Again, it does get easier if you keep going. Also I enjoyed volume 2 even more than volume 1 :ok_hand:

Funny you mention that, because the main character gives me some strong 本好きの下剋上 vibes. Like マイン, 猫猫 is completely crazy about something (not books, though), and then there’s [half way through volume 1 of 薬屋のひとりごと]壬氏, basically the equivalent of [本好きの下剋上 volume 3]フェルディナンド. So, I’m pretty happy about that :stuck_out_tongue:

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I just had a weird moment of clarity about 獣の奏者 and 薬屋のひとりごと (and 紅霞後宮物語).
Some time ago, discussing with people from the 獣の奏者 club, we wondered about the reading of 金色, which was written as こんじき in the furigana version, but would make more sense to be read きんいろ in standard Japanese. At the time, I mentioned it really felt like こんじき to me, and I finally remember why. I have seen it with those furigana in 紅霞後宮物語. I remembered thanks to seeing it again in 薬屋のひとりごと with those same furigana (from the sentence 金色こんじきの髪をした美女).
Except that now I know that the readings used in the likes of 薬屋のひとりごとare garbage used for flavor. Looking at you 女性にょしょう.

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I’m nearly finished 本好きの下剋上 book 5. I just have to finish the bonus chapters that are after the epilogue. This volume was probably my least favorite so far, because the middle was so slow. Too much information dumping about how to make stuff, not enough story progress during those parts. But the last few chapters were really good. I expected them to show off how powerful she was sooner rather than later, and I think it’ll send the series in a good and interesting direction. Of course, the very end of the last chapter and the epilogue were completely out of nowhere, and I loved all of it. I was teary-eyed reading the end of the epilogue, specifically (major spoiler) when Main was apologizing to her mom in the dream.

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I definitely cried.

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