Today I finished 伯爵と妖精 14! This puts me only one book away from my yearly goal, so I am thinking thoughts.
I make my goal bigger, or I could add a different kind (read certain books or types of books, read in certain ways, etc), or I could just pat myself on the back (when I hit 30) and then keep going without changing anything. Making my goal bigger isn’t appealing to me, as I’m happy at the pace I’m reading now, so I don’t need to increase it, but it’d be okay if I didn’t read quite as much in the latter half of the year, so increasing it might make me unnecessarily anxious to keep up. I don’t want to make my goal to read certain books, as it’s 2021 and I read what I want, but I’m thinking about making a new goal post-book-30 where I change something about how I read. Specifically, maybe I’ll try not looking up words? At all? A lot of the words I look up now, I don’t need to look up. I’m confirming things I know, or adding nuance, or just wanting to make sure I have such an interesting word in my anki. There are times I look up things because I genuinely need to, but they’re in the minority. Looking up a lot of words (a lot comparative to what I really need to look up) has become a habit. And, really, I like the habit in general. I like getting new words to add to my deck even if I won’t learn them for a while, and I like being sure of what is being said, etc. But it might be worthwhile to take 5-6 months to break that habit, and then turn the tap back on more gently, being more picky about when I pause in my reading to look things up. Also, I’m kind of curious whether the little pauses every page or two are like mini-breaks for my brain, and whether my reading stamina might actually go down if I take them out. 
I’m still thinking about whether I’ll do this or not. My anki system is feeling particularly fine-tuned right now, so there’s not a need for change, but it might be interesting and a good challenge.
Ah, I forgot the most important thing! Which is of course this picture of ニコ, my favorite cat-shaped 妖精:
伯爵と妖精 picture, no spoilers
(THE FISH. 
)
