[2022] 多読/extensive reading challenge

Japanese Language Reading
#4301

Maybe I’ll check out 宝石の国 this year as well. I’m a little put off by the plain art style since the anime was so vibrant, but I am interested in the story. Plus I have the first three volumes already since they were free to own at one point.

Anyway, I’ll turn this post into a general comment on what manga I plan to read this year. Not a goal, just my current thoughts on the matter.

First, of course I’ll be keeping up with manga that I’m caught up on or nearly caught up on (e.g. とんがり帽子のアトリエ, ブレンド・S, etc.), but that’s only maybe a dozen volumes or so over the entire year. Beyond that, I’ll read the rest of シャドーハウス, which as of now means 4 more volumes, but it is still coming out with more volumes a few times a year. Finally, I still have to read the last 7 volumes of ぼくらのへんたい. But that’s it. Hence why I might give 宝石の国 a chance.

But after that I’m not really sure. Technically I own the remaining 5 volumes of うらら迷路帖, but I didn’t really care for the first 2 volumes. It’s one of those things where I’m kind of curious how it’ll end, but I’m not sure it’s worth reading the really dense 4-koma format to find out. (It also has 12 pages per chapter instead of the standard 8 pages, which makes it drag even further.) I also own the first 2 volumes of まちカドまぞく, but that manga is even more dense! I tried to read a chapter once and my brain melted. Though it has been a while, so maybe it would be easier this time around. To put it in perspective, Natively says that まちカドまぞく is so difficult that it has a higher difficulty score than every novel / light novel I’ve read, own, or plan to read.

Suggestions are welcome, so long as the series doesn’t have dozens of volumes.

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#4302

Let me know what you think, I was gifted the paperback version of the first 7 volumes and 2-6 are still in plastic wrapping. :sweat_smile: The story didn’t really pull me in, but I also didn’t read that far (maybe half the first book?)

No suggestions for manga unfortunately, I don’t read that many and the few I do know I’m not sure would interest you based on what you’ve said so far about other series/what I can guess as to your taste in books.

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#4303

For me, things started to pick up around volume 3, if I remember correctly.
Anyway, you have them already, might just as well read them.

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#4304

If you watch anime at all I’d suggest checking out the anime adaption to help you decide. I thought the world-building was slow, but interesting. The anime probably covered the first 3-4 volumes, so you could see if the later content interests you with minimal effort. (And the action probably looks better in the anime anyway.)

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#4305

Heh, I get that sentiment but also know that if something doesn’t appeal to me it will sit on the shelf and rot for years before I finally just donate it in a purge of the shelves. :sweat_smile: Trying to speed up the process of commit or purge.

Not super into anime but don’t hate it either so might do just that - definitely seems a quick way to figure out where I stand with it :slight_smile:

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#4306

Oh a yearly reading challenge thread! That’s perfect for what I want to accomplish! :slight_smile:

My goal is to reach level 20 by April and level 30 by the end of the year. I recently revisited the anime 獣の奏者エリン while I was pregnant with my daughter last year. I’d like to make it my goal to be able to read the original novel by the beginning of next year, since it’s rated around 31 according to Natively. I’d also like to try to tackle キノの旅 which seems slightly easier to read at level 29, so I might try that first at the end of the year.

Until then, I’ll be sticking to the １０分で読める and なぜ？どうして？series for ES students this year. I don’t know if I can keep up with my reading when I have to go back to work in April while still raising our baby girl, but I’m gonna try!

Natively

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#4307

Dunno if you’re interested but I just noticed that Bookwalker (if I understood everything correctly) currently has a coupon for one month of free manga 読み放題 (valid until end of March). Which (I guess) boils the challenge down to “how many manga can you read in one month” :crazy_face:

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#4308

I guess you have to register to see it?
There might be some restrictions on which manga you get. For instance, they also seem to have an offer for all you can read light novels for ~860 jpy per month, but it’s only Kadokawa stuff…

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#4309

That’s what I understood as well.
(I’m assuming you mean “register to the campaign” and not “register to Bookwalker”, right?)

Hmmm, not sure about that, but if you go to the campaign details site 「2022年冬アニメ化タイトルの対象巻が読み放題！」 | 電子書籍ストア-BOOK☆WALKER there is a list of a few sample manga, and they seem to be from different publishers? Also at the bottom it says more than 20,000 books so yeah, dunno, do you think Kadokawa alone publishes 20,000 manga? No idea tbh…

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#4310

You can use the search function to see which manga are included. Around 20.000 volumes like you said but it’s definitely a selection and not everything they have. Makes sense, 800 yen would be a ridiculously low price otherwise wouldn’t that be nice :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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#4311

Ah thank you! Good to know. (I only use Bookwalker to look up books or authors I already know, so I have no idea how the search functions work… thanks for sharing!)

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#4312

Uh, no, I meant register to Bookwalker. As it stands, I cannot see that campaign.
Ah, but I can follow your link!

Okay, as you said, it’s only for a selection of manga (still totaling 20000 volumes total). As a campaign, manga that just got an anime adaptation are also included until March 31. (So they would not be usually, which makes me think that it’s only old stuff that is available).

#4313

Ah ok sorry, I thought you had already signed up (experimentally) at some point a long time ago. :roll_eyes:

That’s totally possible. I’m not very invested in manga so this was rather a discovery than an endorsement (sorry if I hadn’t made that clear from the start!). Anyways, as it’s free for a month I thought it was worth mentioning. But with the regular price of 800-something yen per month (which I did not see initially), this can’t be new and popular stuff, I guess. :cry:

1 Like
#4314

I will join for the 2022 challenge. Well I need to read lots to bring my backlog down a little bit. I probably have one of the biggest backlogs on this forum. The only way to actually finish it, is to get much faster at reading.
Goals for this year:
25 manga volumes
10 books
5 visual novels or video games (just finishing a videogame or visual novel in japanese doesn’t count, I need to actually understand it)

9 Likes
#4315

I went with Booklive, their sister company. :sweat_smile: It’s possible to transfer a Bookwalker library to Booklive (when registering? I forgot the details) but not the other way around. They had a better discount system (every day you can get a coupon, with one reroll) which did save me more money than Bookwalker, but it got nerfed down hard this fiscal year, so that now point back campaigns on Bookwalker are more advantageous. But I’m stuck :sweat_smile:

No no, don’t worry! I was just trying to understand what’s the catch.

That’s actually the cheapest way to get manga I have heard of so far. Assuming ~80 volume per month, that would be just 10 jpy per book. Even reading just 8 volumes per month would be cheaper than Book Off.

Well, the series getting an anime adaptation have to be at least somewhat popular, right?
Considering that’s for the “winter” anime, I wonder if they have a separate campaign for every season?

1 Like
#4316

Oh, thank you for finding out all that for me! I would never have thought that it would become available online. I’ll make sure to check it out then!

And this is good to know too. Thank you!

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#4317

You might want to ask if your library offers an Interlibrary Loan service. I don’t know which country you live in and whether that would be available to you or not, but I know that at least in Canada it’s possible to file requests for books not within your local library’s catalogue, and free of charge, the librarians will ship the book from whichever library in the country has it to you. (You can get books from the USA too if need be, but that will probably include a fee). So suddenly, the catalogue of the entire country becomes available to you!

There are a few drawbacks, one being having to fill out a separate online form for each book, as opposed to just searching for it on the catalogue and hitting “Place Hold,” and another being that the wait time for receiving books is pretty lengthy, around a month to be honest. (And you can’t renew holds either, but they usually give you enough time to read anyways.) But, you know, free manga!

And I’d like to add that just because you haven’t heard about your country having this kind of service, doesn’t mean it isn’t there–it’s a pretty obscure thing over here, that very few people bother using. So I’d recommend asking your librarian, just in case! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

4 Likes
#4318

My library already offers that system seamlessly for places from the same 区 (I live in Japan), but anyway even for stuff that are not so major, like 放浪息子, the wait time is already 6 to 8 months. I have experienced wait time of more than one year too, but I gave up and just bought the book instead.
I guess I can give it a try for older stuff, but I don’t think it scales to the number we were talking about, though.

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#4319

Yeah I remember you were quite fond of the coupons :smiley: Sad to hear they are gone (or at least not as valuable any more).

Well you could always run them in parallel, it’s probably a bit annoying (when figuring out which book is where) but it’s only that you need to search two places instead of one. Might be acceptable.

You know what? I literally discovered just the other day that Bookwalker also has proper coupons :crazy_face: :woman_facepalming: OMG I feel so stupid! They sent me messages all the while, and I thought they were just to announce their cashback sales and whatnot, so I did not read them properly, and some of them indeed are just announcements, but some others contain a proper coupon code that I can apply on top of the cashback and discount campaigns, as it seems :rofl:

4 Likes
#4320

If you look at the limited time freebies, there are some really popular shows among them, like popular shounen jump series, nana, teasing master takagi-san, kuroshitsuji, etc. The catch is that not all volumes are available, so that could be the case with the 20.000 manga as well.