[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

@Naphthalene and @ChristopherFritz I didn’t realize at first that other might mean games and such. >_>

So I’ve moved myself into both book and manga and I’m just going to pretend that my 20? means 20 across both. :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, @ChristopherFritz what ereader is that? I’m looking at getting a new ereader that can handle manga as well as books (and hoping to start getting some Japanese books at least in ebook, not 100% on the manga yet because it depends on how nice it is to read in ebook format).

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It’s nice that you already have a bunch of series in mind. I have a bunch in my “plan to read” list, but not many that I really want to read right away. And a few that I do want to read aren’t being printed anymore, so I have to look into getting them used.

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Larger e-reader details

This is the very expensive Boox Gulliver. It’s not without issues, but I’ve been able to overcome them.

Google did a Play Store update at one point before I bought the reader that coincidentally blocks the Play Store from working on the device. There’s a firmware update that required plugging the reader into my desktop computer and doing some steps and I think I had to reformat the device in the process (or maybe I just tried that as a fix for the Play Store issue?) And then even after the firmware update, the Play Store still doesn’t work for me… But…I can sideload apps! Since I don’t have any paid apps on the device, just free ones, I’ve been able to download and sideload things like the Kobo reader I use (since I buy e-manga and e-books through Kobo).

I also installed a screenshot program so I can take screenshots, and then use the built-in image editor to “write” notes onto images. (The included stylus works nicely for this.)

As for the good aspects, the size is really nice. I wish I’d gotten the slightly larger sized one, but I’m cheap and these larger e-readers are very expensive.

Manga is very readable (although older releases may be a little blurry). Here’s a sample of a clear, readable manga (dollar coin is for size reference between photos):

Zooming is crazy fast, and is useful for hard-to-read kanji or furigana:

The overall system is fairly quick, too (for an e-reader).

For books, I’m currently using my smaller Kobo reader because I like the smaller size. I haven’t tried reading on the Boox Gulliver, but I probably should for note-taking abilities.

For me, it’s a mix of:

  • “I’ve read this in English, and want to re-read it.”
  • “I’ve been meaning to read this, so why not in Japanese?”
  • “This series seems nice, and it’s easy enough to read.”
  • “I’d probably enjoy this more as an anime, but it gives me some variety.”

There there’s always the tried and true method of downloading free previews of manga and flipping through them for things I might like. Actually, I shouldn’t mention that, because out of about 60 previews, I’ve only picked up about four series for reading, two of which I’ve either read in English or watched the anime subtitled.

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I was never really into manga before learning Japanese (only read two series in English), so I never really got those. :sweat_smile:

I think I’ve ordered one series based on previews? It really is tough just based on that. So far my main sources have been reading the original manga of anime I really enjoyed (ご注文はうさぎですか, 放浪息子, やがて君になる), but there are very few anime (even among ones I really enjoyed) that I liked enough to bother reading the original source material.

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I’ve added myself to the list! I’m trying to read at least one volume of manga a week and I’d like to read my first book this year.

Some tentative manga plans:

  • The rest of 黒子のバスケ (3-30)
  • Volume 7 of 聲の形
  • 美少女戦士セーラームーン with the book club
  • more ふらいんぐうぃっち (both with the new club starting and then on my own)
  • at least the first volumes of よつばと!and ARIA, just to get the big beginner’s manga out of the way

I’ll be reading the next なぜ?どうして? book with the Absolute Beginner’s Book Club starting in February. I’m hoping I can get far enough in my grammar studies to read one of the old books from the Beginner’s Book Club.

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Thanks for the great info and pictures. I’ve been leaning towards a kobo reader. I currently have a kindle, but I want to get out of the mobi closed garden and move over to epub. How troublesome is it to buy Japanese books and manga on kobo? That also have to be a consideration. ^^

Edited to add: Well, I went looking for the info on the forum and guess who had already written about it: @ChristopherFritz Where do you get your digital Manga/Books? - #18 by ChristopherFritz :joy: Thanks!

I haven’t really found anything yet that I think is a true gem, unfortunately.

One thing that I did link in the Cat Club thread recently is a simple gag manga about someone’s musings about owning a cat. Not a lot of content available on Pixiv, unfortunately.

https://comic.pixiv.net/works/6213

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I would super recommend Zenitendou as a follow-on from the detective books / that kind of level! It’s definitely the easiest one we’ve done.

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Oh, thanks for that info! Even if it wasn’t directed at me. :slight_smile: I thought that one sounded so interesting and I like the detective book(s) (I really meant to read the second one with you guys but then I read no Japanese from October on more or less. :sweat_smile:).

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I’ve added myself to the wiki, I am super excited to start reading!

I am currently working hard on the vocabulary of 獣の奏者 to be able to follow the bookclub. I bought the book today and been able to read and quite understand the first page. It’s going to be hard but really fun as well I guess! I also plan to read the other books if I am able to finish the first one.

Concerning manga, I’ll start with some chapters of Hxh while I am in Japan, but when going back to France I’ll finally start to read all the Bleach and Beelzebub manga I have at home.

I feel that I still lack a lot of vocab, so I think the extensive reading will help with that trough repetition.

I went to BookOff today to buy 獣の奏者, and finally bought a loooot of other books/manga. I really love this place!

So I guess I have enough to read for a very long time :upside_down_face:

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Edit: I misread that you were looking to read comics on a Kobo reader, and my reply below was based on that misreading. For Kobo for buying from, you can install their software on any Android device and Windows (and I assume Mac) desktop computers.

Aside from a Kobo reader, the reader I’m using for comics you can use any other e-book store that has their own free Android app, you can sideload it onto the Boox Gulliver. In other words, whatever app you already use, you can also use on the Gulliver. (Unless it’s an iPhone exclusive app.) At that point, you have to ask yourself, you want to spend that much money on an e-reader. (I’m a money-saver-type who was very hesitate to buy at that price, but a few months in, I have zero regrets.)

Edit: But regarding Kobo’s readers, I don’t know if they have any large enough to read comics on. But for books, it’s really nice. But no side-loading apps form other stores.

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(Click the image since Discourse decided to cut it off.)

This is how I feel when I see onomatopoeia words similar to ones I know. Oh, you said モテモテ? Must be similar to もちもち. :laughing:

In retrospect I should have known what モテモテ meant since I’ve seen モテる plenty of times. But since I knew what もちもち meant it was still pretty funny. :laughing:

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You didn’t misread. I am currently planing to buy one of the bigger kobo readers that are supposed to handle manga fairly well, and while you can’t side-load apps on it, you can side-load any file of the right format onto it, which is all the flexibility I need in an ebook reader. But I will admit I’d never even heard of the Boox Gulliver, so maybe I need to research ereaders more.

The question would then be, where do you get those files from? Because all Japanese ebook vendors I know of only let you use their specific apps, you cannot download the files as epub, say. Unless you crack that, which I think some people described elsewhere.
(But if you find such a source that lets you download epub without cracking, I’d be all ears to learn about it!)

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In this case, I was more talking about ebooks in English. I am a voracious reader, and I read probably around 100-150ish fiction books a year in English (with a few non-fiction thrown in). Although a lot of that volume is also rereading my favorites each year. (I don’t actually track my reading because it is so large, but I know I reread a 49 book long book series between April and August this year, which means I read about 50 books in the span of 5 months.) And for fiction ebooks in English, it is possible to find non-DRM books at most ebook stores (kobo, amazon, etc.), but you have to check them individually since each publisher on the platform decides whether they have DRM or not (and they can also choose per book).

So for Japanese books I don’t know. So far I’ve only gotten paper books and picked up a couple of free mangas on both Amazon.co.jp and Kobo. Sorry.

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Oh, I see. Yes, for English books this is probably a totally different story. I regularly buy English non-fiction ebooks, and there are lots of non-DRM options to choose from.

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And here I thought me reading all 14 books of Wheel of Time in five months was impressive.

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Well, those books are meaty! And I’d at least count more or less all of them as two. I wasn’t reading fantasy bricks, but (modern) normal sized mystery novels. (I say modern, because mystery novels from the 50’s for example was much shorter on average, so if I was reading Agatha Christie mysteries, they would have been shorter.)

I don’t read fast, I just read a lot. When I get in reading mode, I tend to read probably all evening (or late into the night if I got to my reading late) so around 2-4 hours every weekday and more than that on weekends. Then I will have times when I read less, but my high reading periods means I still average about 2 books a week.

Btw, I’ve read the first few books of the Wheel of Time and I own them all, is it worth it to read the whole series? (Sorry for the side-discussion of books not read in Japanese.)

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I think it’s worth it. It gets really slow in the middle (books 7-10 or so), but it starts and ends really strong. It’s been a while since I’ve read them, so I don’t remember specifics.

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Thanks! Maybe I’ll start into that series again and see how long it takes me to read it, hehe. :stuck_out_tongue: