[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

DanMachi has a ton of words that are just katakana versions of Greek words (and other languages). Mythology plays a big role in the setting. I’m assuming it might lead to a crazy amount of misparsed words. Overall, I thought it was on the easier end of the spectrum.

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I really want to read something for spooktober but I probably won’t have time to do it. Like always I will buy some ebooks and they will end up on my to read list. It’s probably better to buy some physical books so I can take them wherever I go and that way I may even finish reading them.

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Hi, I’d like to join this challenge even though it is going to be reset for 2021 soon. My short-term goal is to get my amazon JP account set up so I can start downloading books. Ideally I’d like to read in my browser. Eventually I’d like to have the habit of getting up earlier so I can read something enjoyable in Japanese for 1 hour first thing in the morning, but will probably build up to that. よろしくお願いします。

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If you are planning to read in a browser anyway, you may prefer Bookwalker to Amazon (no fuss with Japanese address/VPN). And if you want to go with Amazon, I heard about some issues with their browser reader (for example, bad manga quality) so you may want to check their app.

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Finished 狐火の家! That is by far the fastest I’ve ever read a book in Japanese. Looking at this year, and just at ones I read without taking breaks to read other things:

  • Wの悲劇 (389 pages) 26 days
  • All You Need Is Kill (276 pages) 19 days
  • とらドラ! 5 (312 pages) 23 days
  • 無人島に生きる十六人 (274 pages) 20 days
  • ビブリア古書堂の事件手帖 ~栞子さんと奇妙な客人たち~ (307 pages) 17 days
  • 乙女ゲーム 1 (300 pages) 15 days
  • 乙女ゲーム 2 (302 pages) 13 days
  • 狐火の家 (349 pages) 8 days

?? Well, I’ll take it. Now I’ve started the next 本好き! <3

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Starting 秋の牢獄 today, with a planned pace of 10 pages per day minimum. If we start 本好きの下剋上 vol. 2 with a two-week break that’ll give me just enough time to finish it. If not…well I’ve been double-booking myself (haha! no pun intended) for a little while now so it shouldn’t be too bad.

The 帯 on my book says 夜市の次、これ! which I didn’t register when I initially got it. I’m curious whether it’s supposed to be in the same universe or just for returning fans of the author.

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Just for people who like the author’s style.

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Instead of setting up an amazon jp account, I set up a bookwalker account to start. Thanks @Aislin. I also purchased some tadoku graded readers to get in a little more handholding while it still feels helpful. As I said in my first post, my goal is to carve out some dedicated time to do Japanese reading each weekday morning, and I will start doing that this week when the tadoku books arrive. Cheers, everyone. Happy reading this week.

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So far I don’t feel like those katakana words bloat the word count too much. I’ve been reading a bit over 10 pages everyday, and added about 40 words per day. Hjälp!

But in reality it’s probably going to add up about 1k new words total. It’s definitely a step up in difficulty from all the other LNs I’ve read. Although that list is quite small, and those were recommended as easy to read: Kino, Hamefura, Butayarou, Konosuba.

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Just finished volume 10 of 本好き, which puts me at 60% of arc 3. Again, that’s my favorite arc so far. Can’t wait to see what will happen during this book and the next. Things have been going a bit too smoothly for the main character, so I feel like some major issues are coming our way :joy:

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Suddenly I’m reading much less manga. This month I’ve gone from +15 on my volume a day goal pace to +5. At first I was attributing it to doing more novel reading, but I feel like I might actually be in a slump! I am definitely reading a bunch of manga I really really like, so that isn’t the problem, and real life isn’t being any more of a jerk than is usual this year… :thinking: Maybe 300 is a formidable barrier and once I drag myself past it things will look up. This reading less manga thing means I am also getting behind in my book clubs, so I hope I can bounce back soon.

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Well ahead of my 10 pg/day goal with 秋の牢獄; just finished the first (titular) story at 72 pages. This book rules so far, really glad I picked it up way back when I got my copy of 夜市. It’s got that really nice blend of mystery and slightly existential horror that I liked a lot in the last book.

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Well, I reached my extended goal for this year by finishing 本好き 11 earlier today.
Some stats from Bookmeter:

A bit over 50 pages per day on average, which is about what I was aiming for.
I’m still unsure about what I will do next year in terms of goals. My original plan for this year was to spend more time on other aspects of the Japanese language (mostly listening). Obviously, restraint didn’t went well. I kept telling myself that reading is still practice… but honestly it doesn’t feel like I’m learning at this point. Which is fine too, but then I should really change my state of mind and dedicate some time to studying for real as well.

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After starting about a year ago, I have now finished all the Haikyuu!! :volleyball: volumes I own, 1-40. As my first manga series (in Japanese), reading speed was super slow in the beginning, but having watched the anime I could follow the plot with no problem. Imagine spending 45 min on just one chapter, lots of words and grammar I didn’t know.

There’s still 5 volumes left in the series, the last one yet to be released (November 4th according to Bookwalker). I consider just reading the rest as e-books… e-manga? :thinking: online. Less cost and no wait. Might get the physical books too sometime later, since it would be nice to have the complete set :3

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It’s ten weeks until the new year, and I’ve just passed my 74th volume of manga (well over my goal of 52). If I read 3 volumes per week for the rest of the year, that would neatly put me at double my original goal and a yearly average of two per week :thinking: Considering that I have 1.3 novels to finish in that same time, I’m not sure I want to commit to this right away but it’s something I’m thinking about.

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My attempt to control the ever-increasing number of interesting book clubs is to read (as much as possible) the books one after another instead of in parallel as this introduces less mental switching. As part of this experiment, I finished 獣の奏者 today (I think this is about 7 weeks early). I was behind by two weeks anyways, and so I figured I could as well just finish the book while reading in catch-up mode :sweat_smile:

Incidentally, I’ve also reached my 2020 goal of 10 books and 10 manga :tada:
It didn’t really feel like that much, but my Bookwalker account tells me it’s true :wink:

These are the books and manga I've read in case somebody is interested.

Books:

  • 雨と雪
  • 霧の向こうの不思議な町
  • 鹿の王 1 - 4
  • 知ってびっくり! 日本の歴史のお話 前編 (a Japanese history book for children)
  • Night Market
  • 獣の奏者 1 - 2

Manga:

  • Flying Witch 2 - 7
  • Yuru Camp 1
  • ドラゴン、家を買う
  • Fruits Basket 1 - 2
  • 三月のライオン 1

For the rest of the year, I’d like to continue reading ahead for some book clubs, so let’s see how this turns out. I should be able to finish one or two books and a couple of manga until the end of the year, so my proposed goal turned out to be a safe bet.

For next year, I will probably set myself a goal that’s not too far from this year’s – if I’m honest to myself I spent a really large amount of my time on reading, and I should maybe consider taking other things into account again as well…

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As expected, I didn’t read the second 本好き as quickly as I did my last novel, 狐火の家, reading on average about five pages fewer per day, but for me it was still really fast, finishing in ten days. If this is my new normal in terms of daily brain availability for reading novels in Japanese, my yearly goal for manga is in trouble. (Which is fine, though to falter this late in the year would be a little bit of a wrench.)

Another factor is that I haven’t had any novel book clubs for a while, having purposefully read ahead and finished all of them, but next week I am probably starting 雪国. I guess I’ll see what happens. (Also, will I ever catch up on manga book clubs.)

Tonight I’ll start the next in the 防犯探偵・榎本 series, 鍵のかかった部屋! Excited as always to spend time solving locked room mysteries with Aoto and Enomoto. Maybe when I finish this series, I’ll rewatch the drama. :heart_eyes:

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Gah! I am so impressed by everyone’s reading commitments. It is fun to hear about the novels and manga you are reading!! The site bookmeter looks really neat as well. I am excited to advance to where I feel comfortable enough to get into native material. Today I am going to start level 2 tadoku books. My goal is 1 hour of reading a day through the end of the year for the next 6 weeks (through first week of December). This should give me a good sense of my reading pace. I’m hopeful I’ll finish up the tadoku series and then maybe can pick up something from the beginner bookclub to set a new goal for the final weeks of 2020. Delighted!

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I recently finished R帝国, a novel I started reading because I wanted to read something dystopian in Japanese. It was dystopian alright, but also difficult and tiring to read at times if I’m honest.

basically spoiler-free Review

I’m not sure how to review this.
There is lots of politics talk, and war talk, and religion talk, and international relations talk, and influence of the media on our lives talk, etc. It explored a lot of really interesting themes, but maybe too many different themes? (at times I was thinking “seriously, you just had to put that topic in there as well?”)
It was a very bird’s eye view kind of dystopia, with a focus on organizations, countries, media, rather than the characters themselves. Also, the main characters themselves were aware of the dystopian nature of their reality from the very beginning, while I prefer it when everything in the world is presented as perfectly fine and normal to a rather oblivious character, leaving it up to the reader to form their own opinion about the world.
I somehow found it really hard to relate, emphasize, or even care for any of the characters. I couldn’t even really keep the backstories of the two main characters straight if I’m being honest (not sure if that’s due to me taking some breaks from reading or if the character descriptions were just weak).
It felt like the characters were only an empty vessel to deliver a message, instead of actually being part of a story. I also read some bookmeter comments saying that maybe the book would have been better published as an essay, rather than a novel.

The general themes explored were very interesting however, and also very complex. The biggest one was based around media and public opinion, and around the fact that we only see what we want to see and our tendency to ignore everything else, as to not cause any disturbance to our personal bubble of ignorant happiness.

It also felt really good to be able to read a book with these sorts of themes :slight_smile:

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I plan to import some books and manga. Does anybody here know a good collection of japanese ghost stories?

I didn’t have much time to read this month. Now that I have more time I will try to catch up on bookclubs.

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