[2024] 多読/extensive reading challenge

You cannot keep track of the number of pages you read in a day, you can only mark your reading days in the calendar. When you finish a book, it will count all pages towards that month. That’s a bit stupid, unfortunately.

1 Like

I see, thanks for the explanation. Well, I guess that means I’ll just have to make sure I finish at least one book each month then. So be it!

4 Likes

Well to be fair, natives using the app are presumably reading more efficiently, so that wouldn’t matter that much in the end.

1 Like

Still, even a native might finish a book on the first of the month…
But of course it just doesn’t matter as much for a fluent reader, which definitely is the target audience.

2 Likes

We’re halfway through the year. How’s everyone doing so far?

6 Likes

Well I wanted to read four books this year and I’ve barely started my second, so… not great.

2 Likes

I kinda want to do an update on my progress (basically collating all the stuff I have said, I guess), but I haven’t found the time.

Anyway, I’m basically only reading the book club stuff on the week-end (3 books and one manga) and then doing nothing the rest of the week. I feel a bit like a slob, Japanese learning-wise.
I feel part of the reason is that I will reach my goal for the year with whatever book I finish next (probably Re: zero I think) and even though I have been trying to talk myself into aiming for stretch goals… well it doesn’t feel as motivating anymore.
I thought I would instead try to reduce (again) my review pile on floflo… but I ain’t doing that either.

Soooo, there’s some positive and some negative I guess.

6 Likes

I’m doing fabulously! I’ve just passed my two-year anniversary of learning Japanese, and I am super-pleased with my progress so far, especially in the last couple of months, largely due to me reading a lot.

When I started into the year, I was part of the Beginner Book Club, reading Time Girl, which was my first real book. So when this thread started, I had no idea what I could expect in terms of personal achievements, but it turns out that I have already surpassed both my goals, which I set at 5 books and 6 manga :tada:

I think it was only during last week’s JLPT that I realized how much progress I had actually made. Reading was always a very stressful aspect for me, with a lot of skimming and skipping, but this year, in the grammar + reading section, when I turned to the long text and the information retrieval question, I had almost half of the section’s time left! So I could read the whole text and the flyer without being stressed out, and when I was done with those, I still had 10 minutes so I could double-check a few grammar questions I was not sure about. Granted, this was only N4, but it felt so easygoing compared to last time.

So, I’d like to thank all of you very much for motivating me and sometimes for dragging me along, be it in the reading groups, the read-aloud sessions or in this thread. :pray:

14 Likes

Soooooo slooooooow :turtle:

But I’m learning a lot, I’m practicing the grammar that I learn through other means, and it’s the most enjoyable part out of all my Japanese studies.

So still very worth the time and effort!

7 Likes

I’m making more progress with English reading than with Japanese, but I’m still happy about that:D I have too many series started in Japanese, so I need to fix that I think :thinking:

I’m planning to finish Girls’ last tour next I think, then increase my read manga number cheating with Chi’s Sweet home :joy: So hopefully from now on I will move with the same pace, I’ve been enjoying it so far :blush:

5 Likes

Getting back into reading action now that the JLPT is over.

Just finished Cardcaptor Sakura volume 2~

I forgot how many different forms or love were in this story. I love it.

6 Likes

I just finished the third story from 神の子供達はみな踊る (it consists of 6 independent short stories). Unfortunately, I cannot continue reading at the moment because I will be travelling for an extended period and I cannot take the book with me. So I will give my opinion for the first half of the book.

Regarding language: I found the first story to be refreshingly easy to read, with lots of N3-vocabulary and grammar, and a story that was easy to follow. The second story was a bit more difficult to get into at the beginning because of all the new vocabulary, but later on it went ok as well. But the third story was at times really hard to understand and to follow, I have no idea why. So I’m not too sad about taking a break from this book for a while (because, who knows, maybe this pattern of increasing difficulty is continued into the remaining stories? :scream:)

Regarding contents

Sometimes I’m really worried about Murakami’s childhood, or his sexual encounters… Amazing how he can come up with one weird character after another! Especially remarkable is of course the mother from the third story.

Other than that, I just love his writing style. He can paint a clear and deep description of the scenery at hand and the characters involved, in just two or three simple sentences. He often does flashbacks into the past to add information about the characters, and this always feels elegant and effortless, and it was never confusing to me. I also like his short detours where he throws in some philosophical thoughts, like the thoughts about the salmon skin in the first story or about being challenged by the gods vs. challenging them in the third.

Overall I was a bit disappointed that the stories really had almost nothing to do with the Kobe earthquake, despite the book’s English title.

8 Likes

Same here, I’m using my first weekend after the JLPT mainly for reading. I bought a lot of beginner/lower intermediate level material that I never went through which is bothering me a little bit so it will be nice to move all of these to my “done” pile. I have only limited interested in most of the content so I thought it would be perfect for extensive reading, just going through it as fast as I can. And if I miss something then so be it.

Having the bookmeter account turns out to be quite motivating, I’m really enjoying it so far.

Happy travelling! :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Ugh, I have a good backlog of personal stuff to read, too. I keep just reading digital stuff because I carry it everywhere, but I really need to read some paper manga while at home…

4 Likes

It’s cool seeing my post from 5 months ago where I had 9 読んだ本 and 32 積読本 and seeing that it’s now 28 and 12 respectively.

9 Likes

Is there btw a way to see your progress on bookmeter cumulative, over time?

There is the daily amount of pages that I see as a chart and then I have a table with the total amount of pages read. But not e.g. a chart that shows the total amount of pages or books over time. Not that it is essential but… I just like charts, you know…

I’m just 1/3 of the way towards my yearly goal, but my reading speed has also increased by a lot, so I’m not too worried yet. (and to be honest, just reading twice as much as I already have would still be 16 books, which still is pretty good)


This kind of makes me wish that there was a feature for comparing what your stats look like now to what they looked like some certain amount of time ago.

Click your picture and you will go to a page with a pie chart of your most read authors and a graph that is probably the closest thing to what you want. It doesn’t cover all the time since the creation of your account, though.

1 Like

Yeah, that chart made me realize that I want MORE charts :wink:

I guess I will just have to start my own google spreadsheet and enter some historic data manually.

2 Likes

I’m also quite disappointed by the charting abilities of bookmeter :-/

Ah well, I just need to read enough books so that it doesn’t matter any more…

6 Likes