Must be a new feature… Looks like it does it every time, not just the first time. So I’m going to report that to Discourse and see what they say.
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Alrighty, finished my book in a day thing. Was a success
obnoxious humble brag complaining
I’ve been reading since the time I was probably unable to pass even N5, and pretty much the whole time I’ve been reading what I want. Its really just been light novels and visual novels that are really just as difficult as those light novels. It was nice because I got enjoyment from learning and was able to have the sentences I learn from be of interest to me. Like there was a reward to comprehension. Fast forward, and I didn’t really feel like I was learning as much so that feeling of joy was gone, so I had to rely on enjoyment from the actual content. Not much of a problem because there was a lot of interesting content out there for me. Fast forward to now and its kinda at a point where I have to acknowledge that the amount I’m learning from books I want to read isn’t very much.
Like I got to where I am by challenging myself and using my time efficiently. But with that comes this mindset that if something is easy or even effortless, then its basically wasted time because I could be using that time to learn and read harder stuff. I don’t read any manga anymore for this exact reason, but I didn’t really care because I had books I wanted to read. Now its like, well even those feel too easy so what do I do.
I more or less have decided that I’d like to be comparable if not better than a native my age when it comes to reading, and Im far from that, so slowing down doesn’t feel like an option. At the same time though, it feels like to keep improving at the pace I was, I’ll need to read much harder material. And…I just can’t find much that interests me. Like I thought the monogatari series might be harder, but nope. I’ve looked around for hard novels and stuff that may interest me…but no luck.
I honestly have no doubt that if I read the stuff I want, I’ll come across pretty much everything eventually anyways, but it just doesn’t feel efficient. I know its not. So its like for the first time ever do I sacrifice reading what I want to get better at japanese faster? Its an annoying decision to have to make because I know that compared to before, I’ll feel like I lost something.
I dunno, I just felt like rambling into the void I guess. I figured on here some people might be able to relate.
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If you’re looking for more challenging books, maybe you can find something in here?
As for them being interesting for you, I have obviously no idea, sorry…
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I’ve looked through amazons listing of Naoki prize winners, but I don’t think I’ve checked the winners of that prize, actually. So thanks, I’ll take a look right now.
Yeah, the interest part is really what makes it tough. Usually I’m not a fan of more serious stuff, and it seems like the more difficult the writing, the more serious the subject matter when it comes to literature. Either way, I’ll have an open mind and give it a look!
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Oh yeah, we have those too 
There are a few reviews in the Akutagawa thread already, and while I agree that you can find lots of serious stuff in literature, there seem to be a few picks with the full load of blood, sex and gore in case you’re aiming for that 
See you over there! 
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Done!
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Aye, I started getting that message on one of the Short Questions threads…
Is there an easy way to track how many manga chapters have been published for a manga? I’m trying to figure out when おとなになっても volume 5 is likely to come out, but I don’t know how to find out how many chapters have come out since volume 4…
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Not sure, but in general I just google [title] [volume] 発売日予想 or something of that effect. People tend to have already done all the maths for me.
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Still couldn’t find anything with that. Oh well.
I just tried, and the first result I got told me
「おとなになっても」の単行本5巻の発売日は、 2021年6月16日 と予想します
Which is obviously not up to date 
Either it’s out already, or they have no idea either.
It seems like it’s published in the magazine Kiss, which Wikipedia says is monthly and comes out every month.
So you could maybe extrapolate from that and how many chapters are in a volume (assuming a chapter shows up in each issue).
In my relatively limited experience following manga in volume + chapter form, they’re pretty quick to publish the volume after enough chapters have accumulated. With a Harta series like Dungeon Meshi (~ 7 chapters a volume, Harta misses two months), the rate of “a few months quicker than 1 per year” seems to line up.
Oh, also! You could check the dates of the volumes on bookwalker:
- 2019/10/11
- 2020/3/13
- 2020/8/12
- 2021/1/13
Kinda seems like we might be overdue with that method…
It looks like Bookwalker has Kiss available (as EKiss, which is a great name for a digital edition but it seems to be the same magazine) for possible advanced detective work.
It seems like Takako Shimura’s name is on the cover with the author listing for the most recent two issues, but I don’t spot it on some others, so perhaps it just didn’t have a new chapter for an issue or two.
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They are guessing based on the previously release dates. I expected it to come out in June as well.
Yep. Like I said, I tried that as well so definitely overdue. I’ll check out the digital magazine as you suggested.
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Ah! I found a mention of 連載再開の『おとなになっても』in this issue’s description:
So it stopped serialization for a few issues it seems. Ctrl-F for 志村貴子 and you should be able to find where it stopped and figure out how many months extra you may have to wait.
It seems like 3 issues lack 志村貴子 so probably the next volume will come out in September or so @seanblue
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The information could be buried somewhere on her Twitter feed as well. Way too much to look through though. 
For now I’m happy with your estimate. Given this information I’ll probably order more manga after とんがり帽子のアトリエ volume 9 comes out later this month.
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Yeah, it’s a pain in the neck It’s always super weird to me that the digital magazines don’t always at least include the table of contents in the preview, and that they don’t include actual chapter numbers in the table of contents in the first place.
My detective work above was definitely informed by my previously trying and completely failing to figure out how many issues of eizouken had come out after the last volume and which magazine issue the first one of those was in…
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The only other manga I’ve ever looked up in its magazine is ご注文はうさぎですか, and since it’s literally first in every single volume it’s really easy to keep track of!
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I think it is also important to remember why you want to be so good at reading. Is it because you want to read all the interesting manga/light novels/visual novels/novels in Japanese? Or is it a different reason.
At one hand I get that you want to read harder stuff to get better quicker, on the other hand, if those books are not interesting for you, why read them if you can also read things that you wanted to read? The things you find easier now, will only become more easy, so will you never read any manga/LN/VN/novel again that is ‘below your level’?
The most important thing is that you do what you want to do. It may look a bit slower, but enjoying the content you read is important as well. Reading with the goal to read more of what you can read already by first reading more difficult books seems like your running ahead to your goal while passing your reason for the goal (if that is your reason) seems a bit strange.
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Honestly its hard because I both want to improve so that I can read what I want to read and because I just really like seeing myself get better and make progress. The learning itself is a pretty decent sized chunk of the enjoyment. So the problem lies in that I both really want to go all out in improving and also go all out and enjoy the content that I wouldn’t have been able to years ago.
Right now, I’m learning towards reading what I want to read since I’ll still improve, just slower. But still, I am going to give a few other books a try and see if maybe I could spark some interest when it comes to authors with more difficult writing styles and whatnot. That would be the most preferable outcome since it would be two birds with one stones, so really I’ll just go from there.
I might one day. Right now I just feel like I’m wasting my time when I do since there has always been harder stuff I want to read. Like why read a volume of manga I like where I literally learn nothing vs a light novel chapter that I also like where I can at least see 蘊蓄 and 団欒 and add them to some anki cards so that I’m both having fun reading and having fun learning at the same time. As the list of alternative harder things that I still enjoy keeps shrinking, I might go back and just let myself enjoy things without feeling like I need to get some learning out of it.
Yeah I do admit that reading light novels was my original goal, so in that case it doesn’t make much sense. But since then, I’ve just really fallen in love with japanese and love learning it. Its hard to tell if I like it more because its just new to me or because I actually like it more than english, but really I just have a drive to learn all that I can. That drive just happens to conflict with my monke brain at my current stage.
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How varied has your palette been genre-wise?
That’s one of the reasons I like reading manga magazines, is it’s varied enough I think it would be a long time before ever hitting that “learning literally nothing” point when there’s like, a geology manga, a shoe-making manga, a hotelier manga, a mythology manga, gourmet manga, like 5 different historical periods and 5 different fantasy settings, etc. all together.
I do relate to the “no, I should stop that and read THIS while I’m so excited about learning” feeling sometimes though…
Maybe it’d help to think about easier things you like as your reinforcement stack, and new harder stuff as a challening stack? Both are critical for reading, I think, not just the latter.
If you’ve any interest in mysteries, that’s been an engaging vector for me to read older and more intricate novels and pick up a lot of vocab along the way.
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