In this case it didn’t end up bothering me. If I hadn’t been prepared, I might have been too wiped out to read the post-epilogue bits that night, so perhaps it’s even a good thing. 
That whole last quarter of the book was so good… I might want to reread those parts at some point.
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I can relate hard to that.
Another phenomenon I’ve noticed was “I’ll just check the color pages before going to bed”. Next thing I know, it’s 2am and I’m like 100 pages in. (That might be just me though)
濡れ衣です! But which series? 
Also, I should really start using my local library instead of just buying stuff on BookLive.
Yes, I think I would be more okay with book 5 if I had done that. But at the same time, I wanted to know what happens next.
Speaking of not spoiling anything, I need both of you to tell me when you are done with the prologue of volume 6 :0
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Yeah, the last several chapters of book 5 were fantastic. It’s a shame I didn’t like the middle part, or it would have easily been my favorite of the books so far.
Depends on the book I guess. A few of them have been really interesting and somewhat important to the story. But most of them aren’t that interesting overall. Even with the occasional interesting ones, I definitely also have that “the book is over” feeling.
Well, I finished the main story in Night Market last night, and decided to take a break before reading the other story. So I’ll likely start reading book 6 this weekend.
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In other news, I have finished 博士の愛した数式 late last night and it was fantastic!
Somehow, I feel like, recently, I haven’t been completely happy with any of the book I read. I was starting to wonder if the problem was with me (well, technically, it might be), but 博士の愛した数式 showed me that there are books I can totally enjoy.
It’s so weird to think that I took so long to start it because I didn’t think I would like it.
Like @NicoleIsEnough said, I actually followed the bookclub schedule for that one, taking a break every time I reached the end of a weekly section. And browsing the forum. Because of that I took way longer to read the book than I thought. On the plus side, though, my “regular status” went from 33% to 51% 
I’m almost done with my pile of books, with only 6 left.
- Re:Zero 10-11
- 百人一首
- 鹿の王 2
- DanMachi 14-15
(I have bought 12 books on top of that, though, but they do not count until I am done 
)
I’m hoping to join back some clubs, but I really have to think about time management. Or, at least, find a way to reduce the time I need to alternate between books. Somehow that’s always taking both time and mental energy, making me favor reading one book at a time.
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伯爵と妖精 – I chose it because it’s not an isekai and is completed. I’ve only read a bit of the first volume so far, but I’m interested to see where it will go.
Glad to hear you enjoyed 博士の愛した数式! I loved that one. 
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thirty-two volumes
… it’s also available at my local library!
Somehow feeling a weird sense of connection.
In any case, let me know how it is, before I start drowning myself in even more books.
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Who the heck is the person in between me and val lmao. They are updating their stuff but there is nothing about the person who books completed. Who is this mystery person and what is the meaning behind their actions
EDIT: Wait is it just valkow reading a second book haha
On an unrelated note, I notice @valkow is a always a bit ahead of me. You wouldn’t happen to be a fan of a little friendly competition would you?
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@Naphthalene 32 volumes but completed. Somehow it feels different to potentially throw my reading life away on a long series if it’s at least completed. … I will admit that part of this thinking is that I hope this series will distract me from catching up too quickly on 本好き. 
@Vanilla Yes, that’s also me, lol. I am not competitive, but maybe I should be–surely I’d read more. (Also thank you for the screenshot–for some reason I thought I’d set my goal at 26 books…)
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Maybe you’d be better off using a <br/> tag instead of a new table row.
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Hi Extensive Reading Thread!
I was kind of resisting posting in here because I’ve got my own backlog tracking system that keeps me reading just fine… but it seems fun and it felt a little weird lurking a lot and posting sometimes but never in the slightly more social parts of the forum.
I read a lot of manga last year, and some lengthy games, but only one novel. So the main thing I wanna do this year is increase the amount of full-on prose.
It should be easy… in the sense that I’ve already read one prose book this year! So reading literally any one other prose thing would technically get me there. Fingers crossed??
So far this year
人間椅子 ( 江戸川乱歩ベストセレクション 1)
This is a collection of Edogawa Ranpo stories that starts with “The Human Chair.” I enjoyed it a ton, and honestly it’s been a highlight of my year so far. They’re the right level (think Poe) of creepy/suspenseful to be gripping, but straightforward enough to know what’s going on fine and entice me to want to try translating someday. I was also pleasantly surprised that the age of the stories wasn’t much of an obstacle. It took some getting used to things like grammar kanji that’s now I think mostly passé like 筈 and 併し, and occasionally there’s specific references to Tokyo of the day that require some interesting wikipedia-delving, but otherwise I suppose the difficulty of older vocabulary may be lost on me who has to lots of stuff up anyway.
呪術廻戦 (up to the current volume, continued from last year)
The highlight for me here is that a close friend is a mega-fan of this series, and they have Korean editions of the book, so it was a ton of fun swapping language details we noticed back and forth. But it’s a cool series in its own right too. The tone and arc switches can be a little all over the place, and it was hard to understand the magic system until I realized it might as well just be X-Men, but I was very endeared to the author and his terrible handwriting.
Currently on the docket
ダーティペアの大冒険
I haven’t started this yet and don’t really know what to expect. I enjoy the parts of the anime I’ve seen, but I feel It’s easier to give them the benefit of the doubt in the dilemma of “is this kinda sexist in like, a fun cheesy 80s way where we can headcanon them as bisexual life partners kicking ass, or kinda sexist in like a bad just regular sexist way” when like, it’s a team of people making a fun show, instead of one dude writing a book. But who knows! I’m hopeful.
放浪息子
I also don’t know what to expect from this, but for very different reasons. I read part of this in English years ago, when I was much younger, gender was way more at the forefront of my mind, in comparison to now I’d read barely any manga, and the idea of learning Japanese hadn’t really occurred to me at all. Now those times are long gone and I feel like I might associate this too strongly with that year and it’ll be distracting. But I guess I’ll find out.
The other dilemma is that I only have a few volumes… Do I use that as an excuse to buy the rest so that I can finish the series in one fell swoop? Or do I use these couple volumes as a bellweather for how I’ll feel about the rest?
I don’t know, but I know I want to order books soon because new Dungeon Meshi is out, and in the past I know which side I’ve erred on… (it’s the side that involves buying more books)
幻影異聞録♯FE Encore
Meanwhile, I’m playing this game!
It’s fine. It’s the first thing I’ve “read” that’s both long and actually at or below my level, so it feels strange to be reading long dialogue scenes and not look that much stuff up. It’s got a pleasant vibe, the dungeons are pretty fun, and there’s like a billion different systems that level up after fights! So I’ll probably stick with it.
Anki talk
Anki talk must be hidden from polite society.
I’m in the “my cards are a total trashy mess and I like it that way” camp. They’re mostly raw imports, but sometimes I try to haphazardly fine-tune them with particular word lists like adding something to a list called “alt kanji” so I know to make the second or third kanji option the main point of the card when I import.
I also like to throw in other categories of stuff to break up the monotony, so not only are the cards messy, the deck is also completely disorganized! My favorite of these is prefecture names, because I have a kid’s “remember the prefectures” style book and so whenever one of these comes up and I read the section for that one, and so it’s a more memorable way of learning some geography than if I tried to learn all of them at once.
But I also throw people’s names and example grammar study sentences in there. It’s a huge mess, but I like it a lot. The neat and more precisely curated approach is impressive though!
I don’t wanna track page numbers, and the way I pick next media for myself is a contrived system that involves random chance, so I have no idea if I’ll end up reading anything anyone else is reading, but I might lurk and update stuff as I finish them!
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Love this series! There’s even a discussion topic to talk about the series as you read it, if you want!
On a somewhat related note, I read the first two volumes of 大人になっても by the same author. I’m planning to buy the next two volumes whenever I order more manga.
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I’ll keep that thread in mind! Stands to reason if I post in here enough I’ll get roped into a book club thread eventually…
Noted the other series too! That might be a great middle ground to check out if the weird personal context for Wandering Son I mentioned is too distracting (though I’m sure it won’t and I’ll enjoy 放浪息子 just fine!)
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Yay, welcome! Good luck with your goals this year.
Ooh, nice! I’ve read one Edogawa Ranpo novel, and I definitely want to read more. Maybe I’ll go with this and try his short stories. 
Good, good, glad you are keeping your anki talk behind closed doors as is only appropriate. Your hodgepodge deck sounds like fun, and clearly it’s working for you–that’s awesome.
Even if you don’t read what other people have read first, talking about it here could influence somehow to read it after you, which is also fun. I’m looking forward to hearing about your reading adventures!
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How I feel about my progress when I’ve kept up my one-chapter-per-day 2021 manga reading schedule without fail thus far:
How I feel seeing how much reading everyone else has accomplished:
Back to reading!
Or maybe doing my pending WaniKani reviews that’ve built up while I was reading today…
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Congratulations on sticking to your goal! There is definitely a dearth of level 20’s folk active in this thread and listening to what the big kids are doing can be kind of intimidating.
That was me after an abysmal start to 君の名は this morning.
Baby steps…
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君の名は early reading thought
If you haven’t reached chapter two yet, don’t fret over chapter one.
If you haven’t seen the movie, I’d even suggest not to bother with chapter one if it’s difficult to follow. You can skip right to chapter two and literally not miss anything. Then return to chapter one after finishing chapter seven.
If you have seen the movie, then you’ll know that while chapter one takes place at the start of the movie, it chronologically takes place just before the last scene in the movie, so there’s no harm in reading it between chapters seven and eight.
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Thanks for the tips! Much appreciated.
Between Silver Spoon’s quagmire of agricultural kanji and the rocky start to 君の名は, it hasn’t been a great day for feeling good about one’s reading ability
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that day will surely come. or so i’ve been told
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And I’ve decided to immediately discard that (well, to be fair, I read some of 百人一首, but it’s not something I can just power through) and rent 容疑者Xの献身 and 狐笛のかなた from the library. Because why not.
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I want to join this challenge too! SRS is driving me nuts now and I keep forgetting why I want to study Japanese in the first place. More books, less SRS!
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