I think that’s generally considered to be a reference to Wordsworth’s There was a Boy. (I read this one in last year’s advent on Natively.)
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I had a long day at work last night so didn’t read the mystery pick, then bad sleep and looking at it this morning I couldn’t bring myself to trudge through such a dense text. Instead I read the longer but easier 赤い手帖 by 中谷宇吉郎, there’s a 朗読 here if anyone is interested. I enjoyed it, the ending was quite different than I expected at the start of the story. I will note it’s not a happy story.
I then read 氷は金屬である because it was very short and I figured I could power through it which was true but I feel like I got nothing from it. The kanji was a bit archaic but nothing I haven’t seen before. But the topic…? Maybe if I weren’t so tired I’d find this more interesting, but my brain was turning off reading it. Not the day for this type of writing 
Also a 朗読 for this here
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Ah, I too read 氷は金屬である, but I wonder if it really counts as reading because if you ask me, I don’t even know exactly what I’ve read 
but I’ve had two busy days, and 猫の事務所/ yesterday reading’s felt too long for me.
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I poked about a bit to find out about what this was written for. Apparently it’s from 百日物語, which was a collection of a hundred essays that the author wrote for the 西日本新聞 newspaper as a daily column. I guess that’s why the short length and lack of “meat” – at a pace of one a day I suspect many of them are “here’s a Science Fact you might not know”. 中谷 宇吉郎 was a physicist who specialized in ice and snow (he was the first to create artificial snow crystals), so the topic here is on his home turf.
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Seeing you say that I went “Aha!” and assumed it was another author who wrote a very boring essay on types of freezing rain that I read a few years ago. But no! This the author of サラダの謎, a short story I adored!
I was instead thinking of 凍雨と雨氷 | L34 by 寺田寅彦, a physicist.
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…and also the model for the scientist character in Soseki’s 吾輩は猫である…
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Had no time yesterday so I read the 猫の事務所 story today. What a story. Poor かも猫. Man, office politics suck, no matter if it is cats or my office. Liked the story quite a bit, even though nothing much happens.
Solid workout for といったらない which is good practice for N1 next year 
EDIT:
And I finished the one for today メリイ•クリスマス. Another crazy story. This one, being pretty modern, was easy to read. I think I need to let this one sit for a while. I’m still thinking about what the story wanted to say, and I’m not sure If I have a coherent interpretation yet. The last two paragraphs were different from what I expected for sure…
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Worked some very long shifts the last few days and trying to juggle this with other reading, so might miss out on a few day-ofs, but decided to take a stab にが手と耳たぶの穴 since it looked challenging. Old kana! Yay!
にが手
I really couldn’t figure out what was going on with this text here until I realized it was just a definition of 苦手 I’d never encountered before
Not exactly sure why this is written with old kana unless the publication date listed is wrong, but maybe it’s a later published edition of an earlier work on folklore or something.
Ended up running out of time and not finishing this one, but I learned some stuff at least
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Aozora lists the first publication date as 1942, which pre-dates the spelling reforms. Presumably the 1963 collected works volumes opted to preserve the original spellings rather than modernize.
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I just finished and enjoyed reading 一房の葡萄 and the discussion. I didn’t know what to expect and mostly I was taking it at face value as a story from his childhood, but the discussion convinced me the themes went deeper
Summary
Interesting, thank you!
I thought that one was very fitting and interesting as well
I’d really like to see more from that world, too, it sounded like a tough situation for a child to make sense of
I like how he got across these subtle psychological points
This whole analysis blew my mind. I wasn’t in analysis mode and it didn’t occur to me at all, I’m so glad you took the time to explore that and share those thoughts.
Absolutely, I found the themes so compelling I think I might read his book 或る女 when I’m faster, it’s a story about a strong-willed woman struggling against a hypocritical male-dominated society
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More Aozora-ception, this book is apparently based on a woman who was briefly married to the author of the pre-vetted calendar’s day 5 story, Doppo Kunikida.
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I read about half of 教育と文芸 and realized I was absorbing barely any of it. I wish I liked 漱石. His writing style does absolutely nothing for me and I always find myself zoning out.
Anyways, I decided to yet again grab another Aozora and ended up with the same author of 赤い手帳 and today’s vetted pick (Merry Christmas) and it was a delight.
Thoughts on 非情な男 by 山川方夫 (朗読)
I liked the twist here and it had me laughing. I admit the MC doesn’t seem like a particularly nice guy, but at least he’s not a killer.
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Yesterday I read メリイ・クリスマス, and today I read サラダの謎.
メリイ・クリスマス: I wasn’t sure what to expect or where it was going, but the text was easy to read despite not being too short so it was a nice and fluid read. I found the ending quite interesting, it left me in a bit of a contemplative state. It was amusing how the wife also had someone keeping company in the meantime, but the whole ordeal was so peculiar that the husband/wife pair just (supposedly) made up and had their happy ending. I guess the story left me somehow a bit puzzled, but with a smile on my face.
サラダの謎 was a really nice read, actually. The cultural exchange aspects were interesting, and I like how the story centered around a relatively mundane theme (a salad) but had additional layers to it.
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I like his fiction, but this bit of non fiction wasn’t very exciting. Maybe it was a bit more directly relevant to the original lecture audience.
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氷は金屬である was a bit refreshing to read Despite being more on the technical side was at lot less head scratching for this one. One of my friends in college actually worked in a similar field, so was kinda cool to see some connections to that!
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Todays サラダの謎 was also easy to read. Good amount of onomatopoeia to look up .
I was thinking the whole time, WTF could the scrap of soap be. Never in a million years would I have thought about it being garlic…
Liked the story a lot.
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I read the mystery pick, オツベルと象 by 宮沢賢治 today. There’s a really good 朗読 for it here:
I was simultaneously like, ‘This is so easy to read’ and ‘Wait, what’s happening?’ 
Typical 宮沢賢治 experience for me. I ended up googling it since he’s so famous usually there is some analysis to be found online and indeed there was in this case: 『オツベルと象』宮沢賢治 — あらすじと感想・考察 | 青空文庫で名作を読もう！ - 青空文庫 開拓室
I primarily skimmed the portions under 考察 and admit I’m not sure I am fully satisfied by any of the theories put forward for the 寂しく line, but I can also see a few of them making sense with the overall vibe of the story.
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I can’t wait till I can actually manage a whole one of these per day consistently! There is quite a variety judging by the overview comments.
For my part I’m working my way through セロ弾きのゴーシュ. It’s a bit longer (more like 45 min narrated) and not on the calendars, but since it had been on my TBR for a while I’m glad to have an excuse to dip in. Difficulty wise the vocabulary and kanji are nothing unusual, but there are some tricky sentence constructions that I notice I just have to puzzle over a bit more than usual. I’m not sure what it is that makes them tricky as I generally don’t struggle with grammar. I think it’s the slight flare in the way the conductor speaks as well as the different turns of phrase related to performing music. Luckily I play cello and am also familiar with how a symphony rehearsal runs, and how other instruments work together in general, as there were several sentences I had to guess due to that kind of prior knowledge.
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Somehow I tired out my brain, and the last few days I haven’t been able to focus on any of the Aozora pieces I’ve tried. I started サラダの謎 yesterday and only read a paragraph or two before losing focus, but today it seems like brain is healed, and I was able to read the whole piece! I thought it was a fun and lighthearted nonfiction essay, enjoyed it!
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It’s amazing what a difference a clear brain makes!
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