Happiness Week 2 - Absolute Beginner Book Club

There is something nice about adding words you’ve learned from reading to an SRS deck, because you’ve learned them in a specific context and that context helps remember them. However, it’s a bit of a chore adding all the words to an SRS deck. There will also be some that are really not that common and probably not worth the effort reviewing repeatedly.

I’ve tended to focus on downloading Anki decks that someone else has already done the work on e.g. decks by JLPT level, Core 5k/10k, vocab lists from a specific textbook etc. I do this on the understanding that I’m learning words that someone else has curated to be a more common group of words.

I then just add a handful of words from the bookclub books to my own Anki “bookclub” deck. I often tag them so I know where they came from originally. The sort of words I pick to add:

  • Words that strike me as useful to learn
  • Words that seem common or are listed as “common words” in Jisho
  • Words that I remember coming across previously but had forgotten
  • Words that feel like useful vocab for continuing to read that particular manga series
  • Words that strike me as particularly fun to learn and reuse

You might also want to look at Kitsun.io - someone might have already built the deck for a book you are reading.