December 31st
Card Captor Sakura volume 4 – progress report
Yesterday: Finished chapter 17, continued up to page 176.
Today: Finished volume 4. 
Aand done!
This officially marks the end of my late autumn/winter challenge. I didn’t have everything ready to join back in October, so my challenge lasted from November 1st to the December 31st instead.
Word or expression of the day:
実家 - (じっか) - (one’s parent’s) home
Small recap of my first read-every-day-challenge:
I’m pleasantly surprised that I managed to read around 8 manga volumes (I count the Aria: the masterpiece volumes as two volumes each) within 2 months. This is especially kind of astonishing because I had never read a full book/manga before. Years ago, I attempted reading a manga once but didn’t make it far because I got fed up with my lack of (Kanji) knowledge and I couldn’t find the motivation to push through – on the contrary, I was very disheartened and beat myself up over it.
Frankly, I think that my fate this time would have been similar – I may have tried reading Aria, put it on hiatus after struggling and opted for NHK easy articles or something instead – if it weren’t for this challenge and the corresponding book club pages.
With this challenge, I was capable of sticking to reading every day and see others thrive (and struggle) which gave me more incentive to continue reading despite struggling quite a bit. I noticed that my reading speed became a little bit faster too and I hope that it will steadily improve over time. Who knows, I may have a similar realisation and improvement like @Redglare in a year or so. By the way, @Redglare I’m happy to hear that you managed to achieve your goal. 
One thing became clear, though: I need to focus more on grammar for now. While I tend to understand the gist in general, there is still so much that flies under my radar which hinders my understanding of dialogue and other explanations. So, for the next reading challenge, I will dedicate less time for reading and thus make slower progress but I thanks to this, I will have more time to revise (and learn new) grammar.
Thanks again, @windupbird for hosting this challenge and the following one – see (almost all of) you in the next reading challenge next year! Soo, literally later today/tomorrow 