These last three days I have been keeping up with my advent reading, and surprisingly I managed to finish this week’s Eugenia chapter last night. I had written before how I like focusing on one book at a time, yet since November I’ve been juggling several, and it has mostly worked out great. However now I also made myself read two different books a day (the advent book + book club), and it’s harder than I expected, because I find it takes my brain some time to switch from one to the other. Especially these two books, Eugenia and the narrative tricks, they’re both mysteries, but their approach couldn’t be more different. Both need the reader’s active participation for full enjoyment - you need to constantly watch out for clues - but the writing and the clues you need to watch out for are so different that it felt really jarring moving from one to the other.
The other mystery club book is much simpler in its approach, so I expect less friction. I also really want to start おいしいごはんが食べられますように with the informal reading group. We were supposed to start today, and I was sure I couldn’t finish Eugenia in time, but I have, so I might start reading that today, or get 体育館の殺人 out of the way first. I’d never planned my reading so carefully before, this is getting crazy.
Had to deal with a pretty rough reading session today. You start feeling a little confident in your reading and then hit like five different N1 level grammar points you haven’t learned yet and suddenly you’re taking like twenty minutes for five or six lines…
On the plus side, I’ll be able to finish the volume tomorrow and it looks like there are some real juicy developments next volume!
Word of the Day: 魅了 - fascination or charm. Any word ending in 了 is always funny to me because of it’s insanely common usage as a past tense particle in Chinese so a lot of words like this come across as very bizarre to me (especially 完了 and 終了)
I think I’ll be reading pretty much the same books you will except I don’t have おいしいごはん on the top of my reading list. Instead I’ll probably be reading 犬神家の一族 with the 金田一耕助 reading club around that time.
I’ll be a bit busier that month than usual with our local carnival stuff, but I think that’ll be manageable. And it’ll be over by the 20th, anyway.
So a February start should be fine as long as we don’t exceed our usual pace by too much!
I should be able to fit in between 30-70 pages a week, though I’d prefer to err on the lower side for the duration of February. What’s your happy weekly amount?
Also, do you have a preference in regards to which forums we use to chat about Seven? I think I’m leaning towards natively, if largely because that’s where we first talked about reading this book together.
Oh gosh, ~30 pages a week is totally fine. I’ll take a look at the book later and see how it could be broken up. Since it’s only available in paperback we should also (I think) have generally similar if not the same page counts.
I can’t remember if we talked about it first here or on Natively, but I’m happy for either I’m sure the Natively forums could use a bit more life though, so let’s pop it in there!
Card Captor Sakura volume 2 or Aria: the masterpiece volume 2 – progress report
Yesterday: Read up to page 121 of Aria: the masterpiece volume 2, finished chapter 13. Today: Read up to page 159 of Aria: the masterpiece volume 2, finished chapter 14.
After yesterday’s failed attempt at starting to read chapter 14, I put in some more time today and finished said chapter. Weirdly enough, this may be my least favourite chapter so far and I can’t really put my finger on why. Was it the fully Japanese themed island all of a sudden in midst of a heavily Italian inspired setting that only had some Japenese elements in there (Akatsuki’s clothes, rice for dinner, lamps looking a bit like Japanese rain charms etc.) that was kind of jarring? Was Akari’s and Alicia’s trip mysterious and at the same tame rather uneventful? Was my mood and/or mental fatigue worse today? Whatever it was, at least the art was as pleasant looking as always.
1-2/12 didn’t read
3/12 7 pages Spy Family
4/12 4 pages Spy Family
5/12 16 pages Spy Family (to end of mission), 16 pages かみさまがまちがえる, 24 pages シャドーハウス (both chapters), 54 pages Orange (finished letter 17 and volume 4, finished letter 18), 9 pages おばちゃんたちのいるところ (finished story 3), 25 pages Cells at Work (all last week’s reading, started this week)
Had a few days of minimal reading leading up to the JLPT and departure for my trip. I made up for it today with a massive amount of reading, helped by the fact that I’ve flown 9 hours west so have had a really long day!
I’m still behind with the IBC but otherwise I think I’m up to this week’s reading on all the other clubs.
Was too tired to update yesterday and too tired to add much today D: .
I’m in the process of increasing my Anki workload again for a bit. Now that I’m consistently waking up early, doing Anki in the morning feels much better than later in the day like I was doing before. I want to give my Japanese a big push again, at least in terms of vocabulary, so I’ll soon be doing SRS diligently again with 20 items a day, like I was back then with WK. It’s been a while but currently I feel like committing strongly for a bit. Sometimes I really get tired of SRS and can barely stand it, but right now I’m in a “love phase” I guess? Might as well make use of it while it lasts. Which honestly, I hope it does, cause the commitment I had with WK was nice and i liked it. I really haven’t done SRS that much since then, but it’s great when it clicks.
Story spoilers: This time one of Rozemayne’s servants resigned (basically got kicked out). This other servant ハルトムート is funny, he’s all like “I knew our master would play the bestest/purest move in this situation, she is a saint after all”. What’s up with him and all the MC = saint, anyway? And whyyy did he rank 6th place in the recent character popularity poll/contest when he had appeared in only one book and didn’t even have an illustration yet??? Author being all like, “seems like the web novel fans have been voting as if to say finally! he’s here!”. What’s that supposed to mean?
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ Future me, what’s so special about him?
Something else I remember from a few days ago, the prince invited our main character to a tea party and asked her to ask “goddess of light” what her plans are for the future. The prince getting all flustered and did angry/embarrassed staring at Rozemayne for not getting what he meant by that. Ah, that was hilarious. He’s not entirely scary anymore. But also! There was this one time in the previous volume (#13) when Rozemayne had turned her back to him and was about to leave and she spoke about the library and reading books to her servant, and the last sentence in that chapter was like “little did she know what kind of expression the prince was making in that moment”. Author, what’s that supposed to mean? (my inner Italian coming out here in this post)
I found many waves: 波瀾万丈 = stormy and full of drama, full of ups and downs.
Today’s portion of 叙述トリック短編集 was longer than before, and it also felt harder than before for some reason. It may have been just because it was the start of a new story. The start is always harder, as you try to get your bearings. It was full of interesting vocabulary and expressions though. Too tired to list them now, but maybe tomorrow? The story itself feels very different to the previous one so far. Curious to see where it leads.
I almost didn’t read any other book today, but I thought I’d try a little 体育館の殺人, as reading feels very different with an audiobook. (By the way, I need to decide what to do with Audible because my free month is ending soon. I don’t see myself using it much, but I would like to finish this book with audio at least…) Anyway, I ended up reading/listening to about a third of this week’s portion. Will continue tomorrow, then depending on how long it takes I’ll turn my attention to either おいしいごはんが食べられますように or おばちゃんたちのいるところ.
Read chapter 1 of 青ブタ10. I feel guilty I havent gotten back to volume 2 of Shield Hero, but the vibe this week seems to be slice of life quantum mechanics lessons.
I had a brain-frying day full of meetings today, so tonights reading took me a stupidly long time
I read chapter 37 of Shadows House, which is the first chapter of Volume 4.
I’ve left Audible before (ie, cancelled my subscription). If you purchased anything you don’t lose access to it, and if you find you want it in the future you can re-subscribe. I get enough use out of mine that I keep it active now, but I listen to both JP and Eng books on it and if I follow through with a 3rd language in mid-2023 I can add another…
I reached the epilogue of 異世界の名探偵. I am feeling…mixed. @Naphthalene I know I recommended this book to due to the first half but I’m unsure of if you’ll like it due to the last like…1/3. It’s oddly gruesome given it’s aimed at a younger audience. Full on spoilers below:
So they keep going into detail about how the princess’s headless body has splattered blood allllllll over the room. They really want you to think about blood absolutely everywhere. Then they repeatedly show the grief of the surrounding characters (2 of them family) over and over while their hopes are continually raised and dashed that she might not actually be dead. Then they go into detail about how she is murdered and how her body ended up in the state it did. Anddddd it wraps up with a bit of cannibalism. Cause sure, why not. Also said in front of the grieving parents.
I don’t have long to finish it, although it may not be this evening. It was an interesting ride, I’ll give it that.
Another day where I ended doing a lot of other things like rewatching sk8 lmao so I just read one chapter of ブルーロック today, but oh boy does it continue to be a wild time! Very curious
Read 2 parts of Chapter 2 of 青ブタ10 during lunch (20 pages~ in 30 minutes). The next section is 20 pages long, and remaining chunk is another 20. Gonna audio book it before Japanese class.
Will do better this week, with all the new (and old) book clubs!
Instead I’ll probably be reading 犬神家の一族 with the 
Japanese found under the leaves 
Future me, what’s so special about him? 
lots of big 会社 words but I could mostly read it