📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

Please feel free to nominate it then :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I’m really liking it so far, yes, and it’s only getting better. Its writing style is very interesting, you dive in knowing nothing and trying to understand what’s going on, if anything, because it’s all innocent enough at the start. And then the bombs start dropping one after another. Each chapter is written from the point of view of a different person, and always adds something new to the puzzle (which didn’t even look like a puzzle at the start). The themes are a little on the brutal side though. No horror or anything, but all sorts of sensitive subjects are explored (or sometimes just get honorary mention). I thought of writing a list of warning tags, but it would be spoilerish, and honestly, I’m not finding it that bad. I wouldn’t recommend it for someone who’s looking for a good-feel book or tends to shy away from unpleasant topics in books, but otherwise it’s been a whole lot of fun. And I remember enjoying the movie a lot (although I only remember scattered scenes and not much else) although the friends I went with seemed a little freaked out, so there’s that.

I commented before that this book would be so much fun to read in a book club (lots of speculation and food for discussion on all sorts of (often controversial) subjects. I’m only sad I’ll have already read it and will only get to watch the fun instead of take part if it gets picked. :smiley:

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This sounds like a good idea! Also allows for different paces of reading as unless you are all at the exact same place it can be easy for things to get lost in this thread. Could always go for F&B and lots of pirate emojis haha

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What kind of attention are you thinking it will grab? Surely it’d make sense to include the full title in the first post right?

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So there is this book series whose two main characters are called Saikawa and Moe, and the author was ingenious enough to label that series “S&M” :woman_facepalming: When I posted the main thread for that series, a few people came by and commented on that - which is not inherently bad, but I thought that since the Reading threads are visible globally, you know… But maybe I’m simply overthinking this. :woman_shrugging:

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Ok, it’s done :blush:

EDIT: Just-In-Case-Pinging @eefara @sycamore @Naphthalene and everybody else whom I forgot :sweat_smile:

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Yeah I think the title you made looks just fine :slight_smile:

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Hello everybody from this lovely thread.
It’s me, after a successful week :ok_man:. Homepost 44/61

It’s still hard to stick to this challange given the current nice spring weather here. One day I was only hanging on by a thin thread. I counted 2 Todai articles as a pass -.-.
Otherwise my progress over the last week looks like this:

  • Weekly Saga
  • Weekly Yoru Cafe
  • Little progress on Tobira
  • NO Slam Dunk this week :sob:
  • 8 Todai articles
  • ミイラ by 吉本ばなな (apparently she now is callled よしもとばなな :man_shrugging: )

So I’m pretty happy with my progress given the weather.
The short story ミイラ I read because I saw that Tugumi by the same author will be the next book after SpyXFamily (which I’m not interested in). So I wanted to see how well I like her writing. I stll have these “Read real Japanese” books lying around and the mummy story was in one of them, so I took the plunge.
Really liked the writing in that story, so I’m getting excited to try Tugumi as well. I expect, beause she’s a famous author, that other people here probably have read some stuff from her already.

I feel like I’m taking too much time converting my weekly reading into Anki flash cards. Every time I add cards I start rereading the story and fall down random rabit holes looking up more background information on sayings or figuring out which definition fits best. On the other hand I feel like the resulting cards are really solid. Because of the deep care taken creating them I already half know the words when I get to review the cards.
Not sure I want to change something but I’m def. keeping an eye on it.

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May 15th!

I started Volume 3 of 三ツ星カラーズ today, and read Chapter 20.
Afterwards I also read 23 pages of ふしぎねこのきゅーちゃん which continues to be adorable. I was only planning to read a few pages, but there was a multi-page story arc involving a forgotten lunchbox which I was enjoying too much to stop in the middle.

(Home Post)

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:tiger2: :books: Tanuki Den (aka Homepost): Date 20220515 :cherry_blossom: :raccoon:

Tanuki Scroll XLV: 鉢かづき姫 :bowl_with_spoon:

Read today’s folktale, from Osaka prefecture!

About a couple who a longing for a child, and one day they finally get a daughter. But when she turns 13 her mother falls gravely ill, and to remember her by she puts a rice bowl on her daughter’s head.


:seedling: Japanese found in the tall grass :seedling:

New Things

形見「かたみ」ー Memento; keepsake; heirloom
若君「わかぎみ」ー Young lord or prince

Forgotten Things
枕元「まくらもと」ー Pillow-side / bed-side

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Summary post :bookmark:

May 15th :cherry_blossom:

・薬屋のひとりごと 2 (15% → 19%)

Finished chapter 3 and a tiny bit of chapter 4. I feel like these chapters are getting longer and longer.

Thoughts: Maomao is fun and self-contradictary (did I spell that right). On one hand Maomao is kinda unintentionally savage causing Jinshi to take emotional damage, but on the other hand Jinshi lurks behind every corner and overhears things not meant for his ears and misinterprets stuff. So miscommunication is a thing, even Maomao took notice. “Gaoshun, just express what you really want to say, just tell me… Not that I tend to do the exact same thing which results in major misunderstandings or anything like that, lol”. Like, Maomao what do you mean, the series could’ve stopped short at the end of the first book because of lack of clear communication?! :scream: This girl, I swear dksdksjksd. Thank god for plot armor, right :stuck_out_tongue:

New phrase: ()きにしも(あら)ず, “not non-existent”. I can’t tell what’s going on with the kana between the two kanji. Shimo = ?. Since it is an expression maybe it’s some lingering grammar stuff from ye olde times.

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Day 45

Read 2 pages of 都道府県のおはなし as part of ABBC. Today’s pages were about ねぶたまつり in あおもりけん and リアスかいがん in いわてけん.

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There is another grammar point, 必ずしも、where Bunpro explains: “… and the 副助詞ふくじょし (adverbial particles) し and も. し and も are often combined in order to strengthen the meaning of the word before it.” :woman_shrugging:

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I missed my first day yesterday. Or skipped. I had a friend over from early in the day and she was staying over. And by the time, we finished watching Eurovision Song Contest (we watched for the weird and the wonderful that sometimes also comes with good music :joy:), it was after 1 am, and I decided that I wasn’t up for just symbolically reading something to give myself an artificial check mark—also I was very tried. :rofl:

But today I was back at it again. Although I thought I’d have to ask for help with some confusion in 四十七人の侍, but decided to carefully read through the confusion passage again. I knew most of my confusion came from me not being sure who was saying one specific thing.

So carefully I read and guess what was hiding the grass? A very important て conjugated verb that told the story clear as day who was saying the dialog. And knowing who was saying it, made it about 10000% more easily parsed. (As in suddenly what he was saying made sense, rather than me trying to figure out what it could mean when I thought it was the other guy who was saying it.)

Confusion cleared up, I reread the rest of the chapter (which was only one more page), and then embarked on reading two chapters. I’m enjoying the samurai/historical setting. (There is a reason I bought the full set of Rurouni Kenshin manga since I enjoyed the anime. I am however somewhat terrified about the difficulty so it isn’t very high on my next-to-read list. :joy:)

And maybe because I’m reading so regularly now, or maybe because I’m digging into the sentences I’m not sure about, but I really feel like my reading have taking giant steps forward. The idea of reading any light novel/novels have terrified me before. They still do, but to a lesser degree at least. ^^

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A busy day today, but I still managed to read a good chunk of かがみの孤城 🪞 Week 25 so I’m happy with that! The book can be quite a breezy read sometimes. :slightly_smiling_face:

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ohhh, seems like kotobank has a page on shimo as an adverbial particle :eyes: :sparkles: しもとは? 意味や使い方 - コトバンク

I didn’t even watch but someone told me they thought Norway was the funniest, so I checked them out. Well, the concept was hilarious :joy: “Before the wolf eats my grandma, give that wolf a banana”. So Norway sent meme lords to Eurovision this year.

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It even contains a link to the にし combo when explaining the different usages of も :eyes:

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Norway was weird, but funny.

If you wanna watch creepy, look at Serbia’s. Their performance evokes kinda medical psychological thriller vibes for me.

I liked Australia’s, it was wonderfully different that worked so well for the song.

(There was one performance that had a good pop song but the performance just clashed with the song so they kinda ruined each other somehow. The performance could have worked for a different song though, it was kinda cool, if also a bit evocative of mental hospitals. This year’s theme? :rofl:)

As I said, I don’t watch Eurovision song contest for the great music. It can have that, but it is more about the performances and what they bring. And I also enjoy those that just have good dancing/performance with a good song, it doesn’t need to be weird. But honestly, I mostly watch ESC for the weird. xD

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Summary Post

Day 45: May 15th
What did I read?: クマとカラス
How much did I read?: 47 pages
How long did it take me?: 1 hr 27 min

I finished this today and low-key cried my eyes out :sob: The situation wasn’t what I suspected yesterday, but uh somehow this is worse, WHY IS IT WORSE :sob: After a certain point I could kind of see that Crow was going to have to “go” somehow once his wish had been fulfilled, because ヤタガラス did say that it was just a little more time, but why did Bear have to forget Crow too?? :sob: :sob: :sob: They were bestie friends and now :sob: No memory, just vague feelings that someone was there helping him :cry: Like he almost remembers but not quite and it hurts me, Bearrrrrrr On the bright side, Bear made it to the other island and found some bear buddies finally :heart: But my heart though

So yeah, this manga is extremely sweet and pretty cute, but it’s not pure fluffy-happy lighthearted animal antics like a lot of the other animal-centered manga I read. I recommend it but only if you want to cry, like a lot, at the end :smiling_face_with_tear:

Soothing my soul with some cute panels

Words
  • 存続 (そんぞく) - duration; continuance; survival; persistence; retention
  • 個体群 (こたいぐん) - population (e.g. of animals)​
  • 収容力 (しゅうようりょく) - capacity; accommodation
  • 鳥獣保護区 (ちょうじゅうほごく) - wildlife sanctuary; protection area for birds and wild animals
  • 武者震い (むしゃぶるい) - trembling with excitement

Idk :smiling_face_with_tear: The whole thing definitely has more bittersweet undertones than I thought it would when I bought it, but it mostly felt like things were ok/not too sad until the end wrecked me

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I read four more pages of “Hikoichi and the Living Umbrella”. It appears that Hikoichi is in a world of trouble for deciding to sell the umbrella (which doesn’t work) to the Lord of the region. I will see how wise Hikoichi is tomorrow.

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