📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

This is me too. I don’t care what others do with their books one bit. I couldn’t do it myself.

I also pretty routinely give away books after I’m done reading them, so writing in them would be inconvenient for the next person.

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Hilariously, as someone with a literal master’s degree in books (master’s in library science, plus a graduate certificate in book arts that ended up only being like 12 credits short of a full MFA :sweat_smile:), I used to be the kind of person who couldn’t write in books, then I took a class in grad school that changed me, haha, and now I write in them all the time.

People during the Renaissance period used to write in their books constantly (in fact, if you didn’t, you weren’t considered to be truly “reading”, or at least you weren’t reading studiously), and one of my classes (on Renaissance reading) required me to do so, and I ended up getting so much more out of my grad school reading once I started (plus, class discussions and papers became way easier to write because I could easily flip back through my reading and see the parts that stood out to me), so I just kept doing it after that class.

One Renaissance reader marked up a copy of the First Folio of Shakespeare, and browsing through that copy of it, I found an answer to a question I’d had about a certain passage in one play that I hadn’t been able to find any actual published research on since I first started looking for an answer when I was 16. But thanks to this one reader’s extensive marginalia, that did for me what years of scholarly research could not do. So I’m in favor of writing in books. Future researchers will love you for it.

I also once bought a very cheap used copy of The Odyssey for a class in undergrad (because I’d left my existing nice copy at my parents’ house and suddenly needed it for a class), and the cheapest possible copy I could buy had loads of writing all over it from at least two previous owners. I was annoyed at first and found it distracting, but then I ended up having a great time getting into one-sided arguments with all of their bad opinions in the margins of the book. That was the first time I really wrote in a book I’d owned, since it was already marked up so badly, I didn’t feel any guilt.

So, yeah, as a librarian, writer, and bookmaker myself, I am 100% pro-writing in books. I’d recommend against writing in library books, haha, or I guess anything you want to resell for maximum value, but if you’re unlikely to get rid of your books, you’ll probably appreciate looking back on them someday and seeing your notes, and if you ever do end up getting rid of them, someone else might appreciate your notes more than you think :blush:.

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There’s a few that have shorter chapters and I have read them in past challenges before. Of the top of my head there’s Gal & Dino, Shirokuma Cafe and Ame to Kimi to.

In some ways they might be easier and in other ways they’re a little harder. The first one uses more slang, the second one has lots of different vocab and the last one has little furigana.

That said there’s always gonna be a rough patch at the start whenever you start a new series. I do recommend switching it up every now and then as you’ll note the difference when you come back.

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:shamrock: :blossom: :seedling: Link to Home Thread :seedling: :sheep: :shamrock:

I read a bunch of ハピネス the last few days (caught up with the club!) and as it’s pretty low on words so far, I’m thinking of just going ahead with it (ahead of the Absolute Beginner Book Club Schedule). I definitely want to read 夜カフェ with the book club but that doesn’t really fill the whole week :sweat: I could add a third book, but I feel like I would be spreading myself rather thin then :thinking: Ahhh I don’t know! It feels off to read ahead as I’m usually just behind on the book clubs :rofl:

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Thank you so much! All three of those are on my “to read” list so thats exciting.
I already have Shirokuma Cafe, so I’ll probably start there :slight_smile:

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Summary Post

April 6
Final Fantasy VII


No vocabulary list today because the SRS reviews will come in a bit and I don’t want to check and cheat. Also it’s pretty late ^^.

Same! And it’s not even realistic in a sense :smile: . Like, I don’t know every word I come across in Spanish, my native language. And in English I come across words that I don’t know fairly frequently, but I think the main difference is that my English level is high enough to know when a word is important or if it seems more filler; I know which words are worth checking and which “overlooking”, or which ones I can just passively assimilate, or guess the nuance, and so on. I definitely can’t do that in Japanese yet, so every. single. word. seems super important and must look it up :joy: . I don’t think this level of scrutiny is negative though, on the contrary, I think it gives you more language control over time, but yeah it gets absolutely exhausting and you have to unplug your brain at some point.

Actually, I think the way I approach Japanese has influenced the way I approach language in general. The dictionaries have become part of me and my daily life, I’m constantly looking things up and that has given me a more refined appreciation for literature, I feel. Language is pretty cool, after all. Things you thought meant the same thing actually have different nuances or meanings, and so on. It’s cool to guess why an author might choose certain words over others to create a very concrete feeling and whatnot. And it’s also cool that the more language knowledge you have, the more ideas you can put into words.

In summary: languages are awesome.

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㋃6 – Day 6

  • ジョジョの奇妙な冒険

p76-91
I finally finished the chapter about the rings. I am still upset that I can understand the logic of that one doujin now. Before I could just write it off as weird and awkward crack. It still is. I just don’t like that I understand now.

I wonder if anyone uses the reverse logic to claim the ring bit in Yuri on Ice is not a marriage proposal.

Anyhow, I look forward to no more rings, but more vampire content! It’ll be interesting too to see more of the gore Araki is know for firsthand.

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Summary Post

Day 6: April 6th
What did I read?: ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 Vol 2
How much did I read?: 5 pages
How long did it take me?: 20 min

This chapter focuses on a little girl, which apparently means it’s super easy to read lol. The sentences are short, the grammar straightforward, the words generally familiar…which is good because I’m exhausted today (probably because I, like…didn’t really sleep lol). Felt like I barely had to look up anything!

Today I learned that ラムネ is not just a type of soda, but also a tablet candy.

Good words
  • パチパチ - incessantly (blinking)​
  • かがみこむ - to lean over; to lean in
  • 手さげかばん - handbag; purse; briefcase; attache case
  • 湯のみ (ゆのみ) - teacup
  • 色違い (いろちがい) - variation in color (colour); having a different color​
  • 横になる (よこになる) - to lie down (and rest) I like this word lol
  • あつらえる - to give an order; to place an order; to have made to order​

:pleading_face: kitty
Look at the way its tiny paws hold the pages :3

slams the buy button

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April 6
Today was my day off from work, so I worked on my MEXT application some more. It took me several hours to write 10 sentences, but I’m proud of those sentences! Can’t wait to find out how they’re all weird and non-understandable lol :sweat_smile: I also got better at how to use the different functions of weblio like its sentence database and quasi-thesaurus. ぜひ見てください。

I also read chapter 63 of Haikyuu, the first chapter of volume 8! I joined the book club when they were at the end of volume 2. I’m so amazed at how much I’ve read in just about a year. Way more than I’ve ever read in 4 years of Japanese study at school.

No progress on Tadoku level-0s today, but that’s okay. I think I only have 8 left so I should finish those up by this week.

Progress on Tadoku graded readers
36 / 44 level-zeros
x / 12 level-ones
x /10 level-twos
x / 18 level-threes

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Reverso Context is also helpful if you’re looking for examples of how things have been translated before. It suffers the same issue as weblio (some of the sentence have uh…questionable translations) but as another tool in your toolbox it might be handy :smiley:

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Have you seen the anime? I enjoyed season 1.

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Ooooh thank you so much! Bookmarking now :bookmark:

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Which volume is this? :eyes: You’re convincing me to read it instead of おじさまと(ねこ) lol

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I also have this book. I picked it up on Amazon Kindle 5 years ago. (I had to search it up because I knew it sounded familiar.) I haven’t read it yet though. I keep buying cheap books on Kindle and adding them to my TBR pile.

So like Boa Hancock’s favourite move?

I can’t do it. Something in my soul stops me. I even struggle to highlight and note ebooks. I find that having notes and highlights in a book that I’m reading distracts me from the story because I’m always compelled to read them and it breaks the flow. It’s like I’m hearing two people’s thoughts at the same time and I hate multi-tasking.

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Home

I almost thought I wouldn’t get to read any of GREEN today, since just after I sat down to read it, the neighbor started mowing his lawn and I couldn’t focus. Then when I could, my mind was too much on 2.43 to do anything but read that, but then I ended up finishing the subchapter and needing something to take my mind off stuff that happens later in the series, so I did get to after all! I read Seed 5. lol in the character intro at the beginning of the volume, Makoto is described as: 農業を愛する純朴な青年。

Some commentary:

Oh my god, so Wako never told her parents where she was disappearing to every weekend, so this time they handcuffed her to her bed, but she ended up breaking the chain and running off anyway! So yeah we briefly meet her parents and her little brother Kei-chan. Anyway, she’s running late, and when she finally arrives at the farm, she throws herself into Makoto’s arms and asks if he was worried about her. Nope, not particularly. Not even a little bit? Not especially… lol he’s a farming-baka and he can’t lie.

We also learn that Makoto’s father is an inept doctor at a Tōkyō hospital. And apparently Makoto had told Wako that he was a salaryman—he earns a salary, so technically, he is a salaryman! Then we soon meet his older sister Sayuri, who’s come to bring him home to make him take over for their father, so was just on the news for forgetting a needle inside a patient he’d operated on. Makoto runs off with Wako, and instead of giving chase, Sayuri goes and reports him missing! She also offers a monetary reward of an unspecified amount for whoever can bring him to the Ono house, so everyone in the village is like, I wonder how much the reward is. 1 mil yen? I heard it was 10 mil. I heard it was 100 mil! 100 mil yen?! We gotta go catch him! lmao

Well, they manage to find someone to help them get away and put them up while they lay low for a while, Makoto assures Wako that he has no intention of leaving the farm or becoming a doctor (and he teases her and uses examining her tonsils as an excuse to kiss her), and Sayuri eats their grandmother out of house and home waiting for Makoto to turn up lol

I read 5 pages of 2.43, finishing ch 1-2 and getting me to pg 49! Skimming ahead, it looks like the next subchapter (ONE AND ONLY POSITION) is when we get to meet the rest of the team, and the 4th (RIVAL’S SHADOW) is the first mention of Seiin.

Rambling, of course:

A friend pointed out today, after I’d messaged her about how being real short as a kid and then growing to be real tall in HS is something else Subaru and Chika have in common, that that could mean that Oda’s “unfounded” optimism about growing 30 cm in HS and becoming a super ace wasn’t actually so unfounded. Granted, this is the first day of school that he says this, so he may not know yet that Subaru has reached or surpassed 180 cm already, but he does absolutely know of Subaru, who is a wing spiker like him and in MS was his team’s ace despite not being all that much taller than Oda. Subaru was never described as 小柄 as Oda is (163 cm as a third-year in HS, and likely at least a little bit shorter in MS), just as “not 大柄” and “not by any means blessed with height,” but he was still definitely short for an athlete, and short for a spiker, and yet he was still the foremost spiker in Fukui MS volleyball. And if he can have that, why not Oda? Ah, I’m sad now.

Ochi does know! Or at least some. In the scene where Subaru tries to convince him not to leave the team, he tells him that when their teams faced each other in the Winter Tournament second year of MS, there was one time where he’d thought he’d succeeded in getting a clean spike over, but Ochi picked it up with a flying receive. He still remembers that play in his dreams even now. Ochi’s surprised that his playing left an impression on Subaru in middle school. So yeah, he may not know that Subaru specifically wanted him at Fukuhou, but he does know that Subaru, the player he looks up to most in their age group, took notice of him!

lol I love how Subaru gets Ochi to stop crying by going, “Well why don’t you give being manager a try? You’ll definitely get to go to Nationals that way!” all cheerful-like. Ochi’s just like, “Eh, what.” Just totally flabbergasts him. (……えーと……? なんだその、オレ理論……:interrobang:)

「ぐずぐず言ってえんと、腹くくっておまえの三年間、おれに預けろ。おれがおまえを春高のセンターコートのマネージャーにしてやる。想像してみろや、春高のセンターコートのベンチスタッフやぞ? 絶対目立つし、かっこいいぞ?」

brb, I’m trying not to cry knowing that they never end up making it. They never get to stand on that brilliant, orange center court. “けど、三村なら——三村がいれば、行けるのかもしれない,” except he can’t carry them there, they always end up falling short before the semifinals, and in their third year they don’t even make it that far, Seiin takes the representative spot from them. And now I’m thinking about how Subaru takes everyone’s—the team’s, the parents’, the coach’s—hopes and expectations onto his own shoulders, and instead of crushing him like it may anyone else, it only serves to motivate him, but in their third year when it’s their final chance and he can’t even get them as far as HaruKou, never mind that orange center court, it must surely crush him then. F*ck. I gotta go be emo for a bit.

At least this ain’t gonna lay me out flat for literally two full hours like thinking about the friggin;;; “Fundamentally I’m someone who acts with ulterior motives.” “Ulterior motives?” “It’s all right if you don’t understand.” exchange between Aoki and Oda in the first book (I don’t have access to it rn so I can’t put the original lines, unfortunately, they’re better) the first time I actually properly thought about it. Why is Aoki like this. He makes me insane. He makes me utterly feral. He’s so—!!! (Granted, part of that was also from me imagining Oda confessing in college by basically turning that ulterior motives line back on him [well, the version in Funimation’s subtitles, at least, since I hadn’t read the novel yet at that point] and Aoki echoing, “Ulterior motives?” like Oda did except his confusion being tinged with a lot of hoping and still not quite daring to hope, but mostly it was just Aoki and his stupid utterly-devoted-to-Oda self. Like seriously, he doesn’t care about anyone else, he doesn’t do anything he isn’t required to if it doesn’t serve him in some way, but he will do literally anything for Oda. And I mean literally. I hate him. Not really. He’s my fave. I gotta draw him again sometime.)

I read ch 21-45 of コナの大冒険, finishing the story!

Spoiler

I’m really proud of Kona for attacking that snake in ch 38. Even if he did leap on them on instinct and had unbalanced them and thrown them off the tree before realizing what he was doing, it was still really brave. He could have easily continued to sit there watching in terror, hoping the snake wouldn’t see him and decide to make him their next meal. That wasn’t pitiful at all.

I’m excited to start the sequel, but I think I’ll read at least some of their other intermediate stuff first as they recommend. Though, well, I guess that’s just 奥日光 and 三途の川, as I’m not interested in thrillers/horror. I’m also interested in a few of the easier stories they have, so, well, we’ll see what I start next.

Some vocab of note:

大人びる (おとなびる) [一, intransitive] to look/sound/behave grown-up; to be adult-like; to mature
腹を括る (はらをくくる) [expression, ラ五] to prepare oneself for the worst; to strengthen one’s resolve; to accept one’s fate; to prepare oneself. I found this one without the を. I don’t know if it’s common practice, but this author at least seems to like dropping particles from expressions.
破顔一笑 (はがんいっしょう) [noun, 四字熟語] smiling broadly. This reminds me of another phrase meaning the same that was used with Subaru that, when I drew it into Google Translate so that I could look it up more easily on imiwa, came up as “breaking the liking” (although this is “face-breaking,” but still) which is—
相好を崩す (そうごうをくずす) [expression, サ五] to smile broadly; to grin widely
玉座 (ぎょくざ) [noun] throne
魅力 (みりょく) [noun] charm; fascination; glamor; attraction; appeal
一目惚れ (ひとめぼれ) [noun] love at first sight; being taken with someone at the first meeting
金一封 (きんいっぷう) [noun] gift of money (contained in an envelope); money reward (for services rendered)

I haaaate writing in books. Can’t do it myself, and if we were ever forced to annotate for school assignments, I always got rid of the volume afterwards. If I’m buying used, I much prefer to do it in person where I can check the books over to make sure there aren’t any marks, as well as stains or any other damage. If I have to buy used online, I only go for ones in like-new/excellent condition. Cracked spines are fine. Means the book is loved if it’s read so often. Marked-up pages? Disrespectful.

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April 6th (Calendar Post)

My current book suddenly had a very interesting plot twist, and I wish I could read more but I’m exhausted after 10 pages >.<

三日間の幸福 => 10 pages (113 minutes)

New Kanji I’ve run into today:

=> Garden, Field

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I’m rereading Level 0, Vol. 1, Book 2, of my Graded Readers. I read four pages today and will finish off this book and start Book 3 tomorrow. I sure am learning a lot about soybeans!

New vocabulary:
りょうり
料理 cuisine, cookery
つく
作り making, producing
くさ
臭い stinking, smelly

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Chapters are only one page and it’s really cute! The characters might be a bit harder to read than in regular manga tho, but it’s really worth it!

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Day 7 - April 7

  • 美少年探偵団 1 - 13,64% → 15,48%
  • 無職転生 ~異世界行ったら本気だす~ 1 - 0,00% → 1,73%

Finished chapter 4 and now I’m done for this week’s bookclub. I did not understand most of the nuances in this chapter, and I feel like the whole chapter was just flavour text (that was too hard for me to fully grasp the deeper meaning of). Still, reading this book gives me the opportunity to learn lots of different grammar and vocab, so I’m seeing myself improving over time ^^

I think I’ll go back to Sukasuka or kino no tabi for a few days to see if I can up my reading skills just a bit more before returning to this
Edit: I decided to pick up a brand new light novel (for me brand new): 無職転生 ~異世界行ったら本気だす~ 1! I was watching the anime with my fiancé en decided to give the LN a shot. So far it’s one of the easier novels I’ve read, but I’ve only read a few pages.

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April 6 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

Man, VLR put me through it today :joy: I finished my first real ending this morning, I got credits and everything! It was wild to say the least lmao, and well… it didn’t get less so :eyes:

hey VLR, what?

Soooo the first real ending I got was ディオ :joy: figures doesn’t it? Seems about right honestly. But like… hello?? I have more questions than I did before?? What, he’s in a clone cult?? That’s his deal? Don’t know what I expected but it could not have possibly been that :joy: It was kinda rough language-wise though, so many weird specific words, even by ディオ standards :joy: And why did ファイknow about it? I’m skeptical about the whole red moon thing too, seems rather convenient we’d happen to go outside on the day the thing we specifically talked about happens, and also that’d mean it’s only been six days? Unlikely all around

So yeah I started another route and ended up in the Gaulem Room which had some pretty rough puzzles actually, but little did I know that was the least of it - robot man! And I am quickly learning that any time I thought someone was speaking in Kansai dialect, no they weren’t actually, not like this :joy: I thought I had a pretty good grasp of it but incorrect! This robot is a nightmare but I immediately love him so it’s okay! But yeah an example:

My yomichan rate has increased exponentially lmao, but I’m getting it! There was a fun roundabout conversation talking about what we should call him; we were like “what about ゴーレム?” to which he was like “what, you want me to call you all ニンゲン? that clarifies nothing” :joy: and then he gave his whole identification number, then cut off the last few digits as a pun - 506, aka ご れ む… so nothing changed :joy: A wonderful goof all around

Yeah so today’s reading was a lot of fun, just also particularly challenging :laughing: it can be both!! It’s all progress :muscle:

Omg :pleading_face: a literary baby!!

Mafuyu’s just too powerful :sparkles: love seeing your thoughts on ギブン, I might have to see about reading the manga sometime :eyes:

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