Claiming a home post here! These calendars are super neat; being able to just click on a day to fill it is wild.
As for what I’ll be focusing on during the challenge… I’m currently reading 薬屋のひとりごと with the Advanced Book Club, so that’ll almost certainly fill up my weekends. I think I’d like to really focus on my stacks of manga I have lying around as well, finally get through a few of those series.
Books/Series I'd like to start/finish during this challenge
(Probably going to list more than I can realistically achieve, but I can at least use this as a reminder of the things I’d like to focus on.)
Last time I tried this, I was very bad about posting my own updates although I read almost if not everyday. So I’ll probably only check off the days most of the time.
Goals
The spirit of multilingual reading going on here has me inspired to make this challenge about my non Japanese reading instead!
I’m currently making my way through Le Petit Nicolas, so it’ll probably be mostly about that. I’m about half way through right now. I’ve been taking it very slow and not reading more days than I do, so maybe this thread can change that.
Should I actually manage to finish this book in these 2 months I guess I’ll challenge l’étranger, which is sitting on my bookshelf as well.
I also have a Spanish graded reader, but I haven’t felt motivated to work on my Spanish at all this year, so I probably won’t touch that one.
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Reading: Le petite Nicolas (73→169/148p) 14.04.22/20.04.22
A1 Graded Reader: PONS 5 Minuten-Lektüren: Où est le thym? (0→37/127p)
La quête d’ewilan: d’un monde à l’autre (0→252/334m) (0→80%)
I think I’ll update a list of books I’d like to read this challenge throughout today (thereby ensuring I never get to them, of course). Probably my biggest hurdle will be dragging myself away from binging on translated webnovels; if I can successfully redirect my focus to reading Japanese ones, that’ll be a victory. (Most of the ones I’ve been reading have been Chinese, so no luck switching over there…)
I might also try and use the challenge to build consistency with my other languages! I have a graded reader I’m using to practice my Mandarin, some French webtoons I’ve reading, and a few novels in Spanish that I’m less than 20 pages into, so I’ll probably try and pick up one of those as well. After the Winter Challenge my Japanese reading is (mostly) consistent, but everything else is a bit so-so, haha.
I’m not going to pretend that I’ll keep up with a home post or update every day, but I’ll be challenging along with everyone in spirit and maybe even in comments sometimes! My reading list is a little nuts right now…
夜カフェ with BBC will probably be mostly a weekend thing
霧のむこうのふしぎな町 … I’m already more than halfway through, so I want to keep reading just a little bit on days that I don’t read 夜カフェ (which feels a lot easier)
よつばと！ (vol 8) but only on days that I feel in the mood
それでも歩は寄せてくる … this one is really exciting because it’s the first thing I can read that actually feels like a leisure activity! So I really want to read more, but I have to wait for the next two volumes to arrive and they haven’t even shipped yet!
Then after that, like @Magillou I have a bunch of books already that I’d like to work on, in order to make more space on my “unread” shelf, which is currently full. (So that I can buy more books.)
replies
What is this minimersion of which you speak? I want to read this book (someday), too!
Ooh, yes pls.
@fustian_garb I’ve been putting off brushing up on my Spanish conversation skills for the exact same reason! But now it seems like I’m going to need it for summer vacation this year, and it would make me so happy to be able to converse with people (at least a little) in Spanish … At least I will be practicing different skillsets for each language, I guess.
I also have made a resolution to start reading some articles from the Dutch newsletter Onze Taal whenever it reaches my inbox, in an attempt to slow the rusting process a little. It only takes a few minutes a week, and makes me feel a lot more at ease that I won’t lose the language I worked so hard for in my twenties, and which holds memories of some of my favorite people in the world …
I dabbled the first time this challenge happened last summer. For at least a month, I read every other day. And now I’m back, hoping for at least that much.
I set a very modest yearly goal for my Japanese reading, basically a volume/book a month and I’m already 3 behind… Oops? Well, I was starting from nothing, so no surprise.
And seeing everyone else work on extra languages is awesome. I’m not doing that, but my normal reading habit has been dead for a while now. Escaping into fiction have been a hard sell for the past couple of years. But I’m mostly past that now.
So I might make this challenge also be about my regular reading, or getting back to regular reading, which will be in English, which is my second language but I’ve been fluent for over a decade so not a study language for me anymore. (I honestly haven’t read regularly in my native language (Swedish) since I stopped going to school.) But I’m not sure I want something that formal for it. Hopefully I can just start picking it up.
= read Japanese
= also read in English/regular reading
For June, I’ve decided to track three different reading things, so I’m not gonna be super strict with myself about reading each one every day, but I want a lot of those boxes ticked for all three.
JP = Japanese reading so what this challenge have been about
EN = English fiction, aka something I managed to do for the first fourth of the challenge
NF = Non-fiction, I have some work related blog posts, newsletters, etc. that I need to read as well as many non-fiction books, so this is gonna be about reading a bit of this every day
This will be my first challenge joined! I have been trying to read every day before this, though there were often times where I wouldn’t read anything for a day or two in a row, so I’m hoping for a full 61-day streak with this! Edit: Make that 91, as I’m extending this through June, until the next challenge starts.
I’m aiming to read at least one chapter of manga per day and to keep up with the 夜カフェ book club, as well as the SPYxFAMILY book club once it’s started. My original main, concrete goal was to finish 2.43 清陰高校男子バレー部 代表決定戦編① (which may currently be above my reading level but I’m obsessed with this series and it’s currently my main motivator for learning Japanese. I can also understand at least the gist of most of it, which is exciting!) by the end of May; however, it became clear relatively early on that that was not going to happen. Now, as long as I at least read something every day, I’m happy.
英語で:
・Inkheart - Cornelia Funke
＊Café con Lychee - Emery Lee
＊The Book of Three - Lloyd Alexander
◎Meet Cute Diary - Emery Lee
◎The Love Hypothesis - Ali Hazelwood
その他:
・Colloquial Kansai Japanese - DC Palter and Kaoru Horiuchi Slotsve
I had this same experience. I still can’t really motivate myself to read a book in English. It’s awkward because I’m a bookseller. I’ve had to tell a few customers “I haven’t been reading a lot of new fiction lately …” But we did just get the English translation of Yotubato! in, so at least I can recommend that with a clear conscience!
You guys are nuts. Previously it was only a placeholder but still got the Nice Reply award
Regarding my Strategy this time around I also put in some thought already. I divided my reading materials into Basic, Main Material and Extended.
The basics are a fallback if I’m not feeling up to something hard or don’t have the time for lookups that day. Most days I should at least be able to fit a chapter of Slam Dunk in (which I started in the last challange and continue to read; 5/20 already down) or Happiness. When worse comes to worst at least a News Web Easy article from Todai mobile app.
The main material should be the bulk of what I read during the challange. The two bookclubs are perfect for that. The beginner will probably only last me for the weekends and also the intermediate Baachan probably wont last me the whole week. So whenever I feel like doing some work and have caught up with the clubs I will put effort into finishing Tobira (8/15). I also started Tobira in the last challange and even though I basically know 99% of it already I still haven’t read the articles and find the practice/review of the grammar pretty useful.
Plus since I’m swabian I just can’t not use a book I bought…
The extended material then is for times when the main material runs out or I have a bunch of unexpected time on my hands.
I really don’t expect this happening though since this time around there’s easter and also the wedding of one of my very close friends so I’ll probably rather struggle to keep the streak up this time around.
Last challenge had the added benefit of a 2 week vacation and the slow start of the new year to make it much easier. Let’s see how many days I can handle this time!
Also really already looking forward to all the lovely daily updates of the light novel and manga kind. With all the pretty pictures and explanations for them. Definitely a hightlight for me in this thread.
I on the other hand will be sticking to posting a review update every week and just reading on the other days.
It’s the minimersion server! A discord server that focusses on learning by immersion in a few different languages. The community is really positive and friendly and once in a while they do immersion weekends in which movies are streamed and other fun stuff happens
During the winter challenge I bit off more than I could chew and tried to read too many things at once that were too high above my level. I need to make sure I don’t do that again, especially with finals coming up. But I will try my best to read every day!!
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natively + bookmeter
(i am brand new to bookmeter so i’m still trying to figure it out)
Daily Updates
note: I’m not planning on writing an update every day but if I do write something I’ll link it here
Going to try and get through more Satori Reader stories since I want to finish them all by August. This spring I want to finish the intermediate stories or at least be done with most of them.
I’d also like to keep up with the 極主夫道 book club because I adore that series, it might be one of my favorite manga now. Right now I’m also really getting into 神々のトライフォース (the manga not the game) b/c I’m a big Zelda fan so I’ll be reading that too
NOTE: See updated goals for June in my June 9 post! (and here are my goals for May in my April 30 post)
Here we go again! At the end of last challenge I was getting a bit drained out, but I think with a month break, it should be fine I still have to decide what I’ll read. I’m currently roughly following what the Book Clubs do (ABBC and BBC) , but I don’t think that will be enough for reading every day. I also still haven’t finished reading kuro majo san ga tooru vol 4… and I might have accidentally skipped vol 3, so I probably should check that and those are strong candidates.
I’ve been studying Japanese for 4 years, lived in Japan for 3, and passed the N3 last year.
The previous challenges here really helped me be able to read, and I was able to find some peers here on the forum. I’m excited to further all of that here again!
Oh boy we’re back!! Not that I had the self-control to stop ever, but I’m super excited to see everyone’s progress again! Love the camaraderie
Background
Ahh I’m excited to be back!! The winter challenge was a truly transformative journey, I really owe a lot of my progress to these threads The daily updates have been so effective at keeping me accountable to actually keep reading consistently, so hey whatever works! Reading feels far more doable than it did back at the beginning of the winter challenge, but I still think my biggest weakness is just sheer numbers with vocabulary, so exposure is the best medicine for sure.
What I'm Reading / Goals!
I didn’t really set specific goals last time which was fine, but now I feel like I have a better grasp of my capabilities so! I think my goal for this challenge is to finish the Zero Escape trilogy I’m a bit into the second game now, and it’s not like I’m gonna be able to make myself not play it so I’ll lean into it. I think it’s doable considering my general pace now, so I’ll give it my best shot!
Of course I still have various other things I’m in the middle of which I might pick up from time to time, but Zero Escape has been such a perfect balance of difficulty/interest/challenge/etc. that I’m gonna focus on it, I think. My VLR chaos continues
Ooh, I finished the English translation of the first volume not too long ago; besides any book-specific terminology, I bet this would be a really fun one to read in Japanese.
I think the strangest thing is because I used fiction as escape as a teenager when I had problems all around me, but I guess you can’t expect yourself to react in the same way each time, eh?
I think my biggest problem with it is that while it is easy to pick up a short story (and I have a lot of great anthologies and collections filled with good stories), I just don’t get quite the same experience. But I find diving into novels right now… well I just haven’t been doing it, have I?
Well, hopefully getting some Japanese reading regularly will also help with the other reading. Here is to hoping!
Le petite Nicolas (73→169/148p) 14.04.22/20.04.22
(0→252/334m) 
(0→80%)
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I’m hoping to get better at reading quickly so I appreciate the structure this challenge provides.
(So that I can buy more books.)
I want to read this book (someday), too!
I still have to decide what I’ll read. I’m currently roughly following what the Book Clubs do (ABBC and BBC) , but I don’t think that will be enough for reading every day. I also still haven’t finished reading kuro majo san ga tooru vol 4… and I might have accidentally skipped vol 3, so I probably should check that and those are strong candidates.
透明カメレオン
Not that I had the self-control to stop ever, but I’m super excited to see everyone’s progress again! Love the camaraderie 
