📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

Summary post :bookmark:

April 7th :cherry_blossom:

・薬屋のひとりごと (9% → 10%)

Finished chapter four. Turns out this book can be a real page turner! Thoughts: So the people looking for Maomao from the previous chapter did something genius and managed to identify her. And then the chapter ended on a “ohno, what’s going to happen to Maomao now? Let’s find out in the next episode!”

Word of the day: 年嵩
because the latter kanji looks cool it illustrates how this book goes out of its way to use words that I don’t recognize as common (whether this is a good illustration or not… YMMV ). Why not just use the word 年上 instead :durtle_tomato:

oh yeah, note to self: the part about the gates was confusing

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Day 7 / Calendar
Today I’ve read around 4 pages of Yoru Café in about an hour spread accross most of the day. I’ve noticed that my understanding ability isn’t the best, and that usually makes me way more tired than usual, and this is why I took frequent (and long) breaks. Actually I’m only leaving this reply now because it’s 11pm and my script doesn’t work for adding the previous day.

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By the way, you have one ‘e’ too many in “Le petit Nicolas” :stuck_out_tongue:

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Hmm, I know very little about the book other than “woman in コンビニ” but before I got pulled into a book club I was very close to going for reading it now. I have it so I will sometime anyway, but I wonder how I’ll find it. Though if the arthouse comparison holds in the more literal way I want; I sure love more artsy films :stuck_out_tongue:


Summary post

Well today is one of those days, cause it’s always one of those days. Got no energy, not doing great mentally, eyes and head ache, but I read 7000+ characters. I thought I’d finish the route today but it played out a little longer than anticipated and at the time I went “nope, I have to thrown in the towel this very instant” it was unfortunately quite the climactic moment.

Real spoilers this time, but I like this image a lot

There were quite a lot of lines I just didn’t fully get today, unfortunately. Mostly there were just little bits of them that I couldn’t seem to properly look up and what have you. They were usually clearly throw away moments and I’m guessing casual, slangy speak is the culprit, but I’m following in general just fine.

I’ll very likely finish up the route tomorrow. The way I’m starting to run through at another 1000 or 2000 characters more than my usual pace is encouraging, but we’ll see what happens when I’m off to another storyline.

You want interesting words? Take your pick. I’ve got 一目惚れ (ひとめぼれ, love at first sight), 儚い (はかない, fleeting, transient, ephemeral, etc), and 看板娘 (かんばんむすめ, “pretty girl who attracts customers to come inside a shop”).

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Thanks for your detailed and helpful response! Sounds like you’ve read a few of the books I’m planning to read (世界から猫が消えたなら is also in my want-to-read list on Bookwalker). About the length… it’s definitely going to be the longest book I’ve read so far, but if you find it more interesting than Kiki maybe I’ll enjoy it more as well!

Ah, that makes sense… I suppose it might be better to wait before reading it then, since I’d want to understand コンビニ人間 more fully.

Now I’m hoping it’s understandable and enjoyable enough that I won’t be able to stop reading it :joy:

Thanks to both @sycamore and @pocketcat! I’ll go ahead with かがみの孤城. It sounds like an interesting read for sure.

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Np :wink: I’m glad you’re enjoying them :blush:

:leaves::cherry_blossom::leaves:
\huge\color{#FFDCA2}\mathrm{🍃Day 7🍃}
:leaves::cherry_blossom::leaves:

\small \color{ #D2FFE4}\mathrm{★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★}

Today I translated 3 pages of よつばと!I’m spending a lot of mental energy on transcribing and translating よつばと!compared with just reading, which I think is great for learning. But I’ve decided I should probably read something else on the side without translating to get more input. I’m considering Satori Reader but any and all suggestions are appreciated :grin:

\small \color{ #D2FFE4}\mathrm{★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★}

Tooltip

The flowers above the “Day #” links to my post for the previous day, and the flowers below link to the next day, except for the latest day ofc, they link somewhere special :wink:

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Thanks for noticing. :girl:

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I didn’t hate it, but it was slow (like art house often is), deeply focused on her mental and emotional state (like arthouse often is), and had, for me, an unsatisfying ending (like arthouse often does). :joy: Read it if you want, it’s nice to have as a base of comparison when talking to other people. I just think it’s a poor choice for ‘first book’ like I see suggested in various places online because it’s honestly not something I think would be satisfying for a beginner and the plot can feel pretty uncomfortable.

Also a good book! And pretty straight forward along with being reasonably short. There’s also an audiobook for both and I liked them both as well!

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April 7th!

I read chapter 47 of Yotsuba, which had a panel in it that made me really laugh. (Final panel of page 157).

After I finished that I decided to try reading one of the things I was recommended yesterday.
I couldn’t decide which recommendation to start with though, so I ended up reading the first 2 chapters of Shirokuma Cafe, and also 10 pages of ふしぎねこのきゅーちゃん :smile:

So it was definitely a good reading day for me - thanks for the motivation @Thud and @vonnutje! :slight_smile:

(Home Post)

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Hey, I had that one yesterday! [insert same hat meme]

No lie, ever since I first learned it, that’s been one of my favorite kanji. Both meaning-wise and visually, I find it very beautiful

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8th of April
Day 8

Finished 銭天堂!! It was interesting to learn the backstory in the epilogue. And to think I was expecting some sort of horror story collection when I started the book :joy:

I just bought かがみの孤城 on Bookwalker. I don’t think I can help myself, so I may read that and 君ノ声 at the same time. Just depends on how I feel. And how busy I get.

I’m actually getting excited about reading again! Oh man, I have far too many books I want to read — both Japanese and English ones lol.

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Home post

Day 6:

日本語: I read a few pages of ミニスカ宇宙海賊 just to put something here.

中国語: I read an intermediate entry on Mandarin Bean and one page of 骑士幻想夜.

英語: Finished The Grand Sophy! Back to normal reading times.

@potatonaught Thank you for the tip! :+1:

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Summary Post

April 7
Final Fantasy VII

Vocabulary
  • 排除 = はいじょ elimination, removal.
  • 標語 = ひょうご motto, slogan.
  • 配属 = はいぞく assignment (of a person to somewhere).
  • 生息 = せいそく inhabiting, living.
  • 変異 = へんい variation, mutation.
  • 資料 = しりょう data or materials of a research, etc.
  • 保管 = ほかん custody, safekeeping (of items).
  • 低下 = ていか decline, fall, degradation, deterioration.
  • 勢力 = せいりょく influence, power, force.
  • 現状 = げんじょう present condition, existing state.

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I finished the Level 0, Volume 1, Book 2 today about soybeans. I started the next book, which is a story about what family members do all day. Altogether, I read seven pages. I should have started reading a long time ago. This is fun!

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Summary Post

Day 7: April 7th
What did I read?: ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 Vol 2
How much did I read?: 8 pages
How long did it take me?: 31 min

This chapter is really cute so far lol, it’s basically this little girl going around town playing “doctor” with the little kit she got from Zenitendou, except the effects of the ラムネ pills she gives out are real :3 And she’s learning all about doctor-y stuff from her trusty talking glasses :nerd_face:

Good words
  • だまりこむ - to say no more; to sink into silence
  • かきまわす - to rummage around
  • おさまる - to subside (of pain, symptoms, etc.); to be alleviated; to get better; to ease off
  • みるみる - very fast; in a twinkle; before one’s eyes​
  • めんくらう - to be confused; to be bewildered; to be taken aback
  • 顔なじみ (かおなじみ) - acquaintance; friend; familiar face
  • てきめん - immediate (effect, result, etc.); instant; instantaneous; prompt​
  • かたっぱしから - absolutely every little bit; everything from A to Z; systematically; thoroughly; one after another; successively
  • こしらえる - to make; to manufacture
  • 圧勝 (あっしょう) - overwhelming victory; crushing victory; sweeping victory; landslide victory
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Home

And today marks the first day of my long “weekend” of being too tired to do much of anything because of work. Fun.

[Updated with commentary]

I was too tired to read any 2.43, unfortunately. I did still do some reading, though.

Since I saw at least one other person reading the New Penguin Parallel Text Short Stories, I decided to finally pick up my copy, and instead of a Satori Reader story, today I read 夜中の汽笛について、あるいは物語の効用について by Murakami Haruki, in both JP and ENG.

I’d seen 汽車 before, so I knew 汽笛 was a steam whistle, but I didn’t know the reading (I didn’t know any of the readings for 汽, and, before, I’d only known ふえ for 笛). Conversely, I correctly guessed the reading of 効用, but I only knew it meant “efficacy” because of the translation.

The story was short, but beautiful. I liked it, though I do wish we coulda heard the girl’s story too. I’m definitely not used to reading vertical text on such large pages, though. I lost or nearly lost my place more than a few times, which hasn’t happened since I first started reading vertical text. If they’d broken it up into two lines (? columns are only vertical, and it doesn’t feel right calling them bars, so…?), it woulda been easier to read. Well, hopefully I’ll get used to it.

I also read Seed 6 of GREEN.

Summary

Makoto and Wako return to the farm the next morning because they can’t very well take a break from work, and now Makoto’s strategy is to just ignore his sister lol.

It seems Makoto went along with Sayuri’s expectations of him and entered med school because he didn’t have anything he particularly wanted to do, but then when his grandfather died (and this is when I realized I hadn’t seen him since Seed 1, set nearly a year before the main story. I’m observant), he found what it was he really wanted to do: be a farmer. He quit during his residency.

And now Sayuri’s complaining about being put to work on the farm lol. “If you eat an elephant’s worth of food, you have to do an elephant’s worth of work!”

I’m not entirely sure what was going on at the end of the chapter, though. Sayuri and Wako started fighting over whether Makoto should go or stay, and when he tried to intervene and they told him to stay out of it, they pushed him back and he accidentally tripped over and cut his upper arm on a farming implement, I got that. And that he patched it up himself when the doctor wasn’t in, I got that too. But when he had gone off to the doctor’s, baa-chan showed Sayuri and Wako a room in the house that’s Makoto’s that was just like a small lab and which seemed to appease Sayuri, I don’t get what was going on with that. But she dropped the matter and left before Makoto returned, so, that’s good.

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I got really focused on 夜カフェ the last few days, and have been aiming to read a chapter a day, when I can. It’s exciting that I can read that much, even if it is a stretch. I was so excited that last night I browsed through a bunch of aoitori and tsubasa bunko books, reading summaries and thinking about what I might read next. I was pleasantly surprised how well I could understand them if I power past the the terrifying mystery kanji seemingly inherent to character names …

Speaking of which, I was wondering if anyone could provide a recommendation … I have been watching Nagi no Asukara / A Lull in the Sea and really loving it (I have watched ~20 episodes now.) If anyone is familiar with it, do you have any recommendations for light novels with a similar feel? I think the most relevant aspects are 1) complex relationships within a group of (more than three) friends, 2) beautiful, magical world, 3) the friends face the challenges the world throws at them together (despite the drama that sometimes happens between them). Bonus: bodies of water are an important part of the setting.

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Home Post

Day 6
I woke up in the middle of the night, so I decided to continue reading. I thought I read quite a bit, but I’m only at 56%->59% of the book. According to Kindle’s estimation, 1 hr 19mins to go for this chapter. The offshore book club for the book says 1 week for the whole chapter. I think I’ve been reading on and off this chapter for 3 weeks+. Definitely more intensive than the regular advanced book club schedule.
I rely on Kindle X-ray and the cast on Wiki to know who’s who, because there are too many names. 鶴代 doesn’t refer to other people with their legal names. Instead, she use お嫁さん(本位田梨枝)、お祖母さん(お槇)、銀さん。
あらすじ:銀さんと彼の嫁は鶴代の家に挨拶してきた。幸せそうだった。それて、長男の大助が帰ってきて、両眼がなくなったことがわかった。しかも、性格も暗くなった。時々、秘かに人の秘密を探り出そうをした。大助の妻の痩せて潰れた。鶴代は大助を葛の葉に比喩した。

Words of the day:
おりおり=折々=その時
けたたましい:いきなりの叫び声
秘蔵っ子:ひぞっこ。spoiled child
おもいはかる:思い測るthink deeply
いかつい:a forbidding look
屈託:くったく。くよくよすること

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April 7 :cherry_blossom: Home Post

More VLR of course :tada: It seems like I made a real choice going for this route right after my first real ending, it’s… long :joy: but all is well, not for the characters but that’s a separate issue lmao

I’m about 44 hours into this game if I can do math, and I truly have no idea how much is actually left, but I’m making good progress I think! The power of desperately needing to know what’s going on :joy:

VLR!!

Where to begin even… I finished up the interaction from last time and um it’s heavily implied that someone is a robot?? My bets are on ルナ currently for reasons I can’t quite explain, but yeah very suspicious :eyes:

This route though, it must’ve been a locked one that I’d already met the requirements for, because it definitely gained like four more scene blocks and another fork :joy: There’s a lot going on though, they’re kind of implying that ルナ killed the old woman which uh… doesn’t make the most sense considering prior ディオ plotlines, so there’s definitely more to that whole situation. And the AB rooms move?? Wild; as time goes on and things get more and more complicated I wonder just how many of these people are going to end up being some kind of culprit, like ゼロ definitely didn’t do all of this, other people are up to stuff :eyes: Though I guess one piece of that is I don’t think アリス was murdered, it seems more like the disease won in those realities. But then ルナ…? Idk man :man_shrugging:

Congrats, that’s super exciting!! :tada: :tada: :tada:

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April 7
Finished all the level-0s! :tada: I was only going to read for 30 mins and ended up finishing them all. Now I can say I’ve read them all instead of forgetting which ones I’ve read before.

Excited to dive into the higher levels.

Really need to finish my MEXT research plan translation, but maybe I should send it to my tutor partially complete so at least she has something to start reviewing.

Edit: week 1 of reading challenge complete!

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

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