📚📚 Read every day challenge - Spring 2022 🌸 🌱

I recently got back into reading English books at bedtime to help me unwind. Anyone who is familiar with my JP reading habits cough murder cough crime stories cough will not be surprised that my most recent finished book was about a Victorian era serial killer :upside_down_face:

I actually mostly read historical nonfiction like that in English but so far haven’t found much in Japanese, at least not available in ebook form. If anyone knows any titles I would be delighted to know. :smiley:
(edit, there are some titles I do want to try, for example
戦前昭和の猟奇事件
looks very much up my alley :sweat_smile: )

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Woohoo, a new challenge! :blush:

Home post

2022, 2nd Quarter


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M A Y
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This time as well I’ll be aiming to read in both Japanese and Mandarin every day. It’s so nice to see that other people are also mixing in other languages, yay!

For Japanese, my main goal is to read 30+ minutes of novels a day. Because lately I haven’t been finding the time for manga, this time I’ll also add the goal of finishing a manga volume a week. This week’s volume is: からかい上手の高木さん 17.

For Mandarin, I just need to read something every day. I’ll be focusing on Mandarin Bean entries (intensive aka looking everything up), 漫画 pages (extensive aka getting what I can), and my yearly goal book, which is a book of folktales for kids (intensive). I’ve started a large vocabulary push with Mandarin due to finding something above my current level that I really want to try reading, so additional goals would be to keep up with that and also to be sure and also study grammar and not just fling myself into the anki abyss (which is both simpler and more fun).

I will update on the day following my reading day. Same as last time: I’m aiming for a bit being <10 minutes, some being 10-30 minutes, a fair amount being >30 minutes (if it felt like I didn’t get a great deal read), and a lot being >30 minutes (if it felt like I read a great deal). I’ve found that keeping close track of time spent reading demotivates me, so it’s all フィーリングで. This is really only with Japanese, because my Mandarin reading フィーリング at the moment is more like: Is this reading? Am I just looking words up that happen to be in a row? I will persevere!! :triumph:

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there are some really good ones out there! especially once you can move beyond just what’s localized. there’s definitely a title for everyone.

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I love him!!! hmm I think Sonny/Sunny would suit him heh.

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DURTANUKI!! It would be such an HONOR, please do!! :raccoon::books:
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So excited to be back, thank you :durtle_love:

Aaahhh! “Sonny the Durtanuki” is too cute :sob::two_hearts:

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Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take the books I bought with myself when I moved, but I still have internet for reading. So, this spring I want to read much more than I did last time. (and last time it was around 20 days, so I have a good chance to do it :durtle_officer:)

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New challenge!! :tada: Looking forward to it.

I’ve only partly picked what to read so far - will most likely follow in @natarin’s footsteps and play some more 999 :santa:, which has been really fun so far :yellow_heart:
As for books - I’m currently still reading a series I’ve started forever ago (NO. 6) and I’m planning on continuing that but since that’s gonna take me a while to finish and reading only one thing at a time would be… way too reasonable, I’m probably gonna pick up something else as well. I’m not gonna join any new bookclubs for now since classes are starting up again and I kinda feel like just reading whatever for a while, sooo I get to choose a new book for this challenge :eyes: Exciting.
Would also like to finally read at least some of the manga I have piled up, but I’m just… not gonna make plans I might not stick to anyway :laughing:


:books: :hibiscus: :tulip: Home Post :tulip: :hibiscus: :books:


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Days completed: not enough but let’s not talk about that
Last updated: June 6

bookmeter :books:

Reading List

novels / light novels

  • NO. 6 book #3 (?% - 100%) :mouse2:
  • 死神の精度 (0% - 8%) :skull:
  • 親愛なるあなたへ (0% - 22%) :fireworks:

games

  • Zero Escape - 999 :jigsaw: :santa:

manga

  • SPY×FAMILY 1 :male_detective:
Previous summary post

Winter Challenge


Happy reading everyone :honeybee:

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Sounds familiar :eyes: Not completely dead in my case but I’ve barely read anything in English over the last one or two years - though I’ve been getting back into it lately and it’s been nice, I did miss it quite a bit :yellow_heart:. As much as I enjoy reading in Japanese, there’s something to be said for reading a book without having to look up words all the goddamn time :laughing:

:open_mouth: I love this a lot. :durtle_love:

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Pumped to be back for another season’s challenge! I took quite the break since the end of the last one, so I’m ready to dive back into it with everyone. I see we have a lot of new faces joining us this time. Happy to have you aboard! Also glad to see a lot of returning veterans. My only goal this time around (besides reading a little each day) is to not fall behind in the upcoming book club I’ll be participating in. :sweat_smile:

I’m looking forward to reading everyone’s posts and watching us all progress this spring. よろしく! :grin:

:seedling: :cherry_blossom: Home Post :cherry_blossom: :seedling:
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本棚

:red_square: :skull_and_crossbones: 消滅世界・村田 沙耶香 (part of Sayaka Murata Book Club)
:red_square: :wolf: かがみの孤城・辻村 深月(wanted to read w/ book club, but am SERIOUSLY behind; may post thoughts there, anyway)
:red_square: :breast_feeding: 授乳・村田沙耶香 (picking up where I left off in book club)
:red_square: :older_woman: 傘寿まり子・おざわ ゆき
:white_large_square: :newspaper: TODAI app (articles in a pinch)

Key

:red_square: 0% ~ 33% finished
:orange_square: 34% ~ 66% finished
:yellow_square: 67% ~ 99% finished
:green_square: 100% Complete!
:white_large_square: progress not trackable

Updates

Day 1 → Day 4

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I got this badge for the first time today!

If I left a book on hold for a really long time, that’s usually a sign that I’m not interested in the book. In that case, I just drop it. In the rare case I do decide to continue reading, I may look up synopses/blurbs until I jog my memory of where I’ve reached.

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Since I tend to make vocab lists while reading, if I’ve put off reading the book for a while, I’ll usually start from the beginning. This also let’s me see how many words and kanji I’ve picked up since my first reading which can be a nice motivator.

I’m doing a weird thing with 夜カフェ right now where I’m rereading with the book club but also reading where I’ve left off so I can make my own vocab list. I like doing more active reading because it helps me really think about the content. If I’m reading without looking up anything, it becomes more of a passive process for me, and I forget what I read soon after. If this happens, then it feels like reading to begin with was a waste of time.

(It’s not just a language acquisition thing either. I realized early on when reading and interacting with the text for my English major classes that I actually remembered the content vs the books I read for pleasure.)

But back to rereading books or not - if I hit a certain level where my vocab lists aren’t very long, and I’m more than halfway into the book, unless I hardly remember what was going on, I’d probably just finish it. Particularly if it wasn’t that interesting of a book and I just wanted to finish it to appease the completionist in me.

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Not in Japanese but set in Edo period and basically a detective thriller about this samurai/police officer solving the mysteries surrounding the crimes impacting the shogun. It’s really well-researched in terms of the social restrictions of that time period because there’s only so many things the protagonist is allowed do to do depending on his position, and if he screws and gets caught, he’ll have to commit seppuku. A lot of the times he has to take risks to solve the mystery (or his and his retainers’ livelihood is in danger).

I would say it was one of the big influences for my interest in Japan during my high school days. It’s called the Sano Ichiro series by Laura Joh Rowland. It starts from Shinju and I believe the series is finally complete.

Also looking forward to the reading lists you share during this challenge. :slightly_smiling_face: I love detective fiction but not quite the level to tackle it in Japanese yet. :sweat_smile:

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Thanks for the recc! And when you do feel up to the challenge, my one true boo, my 推し, 江戸川乱歩 (Edogawa Ranpo) does have books he wrote aimed at children and some of them have been annotated with explanations of old terms (like 捕縄 - police rope (top pic here)) and even modernize the older grammar forms. I’m going to go out on a limb and say a version looking like this is probably one of them. :stuck_out_tongue:

赤川次郎 has books for adults that are often crime/mystery and IMO he’s incredibly easy to read…if not edging on pulpy. :sweat_smile: Probably the next step up the ladder after kids’ mysteries if I had to guess.

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Ahhh yay that’s super exciting, I’m glad you’re enjoying it!! I look forward to seeing more of your thoughts :eyes: Zero Escape squad!

I really wanna read NO.6 sometime too, I saw the anime ages ago and I have the first volume of the manga in Japanese but last time I tried it it was way too intimidating :joy: maybe it wouldn’t be as much now, but the novels!! I’ll definitely have to see about getting them in the future, I keep hearing about them :eyes:

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In a language I’m fluent in, sure, that’s often the case, although external circumstances may still interfere. In the case of Japanese books (at the stage I’m at anyway), it was more that I was over enthusiastic and wildly miscalculated the time I would have available for reading. :sweat_smile:

Heh, one of the books I had to put aside due to time constraints and intend to resume reading during this challenge is 三毛猫ホームズの推理 by 赤川次郎. :smiley:

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I’ve only read the first volume, and I liked it. It’s SF, so there were some difficult words, but nothing unreasonable. There’s the old thread from the bookclub to post questions, too. Some of us are still around (although, to be fair, most of the original posters aren’t around anymore and I don’t have the book anymore, so I wouldn’t be able to check anything).

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I’m considering reading that book too. I’ll probably finish my current book by next week, and as I think about my next book I keep swinging back and forth indecisively between 三毛猫ホームズの推理 and 鹿の王。I had been leaning toward 鹿の王 but now I’m leaning back toward Holmes again. (lol) I’m not really in the mood to spend a lot of time with a dictionary this spring and Holmes probably has more overlap with my existing vocabulary knowledge.

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Well, not to try to influence your decision or anything, but it might be fun to have someone to exchange thoughts with as we’re reading. :slightly_smiling_face: Of course it looks like there are many here who have already read 鹿の王 so there will be no shortage of people happy to discuss that either

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:grin: :wave:

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Periodt. I’m in, will start late when I got my apartment. Things will call down soon /./

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