📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 🏖🏖

Japanese Language Reading
#998

Thanks for the tips!!

Yeah, I really like the idea of writing down what I read each day (or maybe week) and stuff like that!
The thing is that I’m currently kind of really stressed about stuff I need to work on for uni and I honestly shouldn’t spend too much time on Japanese in the first place. I’m worried that if I start tracking progress or something right now I’ll be too tempted to focus on those goals instead of the ones I should actually be working on right now :laughing:

For the same reason - and this is gonna sound really dumb - I think I’m kind of subconsciously stopping my self from really getting into anything (that has a lot of new-to-me content available). I know that I sometimes struggle with productivity/focus when I have some new shiny media thing to obsess over :laughing: I don’t know if that makes any sense.

This is kind of why I didn’t join this challenge even though it seems really fun. I’m kind of hoping that there will be an autumn one or something in a couple of weeks or so when things have calmed down for me :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I also really wanna join a book club again, I think that’d help with finishing things too. And it’s fun. It’s just that right now I don’t think I’d have the time or energy to stick to a strict book club schedule.

Haha I have a few of those as well, but even if I never get to those at all I wouldn’t mind, since they were free and all. No harm done.

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#999

Haha, as an almost professional level procrastinator that makes total sense. Yeah, Japanese isn’t going anywhere - makes 100% sense to focus on your other studies :slight_smile:

I think quite a few people have mentioned wanting to do this again later in the year again or continuing on for further months so expect that will happen! :grin:

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#1000

On bookwalker at least (and they do seem to usually coincide…) it’s until August 5th.

(For a bit I thought y’all might be talking about 獣の奏者 since I saw that was 99 yen recently and picked it up with extra coins – I think I have a print copy of No.6 still around somewhere from when it was a book club pick though…)

It looks like there’s a lot of 講談社文庫 quietly at that price right now come to think of it…

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#1001

Read 6 pages of Forbidden Scrollery (2). New mystery starts to unfold!

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#1002

Today I read 5 more pages of ひげを剃る。そして女子高生を拾う, so now I’ve read 30 pages in total :tada:

Tomorrow I will have a lot of time to read so I will try to finish the chapter then (just 13 pages left).

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#1003

Summary post
July 16 Wiii, even more focus today :3 Not being on forum for the whole day helped for sure :+1:

・Read 冷たい密室と博士たち, ch. 2 part 5-7, ch. 3 part 1-6. (14% → 26%)

Trying to catch up on the book club schedule - tomorrow when the new week starts, I’ll be four chapters behind. It’s kind of funny, if it were the Subete ga F ni Naru schedule, I’d be a whole month behind, but since we’re going 2 chapters a week now I’m “only” two weeks behind.

On another note, I think I’ll be dropping Ningen Shikkaku for now. Maybe I’ll pick it up later at some point. And as for Re:Zero vol 1, I suspect I won’t get around to starting it before this challenge ends for me. But maybe I’ll end up surprising myself? :eyes: I never know with SurpriseGlare.

Wow, this thread reached 1000+ posts! Good job making progress in reading, everyone :relaxed: :books: :sparkles:

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#1004

Read an article on Otani Shohei on NHK news. NEWS WEB EASY|大谷選手がバッターとピッチャーでオールスターゲームに出る

Been slacking the past week. Have to get back on track.

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#1005

Summary post

Day 46: July 16th
What did I read?: しまなみ誰そ彼 Vol. 1
How much did I read?: 32 pages (1 chapter)
How long did it take me?: 46 min

This manga continues to leave me mildly confused but still intrigued. The art in this chapter was really pretty :star_struck: I’m super jealous of the view from 誰かさん’s room.

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#1006

This. A million times this. This is still a lesson I’m working on internalising, too often I find myself drawn to finish things out of something like guilt?!?.

Since I’m here, update time. Home post

July 16th からかい上手の高木さん final 4 pages to finish chapter 6.

Making very good progress to finish chapter 7 before the volume 2 offshoot starts, I’ll have to come back later to do chapters 8 and 9.

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#1007

Wiki post

July 16 Update

Aaah, it’s been a while! Somehow, traveling around every couple of days makes it really hard to find time to read (or do my reviews >.<), so the past few days have not seen any progress. I’m finally back home for three days to rest before I get back to traveling around, so I’m planning on using these days to catch up a bit.

I’m probably really behind with my goals for July, but vacations and rest/relaxation are important, and I tend to not plan for those. So it goes.

Today’s reading was a chapter of ホリミヤ. It didn’t take long at all (probably about 30 min) and was cute. I’ve missed reading in Japanese, it’s takes just that little bit more brain-power to understand everything as compared to reading in English, and that’s useful in noticing progress I think. Hopefully I’ll be able to read a bit more tomorrow.

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#1008

:ballot_box_with_check: Day 46

Finished chapter 6 in 僕はブルー！The chapter was SO GOOD, I finished it much faster than usual. So I started a little bit of chapter 7 too. Properly tired now, but feeling satisfied.

It’s really interesting, as an American expat who’s moving from Japan to Britain, to read about the socio-economic situation in Britain from a native Japanese expat’s perspective. It’s making me realize what my original reason and dream for learning foreign languages is–to read the ideas and experiences of people different from me, in their own words. And I’m finally at a point in Japanese where I can start doing that.

Without you guys, I would probably never have read this book. I thought about quitting this book almost everyday since I started (it’s not getting much easier to read, by the way). But knowing you are all working hard makes me want to push forward too!!

We got this :laughing::notes:

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#1009

Ohhh that sounds exciting! Experiencing living on 3 continents across 3 very different cultures =O

If you don’t mind me asking, is the move due to work or something you decided?

See I really wouldn’t have expected to find that gripping but… it actually sounds really interesting.

That’s really beautiful and inspiring.

I like the notion that there are ideas floating around out there which are off limits to me, at least in their native form, and by learning a language I gain access to a sliver more. Although I hadn’t thought about that as an explicit motivation until reading your words =/

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#1010

We’re moving for my husband’s work! We met in the US and lived there for a couple years, moved to his home country of Japan and been here for (just) three years, and now he’s being asked to support his company’s British branch office. It’s a whirlwind of culture, and it’s amazing :sparkles: We’ll be there for 3-5 years.

Honestly, same :sob::rofl: Luckily it is! The writer is really brilliant.

Right??! Wish I could learn every language in the world… I’m so glad you’re inspired too! I hope we get to see and hear all there is!!

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#1011

I’ve moved country once and it was exhausting so I’m always kind of impressed when others do it multiple times!

It’s lovely knowing there’s a job waiting on the destination of a big move, I hope it’s a (relatively) stress free and exciting move for the both of you =D

Whirlwind is right! But quite honestly that does sound super exciting (and really wholesome), and getting to share that experience that with someone makes it even better.

My partner’s work means country moves are very unlikely for us, so instead we’ll be trying to get the most of our holidays and maybe finding a way of making a longer holiday overseas work.

Thanks for sharing!

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#1012

16 pages of Forbidden Scrollery. Overall ~33% complete. The new chapter moves from disappearance of sake to disappearance of magical hoodies.

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#1013

Summary

Both today and yesterday I’ve read another 5% in the Kindle version of NO. 6. No idea how many pages that is but it seems like I’ll get to the end of the first chapter tomorrow which makes me think that I must be doing a similar pace to when the IBC book club read it. I timed myself yesterday and it took me 1 hr 6 mins to read that 5%. Even though I’ve read manga for longer stretches than that when I’m really into a story, I’m finding that this is about my endurance limit for a day right now. Hoping that if I stick with reading prose then that will improve :crossed_fingers:

Still early days, but I’m really enjoying NO. 6 so far. It made me laugh a bit because in one of the reviews I read before getting it someone complained that the romance comes out of nowhere, yet within minutes of meeting, one of the characters is comparing the others eyes to the twilight sky. Already seems pretty gay lol
It’s difficult coming straight from reading manga series where I can comfortably read a few chapters a day and so usually stop at a nice point, to have to force myself to stop midway through an interesting dialogue (as I did today) because I’ve run out of reading energy :disappointed: I’m also not 100% how I’m going to balance this + 2 chapters ハイキュー a week + continuing 鬼滅の刃…but I do want to read all of those things lol. The struggle of wanting to read all of the things always :sweat_smile:.

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#1014

Summary post
July 17

・Read 冷たい密室と博士たち, ch. 4 and 5. (26% → 40 37%) I forgot what I was going to write xD

edit: whoops, got the last % wrong

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#1015

This week continued with the good reading streak. Really want the characters in my manga to hurry up and get their shit together i.e. admit that they like each other and they keep not doing it - which I’m fine with but does make me want to read more. I’ve been finding myself reading at the end of the day a lot, and have been experimenting more with doing minimal look-ups. Down to somewhere between 5 and 35 words/chapter, depending how sketchy an understanding I’m willing to go with, and how much I don’t feel like picking up my phone to look the words up. I notice myself using better reading strategies (i.e. reading the whole sentence to get to the verb and figure out some of the context before deciding if I need to look up the unknown word(s)/grammar) - so that’s nice. I think I’ll want to go back and close read a little later to get some more details.

I’ve been reading 1-2 chapters a day (if we don’t count the binge at the start of the week, which was more like 1 volume/day) - it’s pretty doable, even when I go to bed and just read until I’m sleepy. Work has been busy, but not exhausting this week, which made reading much more doable. Grammar study has definitely been put on the back burner with all the reading, but I’m okay with that right now - getting exposed to grammar points, and looking them up a few times, definitely helps when they actually come up in my studies.

Read this weeks chapter of ‘When Will Ayumu Make his Move’ this morning - it was good - I definitely read the book club stuff more closely than what I’m reading on my own, since there are people to bounce ideas off of when I’m not getting something.

Nice to hear about other people’s reading - I can definitely see myself finding some inspiration for next things to read as I make my way through the posts.

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#1016

Main post

Day 46 :ballot_box_with_check:
Satori Reader: The River Sanzu, Episode 20 (Finale).

Day 47 :ballot_box_with_check:
Satori Reader: Secret, Episode 1.

I didn’t update the other day because I was tired, but I did read! I finished The River Sanzu on Satori Reader, and it was alright, I enjoyed it. Out of the three that I’ve read so far, I think I enjoyed the other two more, but that’s not to say that this one isn’t good, they’ve all been pretty nice so far. I’ve started Secret, which is a long one (98 episodes) and it’s labeled as one of the harder ones. So far, so good. Seems to be a thriller, and the voice acting this time is male, which is a change from the 3 female narrators of the other stories I read. So far, all of the voice acting has been awesome.

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#1017

Home post

July 17th からかい上手の高木さん started chapter 7 and read 4 non-trivial pages (pages 2, 3, 4, and 5).

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