If people wonder I started volume 1 of それでも歩は寄せてくる today. Because it is super easy I read the first fifty pages, or maybe I am getting better at reading manga.
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Yeah, I don’t think I’ve had that happen before. But then again, I probably wouldn’t have noticed if not for writing it down each day like I’ve been doing in this thread.
Summary post
July 22
・Read 冷たい密室と博士たち, ch. 7, part 1.
% being weird again, started at 49% and after closing the book I expected 51% but it says 47% ;-;
wait… 0: I figured it out. It changes based on background color! Whyyy tho. I turned it back from “black” to “cream” and now it certainly says 51%. Very weird, but that’s that explained at least. Will have to stick to one background color for logging progress.
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NO.6: 30%-39% - read more of this than I have in a day before, because 1) I wanted to finish up the second chapter, 2) it’s starting to feel a bit easier/less like I have to look up every other word, & c) it was too hot today after work to do much else!
I also read I satori reader article on my work lunch break. It looks like I’m about to get super busy at work so I think SR will be a good way to make sure I can fit in at least a bit of reading each day!
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Day 51 
Satori Reader: Secret, Episode 5.
Day 52
Satori Reader: Secret, Episode 6.
Increased the duration of the challenge from 61 days to 75. I mentioned it some weeks ago but I think I want to try 2 months and a half of challenge and 2 weeks of cooling down until the next. I think I’ll be able to complete it with no burnout, despite maybe missing a few days next week depending on whether I can reserve some minutes for it or not, cause vacation. But I’m confident that I will finish with >90% of completion, which is good enough for me 
(although the perfectionist part of me really wants that 100% ;-; ).
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also @Axazel
I bumbled my way through the first ‘page’ last night and colour me intrigued, I think it is manageable but on the upper end of difficulty I could manage so it’d be quite slow going. The grammar was surprisingly reasonable, maybe it gets worse later on, just was a lot of vocab work but that’s expected.
I think this moves カラフル up my priority list, especially considering it has an audiobook and the narration sounded good in the sample, although I think for now I need to focus on the current ABBC / offshoot manga I’m reading as they’re easier to make progress in.
If this were part of a book club that’d be freaking awesome, although I doubt I could keep up with the pace.
This is completely my fault but I thought I’d share as it is amusing, first thing in the morning half asleep I opened this spoiler as I think my brain interpreted your statement as “my current theory on the difficulty of this book / suitability for BBC”. My half asleep brain is silly sometimes.
Thankfully I only gleamed a few words, only one of which I remember, and it was something I might have been able to infer from the snippet I read last night, maybe kind of. Phewf!
The word I remember for the curious
possible カラフル spoiler?
Suicide
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Day 52: July 22nd
What did I read?: いつでもサメーズ
How much did I read?: 10 pages
How long did it take me?: 16 min
Weeell, my original plan was to finish ルックバック today, but it’s late and I didn’t think my brain would be able to handle that. So I finished the sharks instead! My last shark book 
But this was a great note to end on.
Just Shark Things
The page for 節分 was soooo cute and clever D: Throwing beans at the sea creatures with 鬼 in their names~ Also today I learned that the name/kanji for manta ray is 鬼糸巻エイ (オニイトマキエイ) - this is good for me to know, because I freaking love rays, they’re so big and glide-y 
And of course
I cannot forget
scarfshark
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I completely agree, it would be awesome! Though, I’m with @Aislin in that I’m not so keen on running it either 
But further agreeing that maybe it would be good for the BBC?
18% already is awesome! Love how you’re critical thinking/theorizing!!
The snippet you gleaned from Aislin shouldn’t spoil the book, since that theme is a part of the intro 
Still, good on you for diverting your attention swiftly haha
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I completely get that, running a club seems like a bit commitment with lots of spoons.
Selfishly, I’m probably in favour of it being a BBC read at a later point, once I’ve improved my reading enough that I could keep up with the pace and be more confident I was actually understanding the book =p
My experience reading the first page of カラフル
I went into カラフル with no knowledge. I knew the name, the cover, and that it was talked about here.
I was pretty much expecting a light hearted childrens book or something, I’m not sure where I got this from, maybe just the name colourful and the ‘friendly yellow cover’.
The first few words (死んだはずのぼく魂が…) caused a double take.
Like, huh, that isn’t what I expected, colour me even more intrigued.
hahaha I’m not actually worried, I’m more just amused that my half-asleep brain leapt to such a weird interpretation of the spoiler warning and decided “yeap, thats safe to look at”.
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22.7.
I read another 2 chapters of かしましめし and finished volume 1. It’s interesting, somewhat cute, somewhat philosophical (? Or the opposite of that), a weird mix between light and heavy. I liked it, but volume 1 ended on a good, hopeful note, and I don’t need to read on immediately.
I reread last week’s part of 人間失格, and am planning to read the current week’s part tonight in order to stay on top of the book club schedule. No 1Q84. D: I’ll read at least 1 more chapter over the weekend though, which will leave 2 more to read over the course of next week.
Oh, and in the evening I found out that one piece is free to read on Shonen Jump and Shueisha. Around 30 volumes will be free to read for about 2 weeks each, for a total of 90 volumes.
I read chapter 1 yesterday, and it was pretty nostalgic. I stopped reading (the German and English translations) around volume 50, maybe, so I’m not too fussed about getting them all. Who knows, maybe I’ll not get sick of it this time.
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I finished Takagi-san Volume 2 today! Guess I won’t be reading with the book club anymore then, lol. (I’ll probably go back to help with the vocabulary sheet though, if I have time)
When reading the first volume I was slow and only understood about half of it, but with the second, could actually enjoy reading it. I think taking as much time as needed to look up each grammar point I didn’t know and to understand it for the first half of the book made all the difference.
Holidays are over for me now and I don’t have nearly as much time anymore, so I’m going to take a break with manga and focus on maintaining daily reading with Kiki. I might buy an digital manga for casual reading but won’t push myself to read it regularly. (That would be Fruits Basket; I was planning to read that next!)
Edit: Forgot to mention. I’m now on the 50th page of Kiki, so that makes 215 pages left and 162 days until the end of the year.
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July 23rd
からかい上手の高木さん (1) - 2 and a bit panels from chapter 8
チーズスイートホーム (1) - chapter 3
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some rambling in reply to that
I like the organizing phase, and posting threads, and such, but never liked doing vocab sheets and still feel too inexperienced answering language questions, so the only thing left when the book club is actually ongoing is try to make a discussion lively and if it isn’t lively enough and it’s my book club I’m starting agonizing it’s my fault and I should do something to make people talk more 
Aaand even if I like organizational stuff when there are for example people who want to read faster and some who want to read slower, it’s hard to make a right decision to not alienate anyone, and other choices like this… basically I love organizing things but I don’t like how wild and unstable “people” element is 
And when it’s something I already read, it’s also hard to follow discussion. Even if you reread you know all the plot already :< Basically every time I think about nominating a book I’m either “but I don’t know if it’s good enough” or “okay it’s good but now I want to read it by myself at my own pace and not wait until book club picks it” (which is カラフル’s case)
Anyway, I did run two book clubs, one unofficial and one BBC offshoot (well that one’s still ongoing) and now I’m telling myself I’m not committing to anything else 
Meanwhile, I had my 2nd vaccine dose today and it just hit hard. I felt better after the 1st dose. 
(AstraZeneca)
I did read some, but I’ll do the proper % thing tomorrow.
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I was too tired to read anything today. Of course I was still studying japanese like every day. Even though I have not finished the second Genki book yet, I already started the Tobira book.
I will add you all on bookmeter once I know how to actually use the site and have time to update my book list. Probably after I, either passed or failed miserably, my next japanese test.
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Summary post
July 23
・Read 冷たい密室と博士たち, ch. 7, part 2 & 3 (51% → 53%)
Will try to get the rest of the chapter done tomorrow. 6 parts in total.
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Day 53: July 23rd
What did I read?: ルックバック
How much did I read?: 75 pages (finished)
How long did it take me?: 1 hour 27 min
Ouch, man, the feels D: Wow. Really good. Although I have to admit, I also feel the tiniest bit frustrated, because I could just feel how much more impactful certain scenes would have been if I hadn’t had to stop and look up every other word during them -_- Oh well. One day, I guess.
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July 24th からかい上手の高木さん (1) wrote out remaining 17 pages from this volume and 1 page from volume (2) but didn’t translate them much yet so that I can start on volume (2) tomorrow while keeping my notebook nicely laid out 
, and then read チーズスイートホーム (1) chapter 4 as I was too tired to deal with more complex sentences.
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Today I’ve completed first chapter of Teasing Master Takagi-san(2) as part of off-shoot club.
Yesterday was the usual 6 pages of Forbidden Scrollery (2)
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I keep seeing this mentioned, but nobody said anything about the plot, just that it’s good. Could someone get into more details for me? What kind of story this is? Light spoilers are okay if needed to sell it.
Day 28
July 23
- カラフル (18 → 25%)
- 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった…5 (23% → 32%)
Day 29
July 24
- FukaBoku ch22 (finished 4th volume)
- 乙女ゲームの破滅フラグしかない悪役令嬢に転生してしまった…5 (32% → 37%)
Re: カラフル @Axazel
I’m not sure if you remember that detail after finishing the book, but I was a little lost when the subject of protag’s highschool choice was brought up. Did I understand correctly that he wants (for now) to go to some private school because it’s easier and he’s going to put his application to only one school?
Well technically since he wasn’t attending any of the classes (or, if he did in the previous life, he doesn’t remember them) before his reincarnation, it’s a miracle he was able to get any exam points at all…
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You can read it here,
and that summary that shows up in the preview is a decent basic summary of the opening of the plot (without touching at all on where it goes from there).
a little more detailed summary
In short, it’s a mostly grounded story about two classmates bonding over manga, with things getting emotional and more stylistically unusual storytelling-wise as it goes on with events that echo the real-life Kyoto Animation arson attack, which this was published on the anniversary of (and seems intended at least in part to process emotions surrounding)
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