Wiki post
It’s really motivating to read everyone’s posts and see everyone keep up throughout the day!
June 4 Update
Today was another one of those low-motivation days. Reading is usually one of the first things I do in the morning, but I waited until after dinner today, and had to bargain with myself to do it. I intended to read just 5 pages, then just 10, and then an entire chapter passed. That’s not to say it was easy pushing through. I nearly gave up for the day at 8 pages.
The manga of choice for the day was the second volume of Naruto, chapter 8. I’ve of course seen the anime a thousand times, and read the translated manga another thousand on top of that, but it’s always refreshing to consume Japanese content in Japanese.
(Naruto early content spoilers ahead.) The scene where Kakashi talks about the heroes who died in the line of duty has always hit very hard, and seemed to have an even stronger effect when I read it this time. Naruto’s excitement and then the moment when the realization hits is something that feels a little out of place so early on, but Kishimoto has always been great at pumping out the feels.
I did look up every word I didn’t understand. This resulted in 62 words over 20 pages, the vast majority of which were said by Kakashi, and a handful each by Sakura, Iruka, and the Third. Naruto (thanks to his childish speech) and Sasuke (thanks to his silence) contributed none at all. I’m noticing that across the manga I tend to read, it’s very easy to get used to the children and teenager’s speaking style. Adults (or maybe just authority figures) tend to speak with a lot more variety in their vocabulary and grammar patterns. None of this is surprising, and it’s true of English as well, but it’s cool to notice. It’s always nice when I read manga more geared towards children and adolescents because there’s lots of pages with fully comprehensible conversations.
I wanted to comment a bit more on ふかぼく but it looks like everyone’s got most of the interesting thoughts covered!
Whether or not I look up every word or go by context depends on how readable the rest of the conversation is. Obviously, when there’s only one word per sentence or per person, it’s a lot easier to keep going for a few pages without looking anything up and getting a “good enough” understanding of the material, but when there’s several words in a short span that I don’t know, context kind of goes out the window. In the latter case, I always end up looking up every word. In the former case, I’ll read over the what I do understand several times, and if I’m still dissatisfied, I’ll look up the words.
I should probably rely more on reading from context, but I feel like I don’t know enough Japanese to make that a useful exercise just yet.
This looks really interesting and has been on my want-to-read list for a while now! What are you enjoying about it? I’m always on the look out for more LGBT content to consume.
I’ve seen you (and @Redglare, and maybe some others?) write about your 2% each day and I’ve gotta say that I’m very impressed. Part of the reason I’ve put off reading actual light novels is that they’re so difficult right now that I can only read one or two pages (in the same time it’s taking me to finish entire chapters of manga). Keep up the good work! I’ll look to y’all for inspiration as I progress.
Four day streak! This makes me feel like I’m finally keeping up with a book club again, instead of constantly lagging behind and periodically binging to catch up. It’s a good feeling 
It’s been a while since I’ve been able to break out of that binge-lag cycle - hopefully I can keep it going 
We started Book 2 a few weeks ago, but if you have any questions or feel like sharing your excitement/horror/confusion with others please feel free to use the chapter threads. We love talking about books here. 
