📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 🏖🏖

Japanese Language Reading
#393

:ballot_box_with_check: June 1: かがみの孤城 上 (63 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 2: かがみの孤城 上 (20 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 3: かがみの孤城 上 (90 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 4: かがみの孤城 上 (40 pages) + 日の鳥１ (10 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 5: かがみの孤城 上 (112 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 6: かがみの孤城 上 (69 pages) ~ Finished

:ballot_box_with_check: June 7: かがみの孤城 下 (170 pages) ~ 46%
:ballot_box_with_check: June 8: かがみの孤城 下 (81 pages) ~ 68%
:ballot_box_with_check: June 9: かがみの孤城 下 (116 pages) ~ Finished

Whew, I’m done. I thought I’d finish it this week, but not in just 3 days. That was one satisfying ending. So glad I finally read this book! I may go into more detail in the 多読 thread later.

What’s next?

I’ll probably continue with 風立ちぬ now which is very short (just over 100 pages), but a little bit harder to read than most contemporary literature.

I also really want to read Nahoko Uehashi’s first novel, 月の森 に カミよ眠れ, and I’ve got a huge backlog of manga I should get into. But for some reason reading actual books is more relaxing.

We’ll see! I won’t plan too far ahead and will just hope to keep this momentum going for a bit longer.

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#394

Main post

Day 9 :ballot_box_with_check:
Satori Reader: Kiki-Mimi Radio, Episode 13.

Chill day.

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#395

Home post

June 10th.

Started chapter 4 of からかい上手の高木さん, Read pages 2 and most of 3 on my commute.

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#396

Summary post

Day 9: June 9th
What did I read?: 不可解なぼくのすべてを Vol. 2
How much did I read?: 27 pages (1 chapter)
How long did it take me?: 50 min

Back to FukaBoku! I feel like this chapter took me a really long time for some reason. I think it was because I spent a long time going back and forth trying to make sense of the conversation at the beginning of the chapter…confused characters = a doubly confused me xD But I got there eventually.

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#397

My Home Post

My usual daily manga reading, and my Summer 2021 Read Every Day Challenge book reading, keep overlapping.

In reading the Detective Conan movie novelization yesterday, I came across:

頬ほおを赤あかく染そめながら答こたえた。

I looked up 頬 and 染まる, but didn’t think much of them otherwise.

While reading ARIA today, I encountered them again:

i-004x i-031x

After that, getting to today’s Detective Conan, them showed up another time for good measure:

頬ほおを赤あかく染そめて

My word frequency list says 頬 comes up a total of 14 times in this Conan book, and seven times. Here’s hoping this RRS (reading repetition system) works out!

Back to work on my 2% for the day…

10 Likes
#398

Wiki post

June 9 Update

Today I read through 進撃の巨人 chapter 2. I originally only intended to read through half the chapter, since these chapters take almost 3 hours to read but I lost myself in the emotion of the story and managed to find the time, I guess? It’s interesting that I don’t find Eren annoying yet while reading the manga. While I love the anime, Eren speaking tends to grate on my nerves, and that hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it’s the voice actor?

The chapter was fairly straightforward, no unknown grammar points, and about 68 unknown words over about 40 pages. Not too bad. I’m starting to think I might need to pick books from a higher reading level if I want to get back to encountering new grammar with greater frequency. Maybe now is a good time to give 君の名は another go?

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#399

Yes that’s definitely not the best. It turns out to be not as bad as expected but it’s not like you could know about it. I did love the fact that the author was conscious about it and turned that into a joke in the afterword of volume 4.

Anyway, I realized I only had the last chapter left to read, so I just went ahead and did that during my lunch break. I feel like things got solved way too fast considering how bad it was. Not that I know how this kind of situation would resolve since I was lucky enough to have a very accepting and supportive family myself.

Anyway, I am now out of LGBT-related stuff to read… Back when I was learning English, I spent many an hour on a website called tgstorytime (warning: writing quality is questionable at best, but my English wasn’t good enough to realize that at the time; also, damn, that website is still up and running?!?). I kinda wish I could find something like that in Japanese. I have found some stuff on 小説家になろう but the tags are way less specific… If anyone has any idea, I’m open to suggestions.
(Maybe I should ask in the lgbt book club, but it’s kinda dead at the moment)

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#400

[main]

I eeny meeny miny mo’d between NHK Easy News articles today and landed on the one about the マンボウ fish. Found it to be a really easy and super short read, which I followed with the second chapter of Japanese Short Stories for Beginners. That also happened to be extremely short and I felt it was a smooth read. What I understood from the Japanese text was pretty spot on with the English translation :ok_hand:

Later in the day I read a little bit of 美少女戦士セーラームーン Vol. 1 :sparkles: I didn’t read very far – just to the end of the scene where Usagi first encounters Luna, but I spent a fair amount of time looking up a couple phrases I found difficult. (Started a vocab list to keep track :crossed_fingers: )

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#401

By the way, you might be aware of that already, but there was a 美少女戦士セーラームーン book club on the forum as well. I don’t think there was a word list, but you might find answers to the questions you have in the thread (you can also ask if it’s not in there!)

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#402

Ooh, this is awesome! I didn’t about the 美少女戦士セーラームーン book club. This should come in handy, thanks!

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#403

If you’ve not read it yet, I’m only 2 chapters in to ボーイズ・ ラン・ザ・ ライオット but would really reccomend it so far! It’s actually written by a trans creator as well which is great. It’s centred around a closeted trans male high school student, he meets a new student that comes to the school and they decide to start a fashion label together. From reviews I’ve read it looks like there are more characters with various LGBT identities introduced later on. I’ve also read ‘my lesbian experience with loneliness’ in English a while back and remember it being good - though more autobiographical. that’s about as much as I know of but I’ll be keeping a watch of other suggestions you might get as I will probs want to read them too at somepoint!

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#404

Ah, yes, I actually have my eyes on it since I saw your posts in this thread!

In this case though, I’m mostly interested in volume rather than in a single entry, so something like the なろう website, but specifically for LGBTQ+. I don’t mind if it’s garbage fanfic self-publication level. (At least, I don’t mind at the moment).
If I look up tags like トランスジェンダー on なろう, I have ~200 hits, which isn’t much for that website… and I feel there isn’t much variety in the results I’m seeing. What if I want a TG character fighting dragons? Why is there no dragon-fighting story in there? Do I have to write it myself?
Being a tad more general and going with トランスジェンダー 異世界, I get 検索結果： 7作品

Once in a while I go on a google spree to find a more relevant website, with no success so far (but I might just be bad at it). There are many relevant websites that I know of in English, so I feel it must exist though :thinking: So I thought I’d just ask here.

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#405

I’m not sure how LGBT-related that book would be contents-wise, but I just remembered that we discovered this trans author in the Akutagawa thread. This is her prize-winning book: 『夏の約束』｜感想・レビュー・試し読み - 読書メーター

(Also, 乳と卵 maybe?)

I would include a warning regarding my recent discovery that Akutagawa winners can be hard to read and/or confusing, but I don’t think difficulty is your major concern anyways :sweat_smile:

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#406

It’s less the difficulty of the text and more the difficulty of the content that is a concern at the moment. Life is busy and stressful right now and I just want to unplug my brain. Based on the samples of 乳と卵 I’ve seen, probably not compatible with that condition.
(That being said, I’m definitely reading both those books at some point).

I think another reason for wanting err consumer-grade writing is that I can just stop reading it whenever and forget about it, so I don’t feel bad about just reading for whatever amount of time I have. Prize winning books, I feel like I should give them proper attention™, reading with a fancy glass of wine and scented candles or something. (Actually both of those whole probably be distracting and thus worsen the experience, but anyway). At the moment, I do not feel like I have the mental fortitude for that.
Heck, even not for prize winning literature, for some reason I’m having a hard time picking back 鹿の王 2…

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#407

Today I read:

  • Today’s NHK Easy News.
  • Some more はたらく細胞 light novel. Reached page 22.
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#408

Summary list

June 9th I finished the first chapter of Kikis yesterday…and that was all of the reading I did haha. I read the final two pages, one at lunch, one later on. I think with Kikis especially I’m going to need to figure out when I count reading. I already did a read of the whole chapter where I didn’t look up anything I didn’t know, just marked them and moved on. So coming back through has been doing a more ‘close read’ and actually looking up unfamiliar vocab and trying to puzzle out things I didn’t quite get. I’m actually fairly happy with how comfortable I’m finding kiki to read - none of the grammar has been an issue so far. The one thing that took me a little bit to get used to was keeping track of who was saying what in dialogue without speech bubbles and pictures to keep me right - but I think I’ve got used to that now. Excited to get further into the story!

Yesterday was a very busy day, so Kikis was all that I managed. Today is quieter through so hopefully more reading time! :slight_smile:

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#409

Understood. Being somewhat at the other end of the spectrum, I should better stop suggesting things to you then :wink:

Sorry to disappoint you - I recently discovered by accident that it won the 本屋大賞 in 2015 :rofl:

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#410

Have you tried bunpro? It might be a good way to remember the grammar points you find.

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#411

Main Post

June 7th, 8th and 9th Update

June 7th – A bit more of ヒカルの碁 (I’m a go player!)
June 8th – A chapter from かぶと虫 on japanese.io
June 9th – Articles from NHK News Easy

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#412

I take all and every suggestions. It’s just that it will probably take years until I get to them.

Speaking of which, only two weeks until I get すねてがFになる from the library. Just a tad late.

That explains everything.

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