July 10 Update
Today’s reading got done a bit earlier since my morning has been free and relaxing and my evening is going to be busy. Finished another chapter of 赤紙の白雪姫, which took about an hour and 15 min total. I’m encountering a lot more polite vocabulary here which I think is throwing me off a bit. Sentence structure continues to be more of a problem than usual. The story is cute so far though, very much something middle-school me would have liked.
Huh, time flies 
I should probably post an update:
July 5: Finished the week’s assignment of 殺人出産.
July 6-10: Read the week’s assignment of 冷たい密室 every day but only managed to finish today (one day late). The week was so busy with two Euro Cup soccer games going on (I only watch big tournaments and not the national league games, but this was the semi-finals so wanted to check them out) and on top of that I chatted with a Japanese friend twice in this week (usually we only chat once per week).
Now I’m behind on the コーヒーが冷めないうちに book club but I will hopefully manage to read it until tomorrow’s read aloud session starts 
Read couple of pages of Forbidden Scrollery (2).
Including first title pages with TOC etc, it’s 4%
Day 40 
Satori Reader: The River Sanzu, Episode 14.
Still no IBC, going through some rough days where I don’t feel like doing much, just binging video games or something. Kinda bummed about it but ehh, what can you do, some days do be like that. I’m glad I still look forward to complete the day tho, even if it’s just one single Satori Reader article.
Day 40: July 10th
What did I read?: 地縛少年花子くん Vol 1 and レンタルおにいちゃん Vol. 2
How much did I read?: 21 pages (Half chapter) and 41 pages (1 chapter)
How long did it take me?: 52 min and 34 min
Another double-feature day, with the Hanako book club reading and some extra reading from Rental Oniichan. I was sort of on the fence about whether I wanted to read Hanako with the club - the premise/title/art didn’t really speak to me for whatever reason. But I ordered it kind of impulsively while I was trying to fill up my Amazon cart (gotta make that shipping cost worthwhile 
) and now that I’m reading it, I think it’s cute so far. It took me a bit longer to read because I was adding words to the vocab sheet as I read. Trying to be a contributing member of society for once lol
…Speaking of Amazon, I’ve been finding a lot more things I want to read lately (like literally the day after I placed that order, I found a bunch of other stuff I wanted lol, and I’ve only been adding to that list since). But I’ll probably hold off on ordering anything until the end of July. …Feeling so impatient though There was this random ad for a new manga inside the new Flying Witch volume and it looks so cute, I want to read it ><
July 10. Time: 1 hour. Manga Pages: 8
What: Manga それでも歩は寄せてくる (Volume 1), current pick of ABBC. Chapter 1, the first read thru, without much lookups, not done with it.
And I missed 12 days of this challenge for no good reason! Why do I keep loosing good habits so easily 
I haven’t posted an update here since June 17, so I’ll avoid the list of pages read per day or it will take forever - plus I don’t even remember it!
Since the beginning of June I’ve finished Vol. 1 of からかい上手の高木さん, 日常 and started reading それでも歩は寄せてくる and 地縛少年花子くん. I’ll try to keep this pace until the end of summer, while making my way through TRY! N4.
みんなさん、頑張りましょう！
8.7.
Some more of 青の王! I really like the illustrations in this book, they’re very elaborate and quite unique.
I also read half a chapter of 赤毛のアン.
9.7.
Finished that chapter of 赤毛のアン! It’s been over a year now since I started it… Eventually I’ll be done, haha. Also read 2 more chapters of 青の王. ⅔ done!
10.7.
Another 2 chapters of 青の王, as well as 8 pages of 使ってはいけない日本語.
At some point I also read a chapter of 異世界妹 volume 2, a manga, but I’m not sure what day that was.
My goal of concentrating on non bookclub books is going well. So well, in fact, that I got quite behind with 1Q84. 
I don’t usually read on the weekends but I did read the a bit of the appendices of A Dictionary of Intermediate Grammar, does that count?
Read 4 more pages of Forbidden Scrollery(2) now at 14/185 pages 7.5%.
I think it’s second day I’ve skipped IBC. However I’ve asked myself do I really miss it? is there a character whom I find interesting, and the answer after 3 weeks of reading is “no”.
Anyway my vacation is ending today, and IBC already cut time that I might spent on Touhou.
July 10th phraw, but sadly not for reading. Posting from end of day July 11th, because moving houses so behind on my updates.
July 10th からかい上手の高木さん 2 panels from page 5 of chapter 6.
Finished vol 5 of 蜘蛛ですが、なにか？ yesterday. I read over 60 pages almost in one sitting for the first time (in Japanese). The story escalated quite a bit in the last chapter, so felt compelled to keep going 
Besides, the last page was getting so close 
Took me 30 days to finish this LN (325 pages). My average pace was ~10 pages/day. Pretty much the same as when reading 氷菓 but the pages are bit larger in the LN, so I think the pace was a bit faster.
I looked up 516 words/expressions. This seems to amount to less than 2 words per page but in fact it’s much more. I just have to look up the same word over and over again. I’m too lazy to SRS it
Now on to Vol 6 I need to find out what’s up with all the ＊spoilers＊
Just finished reading the last chapters of Polar Bear Café volume 1. I think it went pretty well, read 4 chapters per day. The start was a bit rough as the author also had to find the right balance with dosing the puns and events. It’s also a cute manga and it shows with the cover and the fontstyle. I would say it is beginner friendly with horizontal text (might be one of the few manga that has it), furigana and short chapters. Then again I found myself looking at a dictionary faster as the amount of vocab used was more varied and you gotta want to know them puns. As it’s a size smaller than regular manga volumes, the text is also smaller. In most cases that wasn’t an issue, only one panel was very hard to decipher. I really liked reading it more as I got further along, particularly the longer chapters have the better conversations.
Tomorrow I’ll start reading volume 2, trying to keep this good pace going.
Day 40
My new strategy of only looking up totally necessary words is working! I’m enjoying reading this book much, much more.
Today I read two-thirds of chapter 4 in ぼくはイエローでホワイトでちょっとブルー！
Hello, do you have space for one more in the reading room? I don’t have any page goals, just trying to do something every day.
Current book: ありす 19th vol 1 (wikipedia: ja en)
(using an English translation to catch story nuances after reading the Japanese … and trying hard not to read ahead in it )
Finished:
Possible future reading:
(Page # is where I left off…)
JULY 2020:
8: p9
9: p26
10: pg 28 
11: pg 37 (thanks insomnia!)
12: pg 40
13: -
14: pg 50
15: -
16: pg 57
17: pg 62
We’ve been waiting for you already!
Excellent! Welcome aboard 
Summary post
July 11
・Finished Kono Oto Tomare vol 16 + 17 That’s all the free ones! 
Will read book club stuff tomorrow - totally neglected those during binge 
Well… went on a bit of a binge read this weekend - you know, for my level of Japanese reading - nothing like the ones I can do in English, but still pretty good. I read about 1.5 volumes of Love so Life over the last 2 days. Haven’t read that much in a while - there were a few chapters that were more direct continuations of the previous ones, vs more stand alone episodes, and I got hooked. Had to stop about halfway into volume 7 because my brain was getting sleepy. Things were cute, then ridiculous - I did a lot of complaining that characters were being stupid, which is pretty much par for the course of me enjoying something with any kind of romantic plot, because inevitably the characters are being a little dumb.
I also read the ABBC pick chapter for the week - haven’t followed along with a book club since my aborted attempt with Shirokuma Cafe a while (I think a couple years?) ago when grad school exams hit (though I have taken advantage of old threads when reading on my own) - I think it’ll be easier to stick with this one because I’m used to reading more now.
Following everyone’s progress is fun - I love finding out what other people are reading!
