📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 🏖🏖

[d-hermit]

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

@d-hermit

2021-06-11

Started reading 蜘蛛ですが、なにか？5
Getting used to the style. The language seems quite conversational, very unlike 氷菓 that flaunted literary language sprinkled with traditional proverbs natives themselves would have to look up.

Overall it seems far more pleasant to read. And the fact that I’m into the story also helps

Well today I only read 3 pages in 30 minutes but I was taking my time. I feel I’ll be reading it much faster soon.

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＊

[Thud]

Main post

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.

[Axazel]

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！

[kimera]

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 )

Reading List

Finished:

Possible future reading:

• ありす 19th (wikipedia: ja en)
• 火の鳥 - 鳳凰編 (wikipedia en )
• • which is technically vol.5 but for some reason it says no.4 on the cover)

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Daily Log

(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

[NicoleRauch]

@kimera

Hello, do you have space for one more in the reading room?

We’ve been waiting for you already!

@kimera

trying to do something every day.

Excellent! Welcome aboard

[Redglare]

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

[Nishi790]

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!

[rikaiwisdom]

Main post

Day 41
Satori Reader: The River Sanzu, Episode 15.

[chrisosaurus]

@Redglare

Binging be like:

That chart is beautiful, what is generating that?and what is that left axis?

Update: oops, they’re labelled and my brain just skipped over it. Pages read ?!? =O

[windupbird]

Summary post

Day 41: July 11th
What did I read?: レンタルおにいちゃん Vol. 2 (finished) and Vol. 3
How much did I read?: 109 pages (3 chapters)
How long did it take me?: 1.25 hours

Poor Kanami, the last chapter of Vol 2 was rough. But now the tables have turned and Makoto’s “renting” her, which leads to an incredibly adorable chapter where Kanami asks Makoto what he wants to do instead of the other way around. Such sweet sibling energy between them, I love it Hoping I might be able to finish this series before my long weekend is over I really do need to clean my apartment at some point, too, though But I freaking hate cleaning ugh

[NicoleRauch]

@chrisosaurus

That chart is beautiful, what is generating that?

That’s bookmeter.com where you can keep track of all the books

If you sign up and link to your account here and/or in the tadoku thread, people can connect to you (and you can find their accounts and connect as well).

[chrisosaurus]

Thanks! Funnily enough the green from the charts made me think of Bookmeter, although pretty much all I knew about it was that people here seem to use it (and that it used a lot of green)

I have been kind of using Goodreads to track reading, but it isn’t particularly good, so I’ll try check Bookmeter out. I’ve emailed myself a reminder to checkout of Bookmeter, for when I’m less exhausted AKA more capable of actually reading the Japanese on the website =P

and since I’m here… Update time! Home post

July 11th からかい上手の高木さん Chapter 6 1 difficult panel and a few trivial ones.

[Axazel]

Day 41

Finished chapter 4 in ぼくはイエローでホワイトでちょっとブルー、and read just a little bit of ふしぎ駄菓子屋銭天堂 volume 2, chapter 1.

[maykeye]

5 more pages of Forbidden Scrollery(2).

[Aislin]

Summary post

Day 14
July 9

• 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…4 (79% → 86%)

Day 15
July 10

• 地縛少年花子くん1 (9% → 14%) (finished this week’s bbc portion)

Day 16
July 11

• 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…4 (86% → 91%)
• ルーンファクトリー5 (年1 冬3-4)

Day 17
July 12

• 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…4 (91% → 96%)
• ルーンファクトリー5 (年1 冬5; around 13/15 of the main story)

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So far Hanako-kun doesn’t look like my thing, but - it’s only the beginning.
It does mark 3rd series I’m currently doing where protagonist has something to do with farming:

farming compilation - pictures below

[vonnutje]

Today I read 5 pages of ひげを剃る。そして女子高生を拾う。 Still not through the first chapter, but already seeing a lot of progress in known words and known grammar points from studying that makes reading manga a lot easier

[momoni]

Main

July 8
Read 2/3 of 花のみぞ知る 3.

July 9
Read remaining 1/3 of 花のみぞ知る 3. In the end I still decided to sell the books - the art is lovely but the story just didn’t resonate with me. I still have 3 volumes of other stuff by her that I can admire/re-read in the future, so not as heartbroken as I thought I would be.

July 10-11
Was super busy for two days straight and as such fell off the reading challenge (and WaniKani) waggon.

July 12
I had kind of already accepted that I’m still too tired to read anything today, but then late in the evening I thought I might as well read ONE page… and then I read 2. And then another. Ended up reading 12 pages of ふしぎ駄菓子屋 銭天堂 1.

This challenge is magical, I’d like to thank each and every one of you who post updates about your progress - peer pressure is the only reason I managed to read anything at all today.

[Redglare]

Summary post
July 12

Didn’t get much reading done today. Gave Ningen Shikkaku a try, but wasn’t exactly what I needed to read right now, being a bit of a droopy plant the last few days, so to speak. Instead, re-read a bit of 冷(つめ)たい密室(みっしつ)と博士(はかせ)たち - Doctors in Isolated Room, chapter 1 part 6. Has been a while since last time, after all. Was all I managed today.

Long title, how to abbreviate… 冷(つめ)たい密室(みっしつ) yeah

[sycamore]

Summary post

Not done an update in a while! Last week was a real struggle, had so little motivation to do anything at all. However - I only missed one day, which is disappointing after I hadn’t missed one so far but a lot better than it could have been. The days I did read, I generally managed one chapter a day, which is less than I was reading for most of last month but still something I would have seen as really impressive before this challenge so I’ll take it Feel like today I’ve finally got over my setback and feel pretty much back to normal. I celebrated by reading 3 chapters of 鬼滅の刃４ - It was a true shonen manga experience where the first chapter took maybe 40 minutes, then the next two chapters were mostly fighting so only took 15 mins each. Still, was really nice to get back into the flow of reading again. Oh also, in my last update I said that I was going to aim to be starting the 鬼滅の刃 light novels next month…I’ve since looked up reviews and it appears that they are real bad hahaha. So back to the drawing board! I do still quite fancy the idea of a light novel of something I’ve read the manga of so perhaps ハイキュー!!

[Nishi790]

Read for… longer than planned today. Need to stop having mini cliffhangers between chapters of this manga. I finished another volume today and am just opening the new one, since the last one ended on some big fun drama!

Read 1 chapter with my fewest look-ups ever because I was lazy and had something else running on my phone that I didn’t want to swap away from…Only looked up 17 words, when I was really bewildered. It was fun just going with the story and I was more okay with missing a few details than usual. I think it helped that there were relatively few wall-of-text segments in that chapter.

Going to try to reduce my look-ups as I continue through - I’m realizing that I get more of it than I think I do.

As a side victory, there was a text message in one of the panels (so no furigana) and I could actually read all of it - it was not difficult, but still exciting! (Okay, I screwed up on the person’s name at the top of the message, but to be fair, they never use his last name so I didn’t really remember what it was, and it contained some of the same kanji as another character’s name - context made it extremely clear that I was reading it wrong very quickly)

Did I mean to spend a large chunk of today reading? No… no I did not.
Am I glad I did? Heck yes!