📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 🏖🏖

Summary

June 10 Reread this weeks ハイキュー chapter for the book club, then read chapter 3 of ボーイズ…which once again made me cry by being too damn touching and good! It still is taking me about an hour to read a chapter of ボーイズ whereas I average out at about the half hour per chapter mark for most other manga I’m reading. Oddly enough though, this chapter didn’t feel hard despite that…tbh the ハイキュー chapter had more challenging sections. It might just be that ボーイズ has very little furigana and quite a lot of new vocab. Although I have the KanjiLookup app on my iPad and tbh with that it doesn’t feel much harder at all to look up vocabulary via writing the kanji (luckily the stroke order is very forgiving). Anyway, barely managed to hold myself back from reading another chapter…I could see myself staying up until the early morning to finish it and I have work tomorrow so that would be less than smart!

A further note: some days I find reading Japanese so hard and am like “ugh, can I even do this?” and then on other days like today it just flows and it’s so nice to stop for a second and think “oh wow I’m reading something in Japanese and getting enough of it for it to be properly emotionally impactful, that’s so cool!”. Adding this so the next time I have one of the former days I’ll maybe remember :slight_smile:

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Summary post

June 10 Same as yesterday:

・Read 10 pages of SAO 7. page 20 → 30. Was easier to follow now that I had gotten plenty of sleep.

・Read 5% of Honzuki 5. 5% → 10% On the other hand, reading Honzuki late at night was a bit harder due to getting sleepy.

Will try to get up early tomorrow, so can read while it’s quiet in the house and not too hot :sunny:
almost forgot to update summary table again

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Started back in on Sailor Moon volume 3. I had started that about a year ago and had gotten slightly into chapter 3 (in the book, really chapter 17). I went back and reread the last few pages of chapter 2, and will now precede to reread the pages of chapter 3 I’d started. I guess maybe I should skim the first two chapters, but I don’t think I’ve forgotten anything pertinent. Might just scan the images to see what I might have forgotten. ^^

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10.6.
Today I read some more of リゼロ 17 as well as a chapter of あせとせっけん 11. :slight_smile:

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2021-06-10

Finished 氷菓!Read the last 7 pages in about 30 minutes

Overal impression: pretty meh. I guess if I read it as a teen I’d have enjoyed it more.

Well, tomorrow I’m going to start the Spidey and I’m looking forward to that :wink:

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May I ask where you found this book? Looks like it would be good practice.

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Main post

Day 10 :ballot_box_with_check:
Satori Reader: Kiki-Mimi Radio, Episodes 14 and 15.


Today has been the first legit hard day for me. I had quite a stressful day and had to push myself quite a bit to make the effort to read, but I gave in. Funny enough, once I started I ended up doing more than yesterday. It’s pretty easy once you do it; the real struggle is getting to that point :sob: .

Keep going peeps, we’re doing great.

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Woah, this is a really cool kanji! And yeah, I was nowhere near that English translation :skull: Buying the English version to compare is low key genius…

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Summary post

Day 10: June 10th
What did I read?: サメーズ -サメとアザラシ- :shark:
How much did I read?: 30 pages
How long did it take me?: 28 min

Woke up in a super weird mood, been low-key stressed and squirmy all day about a thing I need to do tomorrow, plus I was working until 8pm again, so…it was sharks for me today :laughing: But I love them, they’re so dumb and so cute. And I learned a new onomatopoeia that’s honestly my favorite thing for some reason: もぞもぞ - creeping about; stirring restlessly; squirming
Don’t know why, I just love it lol. Also feels weirdly appropriate for today, now that I think about it :thinking:

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June 10. Time: 30 min. Manga Pages: 3
What: Manga からかい上手の高木さん (Volume 1), current pick of ABBC. Chapter 7, Pages 5-7
Got to reading very late, so too tired to dig the grammar. Just going with the gist of the story.

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Today I’ve read:

  • Today’s NHK Easy News.
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When I saw 淵 in your post while scrolling through the thread I though that you might be reading Made In Abyss :smile:

What is this Cannibal Flan? Is it a touhou doujinshi?

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So I’m reading Japanese news daily, but there is something I would like to ask you guys.

Which one is better between :thinking:

  • Reading randomly to have broader vocab and structure knowledge
  • Reading only a few topic areas to have deeper understanding

0 voters

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I did not do Satori Reader today, honestly was not in the mood, don’t wanna burn out I did read the book I have tho

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I’m just a beginner with reading as well, but if I look at all the comments in this tread and also in the extensive reading posts, I hear a lot of people saying that sticking to one series at a time can build your reading abilities faster because you pick up the way it is written and certain words you will be seeing more frequent. When starting a new series, you have to almost start over again, but you will have more knowledge that you learnt from the last series that probably stuck with you because you read the same structures/words more often.

Another way to look at it: if you are reading this from a topic that you really like, words will stick more easily because you want to learn that subject.

My plan is to keep reading certain series (hige wo suru first, then probably some free yaoi/shounen ai series since I think I will encounter the same words there often and I like reading them xD). But I will also keep working on my vocab and kanji all the same, to get a nice synergy going :blush:

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I agree with the idea that reading from one subject area (or series) at a time is probably more efficient/better, in terms of building up vocab at least. However I don’t have the self control for that hahahaha.

I think there are some perks also to reading a variety of things at a time as well though. I’ve found quite often over the last few weeks that I will look up some vocab in one thing I’m reading, only to have it pop up again in something else. I feel like for some reason seeing it in a variety of different contexts helps me to remember things more than say, coming across it a couple of times in the same manga.

However, I’m guessing this probably only happens so much because a) my vocab is tiny so I can still come across everyday vocab with a lot of crossover that I didn’t yet know, and b) even though I’m reading a variety of things at least most of them have a fairly heavy ‘slice of life’ focus. I’d imagine for example that if you already had most ‘everyday’ vocab covered and decided to read a dense SF novel and say, some ye olde fantasy…then likely there would be limited crossover there.

TLDR: reading from at least the same genre is probably better but if your vocab isnt massive yet and you’re not reading super specialised things then it’s probably not worth worrying too much about. Read what you enjoy! :slight_smile:

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Book Depository: https://www.bookdepository.com/
I LOVE that site! I get all my books there if possible!
Their English section is massive, their Japanese section still somewhat short (But have gotten some good ones, including this one!)
They even have a Latin section O_o
*Bought The Hobbit in Latin just because! Considered Harry Potter, but the one is good for now, cause it’s not like I can actually read it! :rofl:

Oh, and BEST prices and free shipping! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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Well said! Enjoyment is always the most important factor

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:ballot_box_with_check: Day 11

Today I read the whole of chapter for in カラフル (it was really, really short!). The plot is picking up pace even more so reading time today flew by.

I could believe it, this kanji actually showed up in my reading today! 「まだ死の淵から生還したばかり」was the sentence for me. Thanks to you, I didn’t have to look it up.

My favorite words for today:

無駄骨むだぼね=a waste of time and effort
はなし切り出すきりだす=to break the ice, to broach (a topic)
どんでんがえし=plot twist

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:ballot_box_with_check: June 01: かがみの孤城 上 (63 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 02: かがみの孤城 上 (20 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 03: かがみの孤城 上 (90 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 04: かがみの孤城 上 (40 pages) + 日の鳥1 (10 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 05: かがみの孤城 上 (112 pages)
:ballot_box_with_check: June 06: かがみの孤城 上 (69 pages) ~ Finished

:ballot_box_with_check: June 07: かがみの孤城 下 (170 pages) ~ 46%
:ballot_box_with_check: June 08: かがみの孤城 下 (81 pages) ~ 68%
:ballot_box_with_check: June 09: かがみの孤城 下 (116 pages) ~ Finished
:ballot_box_with_check: June 10: がばいばあちゃんの幸せのトランク (136 pages) ~ 50% + 日の鳥1(17 pages)

I read half of がばいばあちゃんの幸せのトランク (138 pages) yesterday, an autobiographic story be Shimada Yōshichi about how he eloped with his wife and became a maizai artist in Ōsaka. It’s so much fun to read I couldn’t stop. Learned a bunch, too. I was actually planning on reading an Uehashi novel, but I’ll save that for another day.

This morning I read another chapter (17 pages). I’ve also read とつくにの少女 Vol. 1 and will probably continue with the next volume soon. I just LOVE the drawings and the atmosphere. I could look at it all day.

But now I’ve got some work to do. Probably won’t be reading much more this week since I won’t be at home during the weekend. Maybe a bit on the train, though.

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