1Q84 Book 3: 37 Pages, 2 hours.
Had the urge to read today (and also had no desire to watch anime/j-dramas) so I read a lot more than usual.
Day 58
I finished chapter 12 in 僕はブルー!
My goal is to try and read a full chapter everyday from now until the end of the book (There’s 16 chapters), which would put me one day over the challenge limit It’s a stretch, but I think if I split the reading between morning and night, it shouldn’t be too hard.
We’re so close to the end! I’m excited and also not ready for it to be over (for now!)
So… After July, 31 are we going for a new thread or we’ll point OP that August exists as 8th month since 700 BC(talk about being old school) and continue here?
I’m for continuing here because August is still (Northern Hemisphere) summer anyway
We talked a bit about this at the start, and all agreed that people can participate here for as long as they like (considering summer started/ended for people differently depending on school/work/locations etc, etc.). I know I’ll be here for a little while after too!
There was also talk about taking a month off, then coming back here after! Though, we’d be heading into the fall at that point… So maybe we’d make another “Read every day challenge - Fall” thread?
Or maybe something entirely different? All I know is I’ll definitely tune in to whatever future version there is of this
Random thought: I like the idea of the following threads’ title to start with the books emojis Could become a “trademark” or what to call it, hehe.
Summary post
July 30
・Read Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活1(26% → 30%)
If there’s one habit I would like to change, it would be to post a biiit earlier than late at night. Instead of writing, I just want to go sleep sleep
Totally agree with this✨ I love how the little books stand out in the thread list.
I haven’t posted much, just updated my main post. It is 1 am, so did my reading quite early today!
Thanks to the challenge I’ve been able to find time for at least a little reading every day, so this is day 61/61!!
On my lowest I only did a page though XD
To get something a bit more substantial, I switched to Graded Readers to finally get through them. I did a whole story/booklet a day, one day I did a whole box (6 booklets I think) I will continue through my Graded readers to see if I can finally read them all! XD (and find where it stars feeling difficult. I have from zero to 5 in difficulty I believe, 5 being upper intermediate/advance)
I also got a good bit of my “Satoshi” manga book done. It is fairly big, and is the story about the creator of Pokemon. Found it too hard when I first bought it so never got around to read it. Now it felt just right, slightly hard but understood enough to keep up.
Day 60: July 30th
What did I read?: シメジ シミュレーション Vol. 2
How much did I read?: 35 pages (2 chapters - finished the volume)
How long did it take me?: 1 hour 6 min
Man, the second-to-last chapter had a lot of science-y jargon in it But I love the weirdness of the last chapter. I low-key want to go to the beach at the center of the Earth, it looked pretty chill tbh. One more manga down!
I got my big shipment of books from Amazon today (just in time for the end of the challenge ).
But I think that what I’d like to do is continue this challenge until Aug. 15, then give myself a half-month break. Then maybe start a “fall challenge” at the beginning of September. I have some time off this week and next week, so I have plenty of time to read for now, but I go back to working in the office mid-August, and I have a feeling that the transition will take a lot out of me, so it seems like a good time to give myself a planned break. I hope that making a specific plan of when I’ll take my break and when I’ll start up again will make it so that reading doesn’t just fall off into the abyss forever. (And if I want to read during the break, that’s obviously fine, but I won’t force myself if I’m not feeling it)
Also, just to throw my two cents in on the thread thing, I think it would be nice to have this thread continue through August and then have a new thread for fall challenge, since I feel like a fresh thread might encourage new people to join in for the fall? Plus, then it feels more new and exciting (Which helps my motivation personally lol, it would feel more like I completed something and then started something new vs. took a break and continued on which for some reason is way less satisfying for me…I want to see if I can trick myself into long-term consistency by stringing a bunch of small/short-term finishable things together. Brain hacking, baby )
Last day of this summer reading challenge!
Lately I haven’t updated here my progress, so I guess the last day is the best opportunity right?
In the last few months, I have read almost every day, sometimes a page, sometimes few chapters, but every day something - in Japanese oc - has been read. Thanks to this, I have finished my first manga and started other three!
I hope I’ll be able to keep going with this pace - well, not three manga at a time, but reading every day - since I’ve found that my reading speed has increased together with grammar and vocabulary recognition!
みんな、頑張りましょう!
Nooo. I broke the streak.
It was going perfect since I joined on jun2, but yesterday I fell asleep completely forgetting to read further. I’ve opened comic mid day to see how much dialogue will be on the next page, but I didn’t return to it in the evening.
Well, I finished forbidden scrollery (2) today.
Next on queue is Takagi vol2 which I’ll start tomorrow. If I read it fully, I’ll be rereading fs(2) until salary arrive. Then i’ll buy the third volume
July 31st and lucky last day.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this challenge, but I’ve also found it very difficult to keep up with at times, even putting aside the arm surgery, this last week or so I’ve been finding myself quite exhausted.
This challenge has helped me a lot by keeping me consistent such that I was able to see my improvement, but now that it’s nominally over I think I might try take a bit of a breather.
(Although I still have more からかい上手の高木さん to catch up on…)
I hope to do one of these again in the future, thanks to everyone for making me feel so welcome and helping encourage and keep me on track.
Yesterday
I started reading チート薬師のスローライ. It’s only the trail version not the whole first volume. Just read the first 40 pages. It’s about a guy who is transported to another world, where he is creating potions. He also meets some cute girls there.
Today
I read the first chapter of スーパーSISTERみお manga. A boring 4 koma manga about a sister, who wants to seduce her brother: It’s full of lame jokes.
Then I finished the trail version of the チート薬師のスローライ manga.
It was a really fun challenge I ordered a bunch of books, thus I will continue to try reading every day for a while longer like the next two years.
Summary post
July 31
・Read Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活1(30% → 34%)
So today is the scheduled last day of the reading challenge for me. It has been fun! Not only because I’m feeling like I’ve done some progress as I’ve tried to read a bunch and document it with daily updates - It has been great to see so many people join along and make progress too! Great job so far And to those who plan to continue with this challenge: ganbatte!
I completely agree that starting a new thread allows for more people to join in, and the more people, the merrier. Means that more people are practicing reading - that’s a win-win
As well as the shiny, new thread effect, hehe. Good for motivation.
Reflections about the opening post
I have no idea who’s going to start the next one, but if there’s one thing I’d like to redo about the original post, it would be the options in the poll I borrowed it from one of the book clubs, thinking it’ll probably work, but I’m not entirely sure if it fulfilled its purpose of, ehm, letting people choose what’s most applicable to them. Maybe I’m just overthinking it. Making polls is not easy (Tip: Don’t forget to make the poll “public”, it’s fun to see who has voted)
And maybe the time frame. But seems like having a time frame wasn’t too bad? Ultimately, it is up to each person how long they want to do the challenge, whatever fits their schedule best. I think I’ve read that it takes 60 days or so to build a habit, maybe it was @jprspereira who wrote that So maybe two months is a good time frame. (At least it fitted my summer vacation nicely, hehe.)
So yeah, will hopefully do another one next summer Will do some reflection on my progress tomorrow, is getting late now xD
Woop, we made it! Feel like I very much limped over the finish line as these last two weeks have been hectic but I have read something everyday, even of sometimes it was just a couple of satori reader stories. Decided that as today was the ‘last day’ I would make a bit of an effort to put some time into reading and ended up reading another 10% of NO.6. Was a pleasant read, things are starting to pick up pace!
Realistically, as I’m in a few different bookclubs and I want to keep reading No. 6, I’ll probably end up reading at least most days even after this challenge. Might count tomorrow as I missed one day. Anyway, I might try to do some kind of sum up, but tbh I think what I found with this challenge is that reading so much manga in the first month really built my confidence and stamina with that…and then the second month showed me that novels are very hard hahahha
29.7.
Very long day at work, but I managed to read volume 22 of One Piece.
30.7.
23-25 of One Piece.
31.7.
26-32 of One Piece.
My goal of finishing off 1Q84 book 2-1 before the weekend totally didn’t happen. I’d planned to spread one piece out over the weekend, but on top of that one super busy Thursday I (unexpectedly) have to work tomorrow too, so I condensed the last of the One Piece volumes available for free right now into one big reading day. The volumes up to 32 become unavailable in the middle of my day tomorrow, and I didn’t want to risk not finishing in time.
I feel like I need a break now and read a novel or something.
Day 59
I read the whole of chapter 13 in 僕はブルー!It’s my second time to do that, since this book is wildly challenging for me. I have to admit that I can actually sit to read it without a dictionary for the most part. Compared to the beginning… That’s amazing.
I also read a bit of the news paper! Because of 僕はブルー、the economics page was actually the most accessable
Day 60
I woke up early today ready to tackle another chapter. I already read 1/3, and will take the rest of today to finish chapter 14!
Since I missed 2 days, I’m gonna post here to make up for those today and tomorrow (wrap-up post foreshadowing! Yes I’m a bit of a perfectionist )
Day 61: July 31st
What did I read?: ふらいんぐうぃっち Vol 10 and 地縛少年 花子くん Vol 1
How much did I read?: 24 pages (1 chapter) and 32 pages (1 chapter)
How long did it take me?: 33 min and 1 hour 55 min (but this time for Hanako is super inaccurate because I was filling out the vocab sheet as I read and I definitely got side-tracked for a while trying to find an explanation of this one phrase)
I had a lot of vague anxiety floating around today for some reason, and it’s always hard for me to get myself to do anything that might actually be fun or interesting under the weight of that feeling. Well today, instead of wasting my day watching reruns and flipping through the same five websites/apps for hours like I usually do when I feel like this, I channeled my vague uneasiness/anxiety into…filling out the Hanako vocab sheet? It really helped though, actually
I…feel like I should do a reflection on the challenge now, because it’s the technical end of the challenge, but I’m also going to keep going until Aug 15th…uh
I guess I will leave my full reflection for the 15th, but I do want to mention that I finished a whopping 12 volumes of manga this month, which is by far the most Japanese I’ve ever read in a month. I also want to say good job to everyone who is finishing up their challenge today! You made it! It’s been a great 2 months, and I feel like the supportiveness of people in this thread has really encouraged me and motivated me to read every day, so thank you ^^
Finished all the grammar points of Tobira so now I’ll probably read through the articles in the book. A lot of them are kinda dry, but I’m still interested in it so I’ll read them.
July 30 Update
Since I’m all caught up with this week’s ハイキュー!! reading, I only really have a couple of things I can read now – 君の名は, and 僕のヒーローアカデミア (the other book I don’t have access to). So I just decided to read a few pages (~5) over 30 min today. Starting a new series is always difficult due to new style of writing, and that hasn’t changed here.
July 31 Update
More 僕のヒーローアカデミア for me today. It’s been a long day so I just wanted to get some quick reading in. Only took about 30 min to read ~8 pages.