📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2021 🏖🏖

Summary post

Two day streak!

Day 2: June 2nd
What did I read?: よつばと!Vol 15
How much did I read?: 1 chapter (36 pages)
How long did it take me?: 20 min (but I was also eating :sweat_smile:)

I did a smart thing and may have stumbled onto a new life hack

So I knew I wasn’t going to get off work until 8pm today, and I knew I was probably not going to be in the mood to cut into my already-shortened end-of-day decompression time (which typically involves me browsing the internet while reruns of Kitchen Nightmares play in the background). BUT, then I realized that I could actually take a break to eat dinner (instead of working while eating, which is what I often do) and read then, before it got too late for me to want to bother. Then when I get off work, my brain can be done, which is what it seems to like xD (I should have just read before work, but I wanted to save as much of my brain as possible for work and doing The Things. My mind is a delicate ecosystem, which is often on fire. - A quote I saw somewhere on the internet and probably remembered wrong. Anyway.)

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before - I used to read during meals all. the. time. when I was a kid. When I became an adult, I just replaced books with screens. But reading during meals could be a great natural Pomodoro-type thing to build into my routine, because it’s built around an activity that takes a finite amount of time. When the activity’s done, I can be done (or choose to keep going). Ah! Life hack!

I probably won’t have a whole life story to add to each of these updates, but I seem to be feeling wordy recently xD Thank goodness for spoiler tags.

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Maybe writing down the sentence and underlining the vocab could work? Makes me remember the vocab longer than when I just look it up. The downside of this is that it takes way longer. On the other side, you can read the sentences you wrote down for the word at other times again and that makes the word stick more

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:ballot_box_with_check:Day 3
Started reading カラフル, just the preface. It’s already really interesting!

Today I felt like I has superpowers cause I was able to guess a couple of words’ meanings based on context (such as 奪ううばう, cause I knew it wasn’t 盗むぬすむ but has a similar feeling). Even with such an “on” day, I still had to look up so many words. Looking forward to it getting easier as I get used to the new writing style/vocabularies used!

Today's Interesting Phrases/Vocab:

疑問ぎもんいている = to have doubts
ぞくう = commonly referred to as, slang for
めでたしめでたし = happily ever after
縁起えんぎでもない = Bad luck, ill-omen

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That makes me feel like I might enjoy reading it soon after all. I haven’t been feeling up to vague metaphors lately and had somehow got it in my head that 羊と鋼の森 would be full of those. :grin:

2.6.
Yesterday I didn’t have much time to myself. I read 2 pages (or 2 entries) of 使ってはいけない日本語, and maybe 5 pages of あせとせっけん.

3.6.
It’s still morning, but after waking I decided to finish the chapter of あせとせっけん I started yesterday and ended up finishing the volume instead. I think the next one, vol. 11 is the last one… :cry:

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Yooo, you genius. I’m going to edit my June 1st post into a summary post as well. Will also include box table because I like clicking boxes. Looks something like this:

June
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
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Ooooh, mind if I also use this when I start reading? This looks so satisfying.

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Today’s reading (will update this post once I do some more):

  • Read today’s NHK Easy News.
  • Took some more notes on はたらく細胞。Reached page 148.
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Sure! :grin: I changed it into calendar weeks instead of week 1, 2, 3… etc. This will be my way of keeping track of the days during summer time lol

image

Edit: Feel free to copy paste if you want to use the same format too :slight_smile:

| June | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 | 土 | 日 | 
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| 
|Week 22| | [x] | [x] | [] | [] | [] | [] | 
|Week 23| [] | [] | [] | [] | [] | [] | [] |
|Week 24| [] | [] | [] | [] | [] | [] | [] 
|Week 25| [] | [] | [] | [] | [] | [] | [] |
|Week 26| [] | [] | [] | | | | |
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I definitely used to be a ‘write down the sentence’ person. Lately I’ve swung across to ‘just read something’ to keep myself reading - most books where I’ve tried to note down sentences with words I don’t know I’ve given up on (because, I mean, that’s every sentence, and I’m not writing out a whole book). Thinking about trying to find a sweet spot in between and writing down words that I have to look up more than twice for easy reference. Of course, that means I need to remember that I looked that word up… we’ll see how it goes.

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I love the idea of ticking everything off - and see others doing the same - and I’ve done it too °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

Sum up! - Summer Reading Challenge

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And finished the part I started yesterday, it changed from being pretty boring to actually get interesting. Not always that happens, but now I’m glad I finished reading that short story. Also day 3 in the bag. ^^

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Oh, I wanted to get back to you yesterday but forgot - sorry!

Yes, I guess that’s what will happen a lot. But if you read like 3 or 5 times more (because you spend more time reading and less time translating or writing down), you will get 3 or 5 times more exposure, and eventually things will start to stick.

Yes, that I also agree with. And I’m not saying you shouldn’t dive into sentences if need be. My approach is often that I continue to read, and when I am really surprised or get a “mental clash” by something that is written after that, then I must have misunderstood something, and I go back and try to reread. (It often happens for me because I misinterpret those pesky じゃない - often I’m not sure whether it’s an actual negation or just an “isn’t it” :joy_cat: - but I can feel it’s getting better).
For me the question would rather be “do I need to do a deep dive for every sentence?”.

Anyways, just my two cents :grin:


For my reading progress:

June 1st: Did not have much time and only managed to read 3 pages from すべてがFになる。
June 2nd: Finished chapter 8 of すべてがFになる (about 20 pages maybe? didn’t check). Also continued my current “book-on-the-side” which is 海の見える理髪店 (a collection of 6 short stories, the first of which is veeeery slow, and somehow reading it is also very slow…)
June 3rd: Continued 海の見える理髪店 - now halfway through the first story.

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ohh this looks fun and is perfect timing for me since I just got back to japanese studying :blush:
I’ll update this post tonight to make it more detailed but for now I’m thinking my goals for this summer will be:

Daily:

  • 1 chapter of Yotsubato (this is a reread so the first few volumes should be a bit easier)

Weekly:

  • 3 pages of the Hyouka light novel (gonna start small…)
  • optional: Yo-kai Watch on the switch

I’m also considering watching the Hyouka anime (with english subs) alongside the light novel so that I’m more familiar with the character names and supernatural vocabulary. Not sure if I should watch each episode before or after reading the chapter related to it.

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unless youre rereading do it before

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gotcha! I actually prefer watching first and reading after but kind of felt like it was cheating haha. I’ll probably get to watching the first episode tonight and starting with reading tomorrow :muscle:

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Sum up! - Summer Reading Challenge 2021

Day 3 - June 3rd
今日の読書: からかい上手の高木さん.
ページ: 18.

I have almost finished chapter 3 - just 6 pages - and then I just have to finish other two chapters to be ready to read the sixth one with the ABBC (b ᵔ▽ᵔ)b

Anyway, this is my very first time reading something that is not “graded” and I see the difference; N1 grammar mixed with more basic one, everyday vocabulary + slang, that’s difficult, something for which I wasn’t ready and I think I would never be ready without the small nudge from the ABBC \(^▽^)/

皆んな、頑張りましょう!

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Copying everyone else and have revamped my first day post with fun goals and progress markers :slight_smile: Link here: Summary post

I reread things quite a lot (especially Bookclub picks) so not quite sure yet whether I’ll count that as reading for the day or not. Will have to see how things go!

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Today I read the first 20 pages of the ふらいんぐうぃっち manga. I didn’t even know that I have it, but for some reason it appeared in the bookwalker app. I am too tired to read more.

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I’m thinking of joining, starting this weekend so I can wrap a few things up (like my queue of WK items after not reviewing for over a year…). I still need to finish 銭天堂2 so I’ll start there

| June | 土 | 日 | 月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 |
|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|
|June 5th | | | | | | | |
|June 12th| | | | | | | |
|June 19th| | | | | | | |
|June 26th| | | | | | | |

| July | 土 | 日 |月 | 火 | 水 | 木 | 金 |
|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|—|
|July 1st | | | | | | | |
|July 3rd | | | | | | | |
|July 10th| | | | | | | |
|July 17th| | | | | | | |
|July 24th| | | | | | | |
|July 31st| | | | | | | |

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Wiki post

June 3 Update

Today I read through 不可解なぼくのすべてを. I originally intended to read this with the beginner book club back when it first started, but I was drowning under school pressure a week in, so I couldn’t keep up. I finally picked it up again in May and got through chapter 3. I’ve been meaning to read chapter 4 for a couple of weeks at this point, but was procrastinating for reasons unknown to me.

Today, I sat down for two hours and finished the rest of the book. That’s about 90 pages of manga. Unlike with 進撃の巨人, I didn’t keep track of the words (though there were several I didn’t know) because looking up kanji without furigana and keeping track of the words themselves was too much effort. Reading through a manga with no furigana is both fun and frustrating. It’s always great to find words I can actually read, and words whose kanji I don’t actually know but have seen enough times to guess them correctly; on the flip side, when I can’t recognize something at all, looking it up is a pain. All this really means is that I need to learn more vocabulary.

Loved the manga so much. I often struggle to read LGBT literature because they tend to bring up the darker parts of my own experiences, and I think that’s the main reason it took me so long to read chapter 4. Once I got through the conflict however, I can’t help but adore all the characters. I’ll probably pick the remaining four books in this short series later in the year, but at the moment, I have too many other manga to read.

I think I’ll wait to finish another manga before I add another one to my list. It’s very easy to get overwhelmed with too many things I want to read on my to-do list.

I love the boxes too, so I’m gonna steal this from you and modify it a bit. Thanks for the format!

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