📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2022 ☃❄

Reevaluating your goals is pretty important. I’m not sure how much you’ve read before or what reading level you’re at, but the first volume of spy x family was the hardest I read up to date. The second volume is already a bit easier to parse just by having more regular chapter lengths and less political background. Whenever Loid is on mission it tends to veer towards more difficult language.

I’ll be giving out my update later this week, the booster shot has sapped all of my will to make one. I have been lucky to be able to keep reading.

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We explicitly arranged for the book club threads to stay open for 10 years instead of 1 year so that everybody can still ask questions even long after the actual book club is over. It would be really cool if we could get more questions in the same threads because then it becomes more and more helpful for people who read these books even later than you :wink:
So, please go ahead and ask there - I’m sure quite a few people (including me) are still monitoring those old threads and willing to help!

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Oh will do! I posted in one of the threads above but I’ll use the Fruits Basket thread in that case. I have at least one sentence per page probably that I have questions about hahaha

Edit: the Google sheet is a real life saver too. Saves me a lot of time looking stuff up

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Noice - glad to hear you are still enjoying the threads! :blush:

And yes, I remember the Fruits Basket dialogues are not always that easy to follow - looking forward to your questions (and whether I’ll be able to answer them :upside_down_face:)

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:tiger2: :books: Homepost - Tigerdate: 20220105 :books: :raccoon:


Tanuki Scroll V: トラとキツネ :tiger: :fox_face:

Read today’s Japanese folk story from Wakayama Prefecture!

About a Chinese tiger challenging a Japanese fox to a race. The fox tricks the tiger to win the race and the tiger sulks back to China… and then sends a cat underling to go chase and bite the fox, but the cat mishears キツネ as ネズミ and this is apparently why cats chase mice.

ドン!ドン!

☆ Learnings ☆

New Words

竹やぶ 「たけやぶ」 ー Bamboo grove
早歩き 「はやあるき」 ー Fast-walking, almost jogging
反対側 「はんたいがわ」 ー Opposite side, opposition

Forgotten Meanings

同然 「Just like; no different from; almost the same as

Forgotten Readings

別れる 「わかれる」 (to part (from people); to part with)


@lucylavelle, happy birthday!! :partying_face:


モフモフ様!I don’t remember the real name of these little bird friends, but I do remember that they are just SO FLUFFY

I love these art styles, and the daily colours! I’ve got an art project going at the moment and one of your links had a section about the traditional colours of Japan and it’s actually exactly what I’ve been looking for, thank you, this’ll be real helpful! :art: :raccoon:

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Summary Post

January 5
君の名は , 9 pages.

Random words
  • 気楽 = きらく carefree, at ease.
  • 睨む = にらむ to glare at. to stare intensely at.
  • そっけない = cold, blunt.
  • ぶつかる = to strike against, to collide.
  • 呟く = つぶやく to murmur, to mutter.
  • 反射 = はんしゃ reflection, but also reflex.
  • 老舗 = しにせ an established shop that has been going for a long time. Wanikani teaches this with the on’yomi as ろうほ but it’s apparently rare.
  • 間取り = まどり plan of a house, arrangement of rooms.

I’m looking more and more forward to sitting and reading each day. It’s pretty chill. Who would’ve thought an hour would pass so fast, huh. Also so many words to learn and the grammar level seems to be about right for me, I’m quite happy :3

I wonder if I would get the same feeling reading on the Kindle :thinking: . I really would like to love the Kindle, I really do. But there’s a certain something about physical books that I just keep coming back to it ;-; I still like the Kindle a lot but I get a much different feeling from it, somehow. It’s probably just not being used to it still.

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Day 5: January 5

  • 君の名は。page 22-31 (read 10% already in 6 days :partying_face: :partying_face:)

I got really confused when the two characters switched bodies again. I think the bold lines are there to give me a heads-up so for next time I will pay more attention to that xD This time I had to reread one page because I had no idea what was going on because I missed the important switch… Even though this novel is hard for me at my level, it is still fun to go through the book and letting the story play out in my head ^^

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Day 5!
Its my birthday, but I still found time to squeeze in a bit of reading after snuggling lots of kitties at the Cat Cafe!
I read the first half of the 2nd chapter of Volume 2 of レンタルおにいちゃん.

(Home Post)

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Happy Birthday! :cupcake: :champagne: :rainbow: :sparkles: :sparkling_heart:

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Summary post

SOOOOO tired today :sleeping::sleeping::sleeping::sleeping::sleeping: But it was the last day before my free 呪術廻戦 volumes go away so I managed to just barely power through the rest of vol. 8. It definitely felt like more of a struggle but it was still fun! I have realised recently just how much being tired makes a difference in how well I can read in Japanese. I’ve had a few times when I’ve got really into reading and read too late and then I will get to a point like “ugh why is this chapter so hard!! I understand nothing!” and then I come back the next day after that thing called sleep and it’s totally fine. For that reason, I’m going to try to hold myself back from reading more 鏡の孤城 until my brain is working again.

Also, I thought I was going to pause 呪術廻戦 after the volumes buuut it left off on a really interesting place so I’m not sure I can. Will probably take it at a lot more chill pace though, maybe a chapter or two a day now I will no longer have that time pressure.

Happy birthday! :partying_face::partying_face::partying_face::cat2::black_cat:Sounds like a pretty ideal day!

Aww, yeah I had the same with mine, really knocked me out for a few days. Hope you can take it easy and recover quickly!

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Home Post
Day 5 Done
I reread the Hikoichi book yesterday, and read Momotaro today. Really noticing that it’s getting easier by the day. Also downloaded an Anki deck for the first 2 books that was available from their website. So also going through that aswell. Also because the books have a lot of vocabulary that isn’t really much used outside these types of stories. Things like lords, servants, demons etc.

Jan
Week 00
Week 01
Week 02
Week 03
Week 04
Week 05
Feb
Week 05
Week 06
Week 07
Week 08
Week 09
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Home post

Day 4:

日本語: I read some of 伯爵と妖精 29.

中国語

中国語: I read a beginner entry on Mandarin Bean and one page of 擅长捉弄的高木同学.

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You’d be surprised how often vocab like that comes up :joy:

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Just four pages of 本陣殺人事件 and I’m still not done with the book for this week’s book club goal.

vocabulary
玉の輿 たまのこし money and social status gained by marrying a rich and powerful man
何でもかんでもなんでもかんでも anything and everything; all sorts of things; by all means
ほこり dust N3
ほお cheek (face) N3
もじゃもじゃ dishevelled; disheveled; unkempt​

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Summary post

January 5 update:
Finished reading よつばと! 1. In the last two chapters they finally started revealing some of Yotsuba’s and her father’s background, but when the father finally got to speak about it, I think I lost my ability to comprehend Japanese :joy: Apparently his explanation was intentionally hard to make sense of, because Fuuka also didn’t quite get it. Still, I think I’ll take a look at the book club’s thread now – perhaps they discussed this. (I specifically avoided reading the book club’s discussion so far – to give myself a chance to figure out things that were unclear initially from the context that’s introduced later.)
The ending was cute! :durtle_love:

Interesting! Have you established some sort of routine around reading? I mostly find myself postponing my daily reading to almost bedtime, even if I have some free time earlier in the day. Not sure why, too, as I tend to enjoy it, and with よつばと! it wasn’t tedious at all.

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Thanks for the advice @Thud :slight_smile: (You’re the one who encourages me to read SPYXFAMILY haha)

Stay safe everyone :mask:

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January 3 - January 5 :heavy_check_mark:

Read a little bit of orange on each of these days.
Orange is one of those novels that uses fewer kanji than an average book for adults, that’s a little annoying :laughing: I forgot to pay attention to that before buying it. It’s probably good practice though, since I sometimes tend to rely on kanji too much…

so cute :3

Happy birthday!! :tada: :birthday:

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Summary post :bookmark:

January 5
・かがみの孤城. I finished the fourth week.

Progress: (21% → 27%)

It’s getting really late. And I have early class tomorrow

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I think this might just be a typo, but in case you’re making flashcards from these - dust is ほこり (埃) :slight_smile:

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Sort of! :relaxed: I’m reading after lunch, so when I’m done eating shortly after I start my reading time. The time varies depending on the day but the consistency has been the same: I know this happens after lunch. Then I set a timer of one hour on my phone, and read until it rings. I don’t have any goals other than just work through it; whatever happens in that hour so be it, whether it’s 3 pages or 10, whether I need to look up more things or less things, check grammar, etc. I really like it because every day is dynamic, some days I don’t look up grammar at all because it’s not necessary but instead I encounter more unknown words than usual, and viceversa. I think I would feel a bit anxious if I aimed for a goal like “read 10 pages everyday”, personally. It also helps tremendously that I’m enjoying the story and I’ve already seen and liked the movie.

It’s actually the first time I’m doing this. In the two previous challenges I had a very chaotic schedule: I would read when I felt like it. Naturally, this clashed with other activities that I wanted to do in the evening too, and I ended up reading at night many days before bed, when I was sleepy enough already, just to keep the streak going. Looking back, I’m glad I still did anyways, because it kept fueling the habit, but now it feels so inefficient. Not only was I reading very late, but also anxious with the thought at the back of my mind that “I still have to read”. I’m trying to morph that feeling into one of “this is when I read” and honestly?, so far I love it. It’s still very soon to jump into conclusions, but I feel like not only is this working much better for me already, but I can clearly see myself reading a lot more than I used to. If you asked me to read one hour before bed I would cry, but one hour in the afternoon, now that’s a much different story :slightly_smiling_face: . I think overall I don’t enjoy studying or doing mental work other than in the morning or afternoon; I think I realise more and more that I prefer to reserve the evenings for leisure and chill.

In conclusion, I think that defining the moment of the day when I do this has removed all of the pressure, because I know it’s happening, so I don’t feel anxious at all neither before that time nor after that time. I think this is exactly why I find it quite enjoyable.

I think it’s also worth noting that currently I have more time than usual so all of this is possible without any schedule problems. Also I say after lunch, but that is usually 4 or 5pm, which would be early evening I guess? I don’t know, English is hard :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: .

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