📚📚 Read every day challenge - Winter 2023 ☃❄

javerend · January 31, 2023, 9:32pm

１月３１日 (Home Post Link)

woooo one month down!

No missed days! Bookmeter thinks 8 volumes read in January but i’m counting 11 (2-in-1 magic treehouse volume + a short, but still full VN + 1 finished today local time but 2/1 japan time)

Some goodies also arrived yesterday! The 漢検 game came highly recommended, and i messed around with it a little bit today. The character recognition is surprisingly good! Little lessons and different problem types are making me think way more about kanji than even wanikani does, so that’s been a challenge. Since I had the ds out anyway, I also grabbed my japanese copy of ポケトモンサファイア that I used to shiny hunt on and restarted it. It’s all in kana, but I’ve understood enough so far to play it pretty comfortably.

Read:

ホリミヤ ch 106, 107, 108, 109 + おまけ, volume 14 done! - the series definitely stretches on just a litttttle too long, but i’m still enjoying it. It didn’t bother me as much in english because I read the whole thing in like 2 days, but having an extra 20-30 chapters that probably could’ve stayed as 4-koma stuff is a little bit harder to get through when you’re only doing like a volume every few days

Word of the Day
肥える「こえる」ー to gain weight, to put on weight

Natsuha · January 31, 2023, 10:53pm

Day 30
One of these days when I’m too lazy to read but somehow I still managed to read some Kindaichi Shounen. Hmm so Kindaichi is actually super smart but plays dumb. Interesting.

2398 pages read 17602 to go

Greti33 · January 31, 2023, 10:58pm

January 31st (Day 31)

Home post

Started chapter two of 1Q84 today, was too tired to read more. I’ll try to do more tomorrow.

Ah, thanks so much for the link! :3

Glad to hear because those were an absolute nightmare I’m actually not yet finished with the book, but I think (and hope) that I’m far enough along to be finished with those chapters.

omk3 · January 31, 2023, 11:13pm

January 31

狐火の辻, 7-21%

Finished the prologue and I’m halfway through the first chapter, interestingly titled 何が. The prologue continued with two seemingly unrelated stories of two separate hit and run incidents, then the first chapter starts with people discussing yet another strange hit and run. So far each section seems to involve totally different people, but it’s starting to get obvious that the stories all took place in the same area, and certain events are already being revisited from different angles. Just when I stopped reading, some Ghost Spotter Youtubers made an appearance. I wonder how it will all converge. If I remember correctly from what I had read about the book, the story is not supernatural, but it may appear at times to be so.

WaniTsunami · January 31, 2023, 11:35pm

Read the first two chapters of Steel Ball Run vol. 7 on the bus to work. Will read the remaining 3 on the way home after doing my reviews for the day.

Brought 夜は短し歩けよ乙女 to work for study. Lets see how this new routine goes.

iterimpius · February 1, 2023, 12:33am

Jan 28th-31st
Home Post

28/1: 10分で読める伝記, 26min.
29/1: 花野井くん, 1:17 volume 2
教養366, 24min. and also わたしの幸せな結婚, 38min → 13%
30/1: わたしの幸せな結婚, 38min → 16%
31/1: planning to read more of before bed, will edit this in the morning!

And that wraps up January! Yay!! I’m genuinely surprised, after so many months of not reading, I didn’t think I could get back onto it, but i guess it’s true when they say that if you do a thing for ten days then it becomes a habit lol;
I did miss two days of reading, but honestly, they were both instances that I was having a super long and exhausting day, so I’m not going to beat myself over it. I do regret not reading more chinese, gotta work on that more!!
And also, I can’t believe I even went and started a whole ass novel, I’m totally committed to it, so i guess thanks @Redglare for convincing me to get it! I’m slow but I’m getting there, and bit by bit I think i’m getting better at resisting the urge of looking words up way too often…
Looking forward to February with everyone!

lucylavelle · February 1, 2023, 12:43am

January 31st!

Today I read the first half of Chapter 4 of Cells at Work.
Only one more week left of this bookclub - I don’t expect there will be an offshoot club do this one since most people seem to have struggled a bit with it.

Personally, I’ve enjoyed the story, and I think the whole premise of the series is really cool - but I’m relieved that I’ve nearly reached the end of the volume because its been a bit time sink as its definitely too tough for me to read at the moment.
I’m hoping to return to the series in the future when I can read a lot better and faster than I can right now!

(Home Post)

NicoleIsEnough · February 1, 2023, 12:51am

Home Post

January Wrap-Up

I read 896 pages in exactly 74 hours (i.e. 12.1 pages per hour on average).
I wanted to reach 900 but the chapter is finished and I’m tired

Finished Books

チュベローズで待ってる AGE22 (with the Compulsive Readers club; finished Jan 13th)
ユージニア (with the ABC; finished Jan 15th)
チュベローズで待ってる AGE32 (with the Compulsive Readers club; finished Jan 25th)

Plans for February

1Q84 Book 1.2 (with the 1Q84 book club; ongoing)
Flesh&Blood Vol. 11 (with the F&B club; ongoing)
この本を盗む者は (with the ABC; from Feb 4th)
ユートロニカのこちら側 (with the Compulsive Readers club; from ca. Feb 11th)

Yearly Reading Goal

896 pages down, 9,104 to go! That equals an average of 828 pages per month going forward.

DIO-Berry · February 1, 2023, 12:54am

Home

January 31st

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険8
63 - 65

I got incredibly distracted by the idea of a “wall” of hidden door bookshelves and then it was already way too late for me to be going to bed

NicoleIsEnough · February 1, 2023, 1:01am

Haha I once was in a (pretty nerdy) café in Christchurch, New Zealand, and they had their toilets behind a hidden door bookshelf - that was really funny the first time around
I need to go to bed now but maybe I can find a picture tomorrow when I’m awake enough to remember where exactly that place was ^^

DIO-Berry · February 1, 2023, 3:40am

That sounds so cool, but a nightmare in an emergency lol. I’d love to see the photos if you find them Sleep well!

xtinelee · February 1, 2023, 4:25am

WaniTsunami · February 1, 2023, 4:39am

Today’s experiment…

Read today’s small piece of 夜は短し歩けよ乙女. It’s hard but not boring. I read through the same passage a couple times and did word look up after and read one more time. I will probably read it again tomorrow and then move on to the next part. These bits are super short, so I think I need it look at this like reading practice and not really “reading.” So when I go home I am doing other reading for fun.

ChristopherFritz · February 1, 2023, 5:29am

Day 31: January 31st

名探偵コナン Volume 13 (91% ➨ 100%)

Month-End Progress

I feel ending the month at 8 volumes completed is decent. (In my first year of reading lots, I averaged 2.5 manga volumes per month.)

Screenshot_20230131_184844-fs8

I’m also partway through eight other volumes, with enough progress to fill about four complete volumes.

I slacked a bit here and there on reading, but since it’s just a hobby, I don’t mind letting other hobbies get in the way.

DIO-Berry · February 1, 2023, 6:01am

Ah, thanks for the name! The photos look cool but confusing. I’ve saved some videos to watch later now though

omk3 · February 1, 2023, 6:19am

Funny how all your finished books for the month are flowers
I finished the same books, but for me two are drinks:

- チュベローズで待ってる AGE22 (finished)
- チュベローズで待ってる AGE32 (finished)
- ユージニア (finished)

I like your reading graphs a lot. I don’t want to track reading time (too stressful), but I think I’d like to try tracking pages. How do you log pages for ebooks? Do you just roughly calculate them based on page count and progress percentage?

natarin · February 1, 2023, 6:30am

January 31 Home Post

A bit of variety today; I started out with some 山猫 which I think was a bit tougher than it usually is, but still not terrible. I also played some more BU$TAFELLOWS, which continues to be fun and interesting! Things are probably gonna get wild soon

(I also got quite distracted by Hi-Fi Rush, which I did play in Japanese for a bit but decided to go for English first to just vibe with it and experience it, though I think it’d be very fun to go back through in Japanese once I have a better feel for it )

Myria · February 1, 2023, 8:27am

Update on 闇祓
Finished chapter 1.
I‘m at 22 % now, and sadly this book is turning into an anime. It went a good direction first (her boyfriend turning abusive, which was quite abrupt, but reading her thoughts about him was interesting. Now I want to read a book about an abusive relationship …)
And then the anime part came in.
Real spoiler territory (for chapter 1): Turns out her abusive boyfriend is a vampire? And her bully who said stuff like „Can I come to your house“ the first time they met and „This is my last warning, stop spending time with your boyfriend (the vampire)“ is actually a vampire hunter (?) and just doesn’t understand social norms / social distance. So, the bully saved MC from possibly being eaten / her whole family being destroyed by the vampire dude.
And now the MC‘s friend got abducted / seduced by the vampire and disappeared. So MC asks her former bully to take her with him on his search for vampire guy.

Hmm. I guess I just don’t like it when behavior traits / actions of characters that might have been interesting to explore get explained away by „oh well he‘s a supernatural being! And all the things he criticized about me are actually perfectly fine because that’s just how I am and he’s a vampire and crazy and therefore he‘s always wrong!“

I feel like I’m less invested in this now But I’m 20% in already and I definitely want to see what the non-school setting is like. So I‘m gonna read on for a bit

Sylph · February 1, 2023, 9:40am

January 31

I picked back up 青のフラッグ Vol. 7 which I’d left unfinished a while ago (life happened I guess?) and finished it, now there’s only one volume left in the series and I’m trying to get back in the habit of reading manga so maybe I can finish it this week.

I also played BU$TAFELLOWS about 1.5 hours and finished chapter 3! It’s been fun so far and now that I’m caught up with the club again I’ll try not to fall behind.

The first month of the challenge is over I seem to have managed to read every day. It helped that I was reading interesting things. This month I read ユージニア which is a pretty big boi for my JP book standards, and I’ve been following the BU$TAFELLOWS VN club.
For February I’m probably going the bookclub route as I want to try following both the ABC and IBC picks starting this month (unless I can’t get into the books) as well as continue with the B$ club (this is how I call it in my mind ). If I have time ouside of those, I’d like to read some manga and maybe go back to reading わたしの幸せな結婚 which I was enjoying back in… November? But also dropped because of life. How dare life.

NicoleIsEnough · February 1, 2023, 10:24am

Oh, great that you also know the place I’m talking about!

@DIO-Berry Here are some pics from the door in question:

Nothing to see here, just a door

Oh I didn’t even realize! I wanted to have the red and yellow colors in there, and flowers also match the book title (with some mental stretching)

Yes, that’s the gateway drug

I use real page count and ebook page count (in the Bookwalker app) and calculate from there.

Spreadsheet

This is what the entry for one book looks like:

(Zeit = time, Lesetag = reading day, Seiten = pages, Aktuell = current, Dauer = duration)

The font size I chose in the app on my phone (iPhone 11) roughly comes to 2 digital pages for 1 physical page, or sometimes 2.5 digital pages, depending on the book. On setup I enter the digital pages (per my app) and the physical pages (per Amazon), and after each reading session I enter the date, digital page number and duration, and the rest is calculated automatically. (I only record fully completed digital pages for the sake of sanity, so even if I’m almost done with, say, page 150, I would still only record page 149 as “page read”.)
I have one large spreadsheet with all books side-by-side.

The biggest fun is deriving data from this though E.g. the daily page count that I posted above is calculated automatically from this page (the script searches the whole spreadsheet for the date in question and adds the pages). I also generate an overview of my current reading status for the year:

(Jahr (beendet) = year finished, Tage gelesen = days read, Fortschritt akt. = current progress, Lesetag = reading day, Zeit gesamt = total time)

The arrows in the first column denote the books I’m actively reading right now, and if there is a year, then I finished the book already.
I recently moved those books that I finished in 2022 to an “archive” spreadsheet because this page got too crowded for my taste, and the scanning process for the daily pages also became quite slow. That’s why this one looks a bit empty.

If you’d like some help in setting this up and with the formulae, please feel free to reach out! My email address is in my forum header, so maybe we can take it offline if you want.