When I leveled up to Level 20, I got a mail saying now I should be reading. What reading specifically might be appropriate at this stage? Any specific recommendations?
6 Likes
What do you want to read? Nothing beats actually engaging with something you care about.
More generally you can have a look at the Absolute Beginner Book Club for instance if you’re just dipping your toes.
There’s also Satori Reader that provides graded readers with a lot of explanations. It’s not free but you can sample most (all?) stories before you subscribe.
Keep in mind that, if you’ve only been using WaniKani so far, you’ll probably find that grammar and potentially kana vocab are giving you trouble. If you haven’t studied basic grammar yet, now would be the perfect time. Free resources include Tae Kim and Cure Dolly. Don’t hesitate to jump straight to reading though, and see how you fare. You’ll be able to figure out where you need to focus your studies to improve comprehension.
Regardless of the path you take, reading will be very hard at first. Japanese syntax is very different from ours, as a result you’ll often be frustrated when you encounter a sentence where you know all the words and still can’t figure out what any of it means. At first it’ll feel like every sentence is a riddle you have to solve. This isn’t you being bad, it’s just how it feels to start reading Japanese. It gets better, but it will take some time before it really clicks, even for relatively simple Japanese. Take your time and try to read a little bit every day. Slow and steady wins the race.
16 Likes
Some more recommendations:
There’s also
Which is the best resource to get into reading, but, unlike the previous resources, it’s not free.
Anyway, best of luck with your studies! 
P. S. Wait, I thought you wanted reading recommendations, but now that I look at the title – it says “Reeding”… In that case, here’s my recommendation:
10 Likes
Lots of people like to start with Yotsuba, so you could have a look at that as well.
5 Likes
I started 6 years ago and still zeroing my lessons from now and then due to inconsistent study (Life is really annoying sometimes). The first time I arrived at 20, I started reading easy NHK news, since at that time I used the old and no more available Jakeeipuu mobile app which gave also articles within the 95% of understandable vocabs known directly in the Reading section it had. From there I suggest following some of the community posts about group reading (I am following a basic one about よつばと and found it for free on the Internet Archive website!). Hope it helps!
3 Likes
Definitely go through at least some of Tae Kim’s guide first for grammar as others said. Other than that, if you can’t stomach the graded readers (I couldn’t), then Yotsubato is great as others have recommended. The first two series I read were レンタルおにいちゃん (Very easy, and there is a great book club archive of it with a vocab list you can follow along with), and then after that, Teasing Master Takagi-san (also very easy, since the main formula is fairly repetitive, thus easier to pick up on repeating vocab. Also has an archived book club with a good vocab list). I also started around your level. A fair warning, it will be very painful at first, no matter what you choose to read. Let your excitement to read carry you as far as you can go through that, because it does get easier, eventually. You’ll pick up a lot of essential vocab not taught in wanikani and a lot of grammar. It is very slow, and very painful, but before you know it, you’ll be able to read a ton of manga without much effort, and starting light novels and visual novels and all kinds of things. For me, it took around 6 months until things really started to open up, and about a year from reading those two series to start reading the easiest light novels, just to give you a timeline, although everyone is different with how many unfamiliar words/grammar they can stomach (mine is low) and how fast their learning pace is. Good luck! You can do it! It’s just a battle of persistence and perseverance!
5 Likes