📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2022 🏖 ☀

Home post :bookmark: Aug 1st :beach_umbrella:

・ わたしの幸せな結婚 6 (0% → 27%)

Related to yesterday’s update: The ending of the previous volume wrecked me. I don’t usually seek out spoilers, but I had to look around for reviews on this volume before I could go to sleep last night. Fortunately, it brought peace to my mind. One of the reviews noted that “book 5 and 6 should be read together”. No joke, I’m so happy this volume is released already, how could I bear sitting with that kind of shipwreck of an ending without reading the next part already. Well, I’m only at 27% but I have a good feeling about this one.

cc @Naphthalene

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Well, I’m glad I did wait until now to read volume 5, then :stuck_out_tongue:

Speaking of which, a bunch of series I am following had a new volume recently (including this one, 宿飯, ポーション頼み, 薬屋, etc). 本好き 30 is coming out in a week too. BUT I still have stuff I bought during the sales back in February rotting in my 積読 pile. sigh.

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Home post

REDC
Week 6

8月1日
Chrono Trigger

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August 1 :blossom: Home Post

I’m super tired so I just read a few pages of 海辺(うみべ)のカフカ. I should have time for a better reading day tomorrow though :grin:

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Home

That fic that was nearly 1500 words a couple days ago? It’s now about 2500 words. If I manage to finish this, it’ll be the longest fic I have to my name.

Today I read ch 2 of キミに言えないことがある. Ugh, my heart hurts. In second grade, Kyousuke had a crush on the older boy who lived next door, but he didn’t recognize what those feelings were until he overheard his mother saying that, the way he was reacting to the boy moving away, it’s like he’s in love with him… about two seconds before he heard his father tell her, “Don’t say disgusting things.” A few years later, he met Kasumi, and he later developed a crush on him. But when Kasumi confessed to him in college, he remembered the wish Kasumi had written for Tanabata in 5th grade (to marry someone he loves and be happy with them), and he remembered his father’s “気持ち悪い,” so he turned him down and told him that what he feels isn’t love. Because he doesn’t think he can make Kasumi happy. Augh

Though Kyousuke’s father is also just a dick. He’s obsessed with “correctness” and perfection and instilled that in his son, and he’s never proud of him no matter what he does because success is expected. “Of course he got that result, that’s nothing to be happy over.” And of course, anything less is meaningless. Like, yeah, no wonder your son has self-worth issues.

Some vocab of note:

オンボロ [prenominal; noun; な-adj.; の-adj.] run-down; shabby; dilapidated
転げ落ちる (ころげおちる) [自一] to tumble down
愛でる (めでる) [他一] to love; to cherish
千載一遇 (せんざいいちぐう) [四字熟語, noun, の-adj.] once in a lifetime (opportunity); (a golden opportunity that may) happen only once in a thousand years

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:spiral_calendar: Day 32: August 1st :strawberry: :deciduous_tree:

July in Review

I hoped to complete 10 to 15 volumes within July. If I did a decent job of marking off volume checkboxes in my home post, I’m at 16, which nicely exceeds my goal.

Completed volumes, in unicode-alphabetic order:

Screenshot_20220801_163839-fs8


🔍 名探偵コナン Volume 11 (0% ➨ 11%)

The plan was to finish volume one of Kaito before buying the next volume of Conan, but it’s a new month so I’ll make new rules. Since Kaito is one-chapter-per-story, I’ll aim to read at least one chapter of it per volume of Conan I read.

With the first chapter finishing off a case, tomorrow(?) begins a new case.

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:books: :video_game: :shallow_pan_of_food: :sunny: July 29

Another busy day, played like 10 minutes of バリバリ.

:books: :video_game: :shallow_pan_of_food: :sunny: July 30

Snuck in 5 minutes of バリバリ while waiting for someone.

:books: :video_game: :shallow_pan_of_food: :sunny: July 31

Finally some time to myself. Played the entire 2nd chapter of ルーパーズ in 1:10h and later I played バリバリ for another 1:10h (total coincidence).

And July is over! It’s been a busier month than I expected. I missed 3 days but had a bunch of others where I didn’t read too much. I have a vacation coming up in August so hopefully I’ll have more time for reading and all things Japanese.

(I’ll probably do a double post to start August off right, sorry in advance P:)

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:books: :video_game: :thong_sandal: :sunny: August 1

I’m trying to make ビブリア a daily reading focus since I want to read it within this month. Today I read 3% (5% → 8%). I’m really enjoying the introduction of the MCs trauma with books, and have a few theories of how that will tie into the old bookstore stuff. Already getting into it.

I also read the first chapter of 青のフラッグ Vol.2, I have no idea what to expect from this series so I’m pretty intrigued.

Then I played some バリバリ before bed ~20 min since I don’t want to lose my streak with this VN either.

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:star2: Home :star2:

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険23

start - 20

wth D’Arby the Elder looks nice. Robbed by the anime we’ve been
He kind of looks like their lovechild in a complimentary way :thinking:



image

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home post

July progress: what I finished

Books
ナミヤ雑貨店の奇蹟 (had already started)
彩雲国物語 vol. 1
ガリガリ君ができるまで
夢から醒めた夢 (a short children’s book)

Manga
東京タラレバ娘 vol 1, 2
暁のヨナ vol 10, 11, 12
薬屋のひとりごと vol 1
天使なんかじゃない vol 1
バンギャルの日常 vol 1

And some book orders arrived, mostly from CD Japan. Photos and comments

A whole pile of 彩雲国物語 light novels.

And the rest of 鹿の王, a history/look back at the visual kei rock scene, and a reading diary.

The 読書ノート is a reading journal for children with pages for 50 books. It has spaces and suggestions for comments about the books, a sheet of stickers to use when you finish a book, and every so often there’s a congratulatory page with praise and encouragement. And since it’s a paper book that nobody can see except me, I think I might try writing it in Japanese.

There are other 読書ノート journals available for older children and adults, with more pages. (100冊、200冊, etc) But right now, 50 books is a good goal for me.

Yesterday’s reading was some more 鹿の王、and some of a pulpy horror novel 異端の祝祭。

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I love that little reading journal! So cute.

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:tiger2: :books: The Tanuki Beach Resort: Date 20220802 :beach_umbrella: :raccoon:

Tanuki Scroll of トリポリ :lebanon:

Random article - about the city of Tripoli, Lebanon.

:beach_umbrella: Japanese found in the sand :beach_umbrella:

Words

スンニ派「すんには」ー Sunni (Islam)
十字軍「じゅうじぐん」ー The crusades / Crusader
要塞「ようさい」ー Fort; stronghold

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Today: よつば&! p. 146-154.

Is it just me, or is the flat affect of lines like "でてきなさい” (when Yotsuba climbs into a cabinet at the department store) completely hilarious? There’s an earlier similar moment when Yotsuba’s dad calls Fuuka “美少女” and she says “それやめてください” with an expressionless face and I laugh every time I think about it. The brilliance of this manga is hard to put a finger on but you know it when you see it, and it seems to be in these tiny moments that hit you out of nowhere.

New things:

迷子 (まいご): lost child, lost person
超 (ちょう): super-, ultra-
ビクビク: being afraid of, trembling
ドキドキ: thump thump; pitter-patter
ビビる: to be startled
戦う(たたかう): to fight, to wage war
はらへった: hungry
民間 (みんかん): private, non-governmental
ガラガラ: with a clatter, with a rattle

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Oh, did you like it? :eyes:

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I’m almost done with 青春ブタ野郎 book 2. I love this series. But the time it takes to read vs watch I’m wondering if I should just watch the rest of the anime and movie then just get caught up but I am benefiting so much from reading that I don’t want to stop. I’m still reading Chainsaw Man when I can. Have Tumugi chapter 2 waiting but I’m not really interested. Now that I’m in the flow of reading I just want to read what I want to read. It’s cool.

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Although I dropped out of officially doing this to relieve pressure, I’ve still been reading almost every day cause this is just more or less my main hobby now, heh. Wanted to check in with how I’m doing:

スマホを落としただけなのに - I’m a few sections from the end! Something like 92%! There were moments earlier where I thought there wasn’t enough personality but I think the end has pulled me in more. I’ve got a lot of specific thoughts but I’ll try to put out a Natively review when I finish (in a day or two? :eyes: ). Seems to be cruising to a solid 3/5 barring any huge last minute swings. It’s been the perfect level for relatively comfortable reading (great call there @pocketcat) and I think I’ve gotten a lot better at listening with the audiobook, too. Whatever details I lose, I basically follow the plot every time on blind listen now.

Loopers - Fun stuff! Pretty nice reading level. But I’ll save most of that for the club. Just, having a good time when Loopers day rolls around.

Flowers - So I’m hitting a point where a lot of new characters are showing up, and that’s great, cause the cast started off really tiny. What I’ll say at the moment is I think this is a good VN, but it’s bordering on difficult enough for me that it’s detracting from the experience. Truly harder than I expected. Virtually every sentence has one new word max, usually a few, and they’re dense sentences using weird kanji for words I know too. Really getting tested on my memory for 此処, 其処, 何処, that sorta thing, heh. It taught me that 佳い for いい exists. There are worse examples but you get the point, this sort of “what is a kana form?” writing is entirely the norm.

It seems to be a good VN! But it’s a descriptive, relatively slow moving one, and the issues come from that combination. I fight tooth and nail through sentences that are ultimately just descriptions of what someone looks like, using new words with new kanji I’ve never seen before for particularly fancy ways to say willowy or something, haha. I can’t really appreciate the quality of the prose when I’m still puzzling through it, so the “reward” of the actual text feels anticlimactic for the work involved, you know? It’s me, not the VN.

So most days I get through about 3000 characters and get tired and quit. I’ve been debating what I want to do, but at least so far, my stubbornness to continue (mixed with lots of easier reading material) is winning out. I think if I do finish this one, I’ll at least be taking a break with something else before starting part 2. There are times in the past where I’ve fought pretty hard through something and it felt pretty valuable to my learning, but I’m slightly unsure here. The part of the difficulty in grammatical constructs feels like a good mental workout, but when it’s so full of words I don’t know, I’m not convinced they’re words I’m going to reinforce any time soon unless I seek out particularly literary and highly descriptive works, which I don’t expect to do soon enough to feel like what I’m learning is truly worth the effort. If that makes sense.

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Yay! That’s awesome :smiley: That really opens up the world of listening material for you. There’s actually 3 books in the series and I know at least the second one also has an audiobook although I haven’t listened to it yet. So long as it’s still in the nomination list for the Mystery Book Club (for next rounds of course) I’m going to try to abstain from reading / listening to it :sweat_smile:

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Yes, I thought ナミヤ雑貨店の奇蹟 was really good. (I left a review on Natively) It’s the kind of book that I think a wide range of people could enjoy. It’s well written and interesting, and there are a lot of things about it that make it a great learning opportunity from a language student perspective.

If it wasn’t so long I think it would be a good candidate for a reading club book.

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august 2 :sunflower: home post

so… I accidentally didn’t read for a whole week :sweat_smile: I need to remember to read before I log into ffxiv. Yesterday and today I got back into it, reading 極主夫道, 魔女の宅急便, Orange, and the very beginning of TUGUMI.

Since it’s a new month here’s a recap + goals

July Recap

By the end of June I was reading consistently every single day! And I kept that up until July 19. And then after that even on the days I read I only read for a bit. Last week I didn’t read at all… Despite that, I think July was a good month for reading.

Books I finished:

  • 夜カフェ1 (July 13)
  • 極主夫道5 (July 20)
  • しろくまカフェ1 (July 21)
August Goals

My goal this month is to actually finish the books I’ve started instead of starting a billion books and never finishing them. I even made a gantt chart, but have I followed it? No. I’m going to outline my goals for this week specifically in my study log, but here are my plans for this month:

Book Clubs
Here are the book clubs I am / will be participating in this month. Now that I’m listing them out it seems like way too many!

carrying over from july

  • 極主夫道 (as usual :slight_smile:)
  • シャドーハウス w/ BBC
  • Orange (fell way behind, will try to catch up by the time we start Vol 2)
  • ルーパーズ I started this VN and found it easy enough to follow along, but I’m still at the very beginning because tbh I keep forgetting about it. I think I’m almost done with ch. 1 though? (the prologue? whatever that part is)

new in august

  • TUGUMI - started this week!
  • 夜カフェ2 - starts August 6
  • 十角館の殺人 w/ Natively book club - I believe this starts August 8
  • Hunter x Hunter w/ ABBC - starts August 27

さようなら Satori Reader
If I’m going to finish Koibito or Oku Nikkou on Satori Reader I need to do it asap. I’m canceling my subscription later this month, so it’s now or never

Other
I need to get back into reading 時のオカリナ. I’m at the part where Link first arrives in Castle Town, which is 城下町 in Japanese btw). So I have a long way to go. My goal is to finish it by the end of August. Other than that, I’m reading 魔女の宅急便 since that book’s been sitting on my shelf for a year and I still haven’t read it

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:sunny: :beach_umbrella: Memoria’s Summer Readin’ :beach: :sunny:

August 2nd: (Yes I’m changing the titles…)

Today I read 15 pages of 好きっていいなよ. It’s been in my Bookwalker library for a while and I figured now was a good time to check it out. I only have energy for Zero Escape on the weekends, it seems. At least while I’m still moving. Reading NHK easy news articles doesn’t really motivate me, so I need something I can pick up quickly. Actual move-in date is scheduled for this Saturday! :confetti_ball: I really hope things will settle down some more after that.

Might have to take you up on that once I find a hook that actually picks up on the escape room text :sob:

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