📚📚 Read every day challenge - Summer 2022 🏖 ☀

I always thought people just liked having their home posts linked to their current posts so people reading their current posts can refer to it when they liked. :woman_shrugging:t5: Well, I just bookmark my home post so when I open the forum to the home page, I click my profile icon and pick my latest bookmark.

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Oh that’s smart. I’m going to use bookmarking to find my previous day more easily now

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thank you all for the many replies as to why we link our home threads ^^ i wasn’t expecting that many answers! i’d started doing it because it seemed like everybody (well, many people) were doing it. i like the “so that others can consult the home thread and figure out what the heck i’m going on about” reason most :smiley:

that said: home! :wink:

i’m on page 94 now, solid progress. pretty sure mu confusion yesterday was indeed because they were talking about hypothetical situations.

Saeki and Touko are slowly getting closer. Saeki is totally in love with Touko, and doesn’t yet know about Touko’s policy to reject all confessions. and Touko is presenting a perfect and impenetrable facade. but Saeki is Touko’s closest companion, and would like to get a bit closer i think. it’s a complicated dance.

it’s kind of strange reading this while knowing what the outcome will be: in a year’s time they will be close friends, student council president and vice-president, number 1 and 2 of the year by grades, the perfect power-couple. except not a couple. Saeki will still be in love with Touko, and Touko will fall in love with Koito… in a way, there’s a lack of dramatic tension. on the other hand, there’s this careful dance of building friendship and trust…

mostly was okay with comprehension today. at one point a new section started, and i thought they’d timeskipped a year (we’re actually a year behind the point where the book starts currently), because the scene was so similar to one from the manga. but figured it out soon enough. and then there was that column of text, 22 kanji, not a single kana, that made me gulp :sweat_smile:

ahh, and i signed up on natively, and listed everything i’ve read so far. i like how it shows me the relative difficulty of what i’ve read :slight_smile:

and i’m thinking of taking a breather from やが君 at the end of this part. want to read something easier to relax my brain a bit, thinking about 隣の吸血鬼さん. i really enjoyed the anime for this, it’s cute and wholesome, i ought to enjoy it ^^

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:house:Home Post

Day 5

カリスタルハンータズ :dagger::gear::bow_and_arrow::sparkles::unicorn::facepunch:t2:

Progress - [|||||||79%] Read about halfway through chapter 3 because it’s looong and the last one in this volume!

New words/vocab :face_with_monocle:

なったよ (to become/it became)

I’ve had this manga for a while, but didn’t have the motivation to actually sit down and READ. Thankful for this challenge :heart: and all of you!

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I continue to be lower energy than usual, although I’m making efforts to cut out the things that are draining time and not bringing me any happiness in return. Such is life - always fine tuning!

As I was lower energy I read more 本好き, because it is a simpler read than 硝子の塔の殺人, although I do want to know the ending there. As expected this is a faster read, although the fantasy vocabulary is throwing some new words at me. The writing style is also not at all what I’m used to, but I don’t mind it. It reminds me of books I read as a kid, with the protagonist’s adventurous spirit and single minded goal. It’s cute.

edit: keep forgetting to say that I did complete my grammar point for the day!

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:spiral_calendar: Day 6: July 6th :sun_behind_small_cloud: :wind_chime:

Small reading day for me today.

:ninja:t2: くノ一ツバキの胸の内 Volume 1 (79% ➨ 100%)

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Home

I read mission 8 of SPY×FAMILY.

I'm 99.9% certain there's gonna be a spinoff club, so, spoilers

loooool is “ugly” the only insult Damian knows, or does Anya just piss him off that much? And it’s hilarious that when they first meet, he thinks Anya’s recognized his charms and fallen for him already, but she hates his guts and he’s the one who falls first. I can’t wait 'til we get to the part(s) where he flashes back to various scenes with her and he remembers her looking all cute instead of making those stupid faces. Scion boy’s got it gonna have it bad lol

Damian:
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Also now that I know that Plan B for getting close to Desmond (since Loid’s half given up on Anya becoming an Imperial Scholar?) is for her to befriend Damian and get them invited to the Desmond house, the post(s) [like this one] I’ve seen on tumblr where Loid’s bemoaning Anya and Damian not getting along (“The mission!”) make a lot more sense.

Oh my gosh apparently Endou-sensei drew this last month in response to the damianya ship tag trending on JP twitter:
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Amazing.

Y’know I almost didn’t even notice that the other kids use kanji in their speech, it’s just Anya who’s all kana. I’m sure part of it’s the difference in their upbringing, but mayhap it’s because she’s actually a year or two younger than they are?

I read a bit farther in 2.43 today! But before that, I went back over a part I’d read before (and spotted a few words I didn’t know back when I read it a few months ago but do now! like 挙手) and translated a bit. Then I read about 2 pages, leaving off on pg 85. We already learned that Seiin and Fukuhou are about 30 to 40 minutes away from each other by train, and now we learn that Seiin is a 20-minute walk from Nanafu Station. That’s kind of far to go to go spy on your rival school’s practice on a whim, but that’s not nearly as far as YuniChika’s trip to the HS section of Chika’s old school in Tōkyō last volume, which was on even more of a whim. (Unless that 30-40 minutes includes the walk from Fukuhou to Fukui Station and the walk from Nanafu Station to Seiin? Still a bit far, though.) Also Seiin’s school uniforms are black here, but they’re teal in the anime lol. Well, the teal looks better.

「男バレなんてうちにあったか?」
「ないこともないんでないんか?」
That’s a lot of ないs lmao. I can’t remember how Funimation translated that line, but uh, he’s really not sure they have a boys’ volleyball club, is he.

I must say, it was rather comforting “hearing” Fukuiben again. I come across Kansaiben (and some 役割語 that’s similar) sometimes, but it’s just not the same. I’m not sure how much of it is that it’s the dialect spoken by the characters in the first JP story I read (I jumped into 2.43 well before I started reading any manga, much less anything else), not to mention I’ve had to figure most of it out on my own due to lack of resources, how much is just that this is my favorite series, and how much is that I simply like the dialect. It kinda feels… softer? and warmer? than standard Japanese? I dunno, something like that. It felt like coming home.

Some vocab of note:

こぎつける [自他一] to reach (a goal after considerable effort); to arrive at; to (finally) manage to do
私語 (しご) [noun, する verb (自)] whispering; whisper; secret talk; murmur
本来なら (ほんらいなら) [expression] by all rights; properly speaking
問答無用 (もんどうむよう) [四字熟語, noun] there being no use arguing (about it)
親密 (しんみつ) [noun, な-adj.] intimacy; friendship
西陽 (にしび) [noun] westering sun; setting sun; afternoon sun
内弁慶 (うちべんけい) [noun] someone haughty and boastful at home but meek and reserved outside; being a lion at home and a mouse abroad

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Day 5 :heavy_check_mark: :cyclone:

~ 19-20%

Day 6 :heavy_check_mark: :cyclone:

~ 20-28%

July 5 was a more socially busy day than I expected, so even though I was set to read a good chunk I only managed a 1%. And had to stop right before a titular hole made its sudden appearance! Then yesterday, even though I still had reduced reading time, I managed to finish the section. I was half-asleep by the last sentence, but it was worth it.
I’m really enjoying this book a lot. So far it’s been very quiet and slow, but in a good way. The (seemingly?) mundane is described in such a way that it’s always very slightly off, very slightly uncomfortable. The summer atmosphere is palpable - cicada’s voices permeate everything, and bugs of all sorts make an appearance. I can almost feel the intense heat and smell the scorched grass as I read. I love it.

Some early speculation (not really spoilers except about the very beginning): The narrator has suddenly found herself in a situation far removed from her hectic life in the city, where she suddenly has nothing much to do with her day. She is also apparently for the first time in a smaller community and in close proximity to her husband’s family. Hearing herself be called お嫁さん surprises her. I’d go as far as to say it makes her reevaluate herself, or feel removed from what she thought she knew about herself? Combine that with the sudden joblessness and the aimlessness of her days, and the nature (weather, plants, little and larger beasts) which here is so dominant and all-pervading compared to the city, and it’s no wonder the narrator perceives everything through a rather surreal lens. I wonder how much she is imagining or twisting in her head, and how much is actually there. I loved the little detail early on with the dog design on the slippers. She seems to like focusing on little details and let her mind run with them. How much of what she describes is real? How much is exaggerated? Is any of it metaphorical? I like the mystery of it and I’m here for the writer to take the story wherever she wishes, or even leave it as mysterious as it is now.

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July 6 :blossom: Home Post

Pretty good reading day today actually! I started out with some (かぜ)つよ for funsies, though they definitely weren’t having a great time lmao; lots of drama, (かける)'s deep in his destructive mindsets and ハイジ fully snapped at him and then passed out, wild times. There are definitely things happening that I don’t remember from the anime and I’m not sure how much of that is the novel actually being different and how much is me just not remembering :joy: either way it’s a good time!

After that I played some more バディミッションBOND and actually caught up on the side stories and got back into the main plot, and oh boy are we in it now! I always forget how intriguing everything going on in it is until I actually play lmao, I’m so curious about everything :eyes: It helps that there were some pretty smooth sections to balance out the usual linguistic weirdness, but oh man are things going down.

buddy bond stuff yay!

Wellll I’m at least partially right with theory things? I don’t have enough information to confirm all of it yet but it definitely seems like ルーク was at the lab that blew up and just doesn’t remember, he had a dream about it and was like “??? what was that???” so :eyes: I’m so curious what the whole deal with that experiment is, it’s so central to so much of what’s going on.

There were lots of goofs too of course, アーロン tricked ルーク into sitting when he whistled:

So well-trained :laughing: and in front of スイ too, rip. アーロン continues the trend of impressing random men with his sheer power and getting called アニキ:

Wow, danganronpa Mondo showed up just to talk about how cool アーロン is, amazing :joy:

There was some real angst too, though… アーロン especially, which is always rough. They found out that people with the whole rat mark situation only have about six months after the fact to live which… doesn’t bode well for his sister, so he’s angsty mode for sure. Dramatic roof time:

You can really see how ridiculous his outfit is from there lmao; but yeah he’s having a bad time :cry: There was a flashback to him blaming himself for the other kids getting killed which is a thing that happened apparently? But that was rough all around, he was so upset, and still just a kid going through so much. I mean look:

アーロン :sob:

Yayyy, glad to inspire!! I’m super excited to go through a VN as a group like that, I hope it goes well for you :grin:

Ooooh it’s so pretty :hushed: I definitely see what you mean about the language, I don’t know that I’d have the mental energy for that yet :laughing: it’s really lovely though, I’ll be looking out for your thoughts! Best of luck :muscle:

Ahhh congrats, that’s such a good feeling!! :tada: On to the next one soon :eyes:

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home post

Finished ナミヤ雑貨店の奇蹟 a couple of days ago.

I started 彩雲国物語 and the vocabulary is a killer. I’m questioning my sanity: why did I think it was a good idea to read a light novel set in some kind of medieval pseudo-China? Even before opening the book it was clearly going to be full of vocabulary that I will see in nothing other than this sort of story, and kanji everywhere too.
(But I like stories with set in medieval pseudo-China. Good heroine a bonus. I read whatever stories like this I could find in English as a kid, and then I ran out because there aren’t many in English. If I can get through this, I’ll surely read more.)

I’m also getting through 暁のヨナ。I like medieval pseudo-Korea too.

And I did my grammar. Only 6 lessons left in the book. :slight_smile:

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

Day 7!

I read 20 pages of ピーチガール this morning. They’re introducing annoying drama now. The type of drama that would easily be solved if people just talked to each other. :upside_down_face: I miiight start one of the VNs I bought after I finish this volume.

Have a nice reading day, everyone!

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:books: :video_game: :shallow_pan_of_food: :sunny: July 6

This was a productive day!
I finished volume 5 of オレンジ which closes the main story, so I’ll just wait for the bookclub to get there and read the other 2 volumes with them.
And a bit later I also finished 夜カフェ! That’s my 4th book this year so I need to make an effort if I want to make my goals for 2022.
Then I played バリバリ for an hour in which I completed a section. I also picked up the 1st volume of 青のフラッグ again, since this is what I’m planning to read next in terms of manga. I’ve read the 1st one already but I figured I’ll do a quick refresh before going on to volume 2.

I’d like to start ビブリア soon and the VN club is coming up in about a week as well :open_mouth: I hope I don’t overdo it.

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:evergreen_tree: :books: July 7 :books: :evergreen_tree:
(home post)

Hotel :evergreen_tree: page 123 → 148 (26 pages)

Well, I keep putting off reading until the last minute. It might be because I’m enjoying the Hotel manga so much; and it is only supposed to be my last resort read. :joy:

And I enjoyed it well yesterday. It is a two chapter story arc, but considering it was very late I only read the first chapter of it. I did however flip through the pages of the second chapter. I’m in for a treat today. :eyes:

I’m not even gonna pretend I plan to read anything else today. I have a feeling, except for Orange, that I won’t be reading anything else until finish the two volumes of Hotel that I have.

Yesterday I spent far, faaaaar, faaaaaaar too much time playing Atelier Sophie. I grinded for a specific material (for a side character’s story), and also cleared out a lot of alchemy that had built up. I could clear a little more, but I want some real story. So today I will continue the main story. :eyes:

Lots of fun planned for today clearly. Maybe today I’ll get to my Japanese reading early enough to also make my report on the day of. We’ll just have to see. xD


Thanks! Currently I only read on paper, so reading the VN on Switch won’t make it much different (for lookups I mean). So I’m ready. ^^

And then, I’m ready to start the maybe too many VNs I bought in a short time because I always do that when excited. :sweat_smile:

I’m with you there. Hopefully my worst case scenario is that all my reading time will be taken up with Orange and Loopers. It’ll be interesting to me to see how long the chapters are and how long it takes me to read them. Because I don’t really have a reference for characters vs manga pages. ^^

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Day 7!

Read 12 pages of Spy x Family. If I do the same tomorrow, I’ll finish mission 2 on time with the book club (except I probably won’t, due to work tomorrow).

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:house:
7th of June

Read page 83 to 85 (23 – 24%) of かがみの孤城 today. I was super unmotivated today and only started after half past ten in the evening… pretty tired now lol. Hopefully I can wake up early enough tomorrow to do WK reviews and get reading done before leaving for work.

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I was super busy and didn’t even have time to post in this thread. Yesterday I read seven pages of 5分で読める恐怖のラストの物語. For some reason I enjoy reading it, it’s pretty much like an anime in written form so other people would probably not like it. If I continue reading at that pace I should finish it this month and I could join the TUGUMI reading. But on the other hand I want to try the JLPT N1 next year reading newspapers, magazines, essays would probably increase my chance more than reading books.

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Today: 13 more pages of よつばと!: now on p. 116. Would like to read more but we have a contractor in the house and it is really putting a dent in my study routine, so this might be it for today.

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:tiger2: :books: The Tanuki Beach Resort: Date 20220707 :beach_umbrella: :raccoon:

No Longer Tanuki Progress: 79.81%

Got a lot of work to do so not much time to read today.

Learnthings

日暮 「ひぐれ」ー Twilight; sunset; dusk (more common as: 日暮れ)
質入「しちいれ」ー Pawning; pledging (more commons as: 質入れ)
納涼「のうりょう」ー Escaping the heat (of summer eg.) to enjoy a cool breeze
(I like how specific this word is)
区別「くべつ」ー Distinction; classification
粉薬「こなぐすり」ー Medicine in powdered form (also こぐすり)
丸薬「がんやく」ー Medicine in pill form
駄洒落「だじゃれ」ー Bad pun; bad joke (more common as: 駄じゃれ or just だじゃれ / ダジャレ)
対義語「たいぎご」ー Antonym
「すみれ」ー Violet (flower)
浪花節「なにわぶし」ー A sung narrative popular during Edo times
臓物「ぞうもつ」ー Offal; entrails; tripe

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I need to come say hey, congrats! We almost synced up. I’d tuck this into my update today but I have a bit of a busy day before I’m going to get to read this time, and I don’t trust myself to not be too scatterbrained :sweat_smile:

Looking forward to ルーパーズ with you all and I hope we successfully entice @MissDagger .

Honestly kind of impressed by people who do so. I never had the patience when digital tools are so convenient (well, with a few exceptions for things that had WK made vocab lists). I’ve had あずまんが大王 sitting around that I got as a Christmas present, put it on hold before because I felt the kanji lookups were still a bit much at the time. I can obviously handle the writing now but I think some day I have to make a bit of an effort to ween myself off my instant lookups, heh.

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@AzusaChan Oh right! Congratz on finishing your first VN!

Part one is just having a really good app on tablet/phone to do look ups in. There are multiple ones. I use Midori that I found about ten years ago when I first tried learning Japanese. Midori can figure out almost everything I throw at it, it also is fine with conjugations. And it’s kanji drawing doesn’t need stroke order (it can help on the really complex kanji) and it is very lenient in interpretation (sloppy lines isn’t a problem and such).

For the VN club specifically I’d have to play on my PC if I wanted instant lookups. My PC is not my main computer, and it’s a desktop, so locked in place. My main computer is a mac laptop. So for me, playing a VN on a computer would be most inconvenient, even with the quick lookups. (Since almost none of them release for Mac…)

To be fair though, on paper, I haven’t been reading things without furigana (while doing look ups), so maybe it would get a bit more annoying at that point to read on paper. And honestly, once I move over to reading more books/LNs, I’ll probably move to reading on tablet/similar because when there are no pictures, I don’t see as much point in having a paperback. (You never have to worry about a poor scan of a manga when buying paper. :joy: )

So for me, it is pretty medium dependent (manga/books with loads of art=paper; other books=ebook; switch for VNs because easier and more convenient for me). Basically it follows my preferences for media outside Japanese ones too.

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