Coming in a little late so hopefully it’s not too late to join.
I have a rule that I’m not allowed to buy a new book until I finish the current one, which I’ve mostly been able to stick too lol. I got a little trigger happy and bought two I knew I can’t read yet but really want to, so now they’re staring at me every time I go to read.
Currently reading 夜廻 (highly recommend if you know the game or like horror). Planning on finishing it this week, haven’t decided on the next book yet though.
Hope you heal up quickly, @Special_Guest !
Can I ask what the new romance anime was?
Never too late to join! Lord knows we all still have piles to go through.
Mind if I ask what the two are that you’re in a staring contest with?
Update for today (so far): chewed right through 魔男のイチ volume 3! Will probably keep going with volume 4 until it’s time to leave for the day 
“You and I are polar opposites”
it seems to be new this season and boy oh boy is it a bit slangy IMO. Only watched like 2 episodes of the 9 released and I struggled wot understand with the subs on. But ive been getting into Romances recently, not sure why. But it seems cute so far.
However! If people want a good romance movie with White Day coming up I recommended
“Ride your Wave”
Its a lovely and kinda funny romance movie written and directed by Masaaki Yuasa who is pretty well know with many other anime and movies many people who like Anime probably know.
I’m glad I’m not the only one with this problem. Though I don’t regret it at all.
I just finished 久保さん, but ended up buying another 30 volumes from Kinokuniya, 履いてください、高峰さん、結婚指輪物語、and a few other of the most recent releases for other series…
Which wouldn’t be bad, but I also just placed an order for the entire series of 史上最強の弟子 ケンイチ so that’s another 64 volumes… so my backlog has grown by nearly 100. Send help…
Also picked up the blu ray for 藍より青し which is next on my list to buy so that’d be another 17 volumes…
I really need to buy new bookshelves. 
putting this here as a small reminder to myself more than anything else
→ get to page 147!!
SVSSS and Erha in JP. BL wuxia books may not be the best reading practice yet lol.
I also have the entire No. 6 series in paperback, hoping to tackle those by next year.
I have a bunch of manga series I purchased during my time in Japan that I have not yet touched. Manga is another type of challenge because it’s full of slang. I’m stuck between wanting to finally start, but not wanting to search up every four words I read. Any idea how I can strike a balance? I’m kind of thinking to just push through, then on a reread search up words that still don’t make sense.
I think this is a good approach if you dont mind rereading!
I’m not patient enough to reread I’ve found so I’ve just tried to limit how many times I look up words. I.e. only look up words that appear a lot or just really annoy me.
Buddies in crime! I definitely have enough manga now that I’m starting to have to rearrange things to get them all to fit
頑張れ！
Oh man - I haven’t read Erha but I’ve read SVSSS (in english lol) and I can only imagine what tackling that would be like in Japanese.
…Also I do have the first two volumes of a MDZS manga adaptation in Japanese, so I suppose I’ll get a taste of it eventually too, lol.
A few thoughts!
My very first instinct is to point out that there’s a lot of variation in how slangy a manga will be, just based on it’s setting/premise/characters. Since it sounds like you have a variety of options to pick from, I’d consider taking a look at the first volume (or even just the first chapter) of a few and seeing how they feel to read. You might find that one of them is less intimidating than the others.
You could even check natively to see how people have rated the difficulty of the series you own, although keep in mind that they might feel a little different based on your own progress with kanji/grammar/etc.
Personally I’m at a point where I do basically just push through, checking as many kanji on my phone as I need to to get the gist of what’s being said. It’s certainly not fast, but I’d much prefer to be reading something I find interesting - even slowly - than forcing myself to read something at a lower level that I’d be bored by. And thankfully, the more I do it, the more certain words start to stick (albeit…slowly, lol.) But it’s definitely easier to see the impact when I keep going with one series, since obviously any given story will be using certain words repeatedly that might not show up in a different story.
And I don’t personally do so, but I’ve heard of other people doing pre-studying or research, so to speak - if the series you’re thinking of starting with is reasonably popular you might be able to find an anki deck, book club, or another resource that someone has previously made, and get a sense for the vocabulary to expect using that.
Got a bit chatty, sorry, but there’s my two cents! Past a certain point I think you do have to psych yourself up and go for it, but when you do you’re welcome to join us here with progress reports. While I am definitely a terrible criminal by this thread’s standards, I do find that it’s been a lot of help for me in maintaining my motivation if only so I can come back and say I did some reading in addition to committing more crimes, so maybe it will give you a bit of a helpful nudge too 
And on the topic of updates - I had gotten through about the first 1/3 of イチ volume 4 yesterday, and so far today I’ve finished that one off and am about halfway through a (borrowed) ヤンキーくん volume two!
Edit: Finished the ヤンキーくん volume and then got through イチ volume 5!
(Can you tell I had a lot of time to kill today.)
thanks! up to page 119 from 97, so just 28 more pages to go OTL
Not a ton of updates on my end. Work has been kicking my butt recently, and probably will be until the end of April. (I need to speak with whoever decided having two big back-to-back deadlines was a good idea because whyy).
Mostly just reading Kiki at the moment, with other books on pause. But, I’ve also been too busy to buy anything new, so that’s a win, right?
———
Very belatedly responding to other stuff here:
@Ayara012 I’ve been really into 牧場物語 Let’s! 風のグランドバザール recently (lol at the random Let’s in the title). I’ve been playing the 牧場物語 series since I was a kid and am very familiar with farming vocab at this point, so it’s really nice to be able to just play it without needing to look anything up. However, if you’re not as familiar with that type of vocab, this one is kind of the perfect game to start in the series as it has a log that lets you read back through a conversation and replay audio.
I feel like I’ve been seeing more games doing this recently, and I really love it. Obviously it’s great from a language learning perspective, but also really appreciate it from an accessibility standpoint.
I’m also planning on starting Metaphor Refantazio soon, since I ended up getting tickets to an orchestra concert they’re doing for it later this year. I’ll probably play that one in English with Japanese subs though, at least for a first play through.
Also going to second the recommendation @Special_Guest gave for Ride Your Wave. It’s also kind of devastating in some parts though, so prepare for tears as well as laughs if you’re the type that cries easily.
I’m currently on a manga reading project to get through more than half of my Manga backlog this year.
What I’ve been doing is looking up the vocabulary only if I don’t know the root word of it, if the word appears multiple times, or if I don’t understand the sentence as a whole.
If I can get the gist of it without looking anything up, I will just continue reading.
With some manga and even some books, I will plan to re-read them as my understanding and vocab level increases. I recently re-read Flying witch, Ruri dragon and Sandlands, understanding a lot more the second time around.
Oh exquisite taste there, I played that a whole bunch when it dropped (in English though, lol), I think it’s a very good remaster of the original - I’ve been playing most of the 牧場物語 games since Sunshine Islands\Island of Happiness, although I don’t often do so in Japanese.
I’ve kinda been contemplating taking another shot at something in Japanese lately, but I haven’t decided yet what I wanna go with.
Edit: Today’s total is the next two (borrowed, I’m being good) volumes of ヤンキーくん!
I’ve finally finished 余命一年と宣告された僕が、余命半年の君と出会った話, took me two weeks instead of one because I was quite busy. It was easy to read but the story was… not so great ? Heavy atmosphere, characters are poorly built (lethargic) and hard to sympathize with. Honestly I don’t recommend. It’s like “I want to eat your pancreas” which is’nt that great of an anime to begin with (IMO the main character is way too lethargic for no reason which makes it unwatchable).
Next I’ll be reading Samishi Yoru Ni Ha Pen Wo Mote and in parallel Konbini Ningen.
I think it’s great to switch from one book to another, and now it’s decided : if I don’t like a book, I’d rather drop it than brute force read it to the end for the sake of reading, no more disappointment !!
I’ll try to read konbini ningen in a week and I’ll try to read Pen wo mote in a month or so.
Achieved!
Next goal is page 190. This next chapter seems quite a bit shorter than the last, thankfully.
Okay I ended up finishing コンビニ人間 in two days, this one was amazing I really liked the story and the meaning of the ending is left to the reader’s subjectivity. Though the story objectively demonstrate some deep spot from our society
I’ve red around 50 pages of さみしい夜にはペンを持て which is around 25% of the book, I think I’ll try some slice of life light novel in parallel to just read something easy without thinking, still haven’t decided which one yet.
Édit : it has been decided, it will be 成瀬は天下を取りにいく
waaaa next chapter is 70 pages… epilogue starts on page 261
I haven’t been reading much recently as was away from home for a bit and now staying at my bfs because my car is in the garage, so maybe I’ll get some reading in before the end of the month 
Reading update!
We are SO BACK Baby. I did some cleaning around my apartment and situated my extra chair near the window and did some reading. Only a couple pages but its the most Ive done in awhile outside of my studies. With Spring upon us I will use it to take in the fresh spring air that is slowly coming around warming up my little piece of Inaka
I liiiiiiiive!
No real reading update - I had a four day weekend, which was lovely but during which I did exactly zero reading, and then spent yesterday’s spare time taking care of some everyday miscellany (budgeting, updating my calender, etc.)
I did pick up three new manga over the weekend, but to be honest I don’t even feel bad because they’re all continuations of things I already have (ホリック・レイ volume 5, 私の幸せな結婚 volume 6, and 魔男のイチ volume 7) and I got a particle-practice textbook too, so.
I do need to get back on top of my reviews today, though - I vacation mode’d them partway through the weekend to avoid burying myself, but not before they’d already piled up a bit. Oops.