Book collector rehab (actually reading what you own accountability thread)

Ahaha yeah sorry, should have done so right away xD https://www.librarything.com/profile/Rhynn Just… keep in mind I’ve only just added my books (ALL of my books), I haven’t done any organising beyond “Japanese” and “other”. Have to check details, add tags etc. for literally all of them…


Meanwhile. I’ve been doing small amounts of reading, but mainly I’m working on my textbook backlog. I’ve made a study plan which includes everything that’s just been looking pretty on my bookshelves, and so far I’m ahead of schedule. Let’s see how long I can keep that up for though. But, getting through backlog feels… good? What is this magic :joy:

Of course since I’m planning to take the N3 next year I’ve already added a few books to my basket. I swear most of it is study books for the N3. There’s not even a full set of manga in there this time!
Doesn’t stop it from being my most expensive all-at-once purchase so far though oops.

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Welcome back :blush:

If the object of this thread was to collect as many books as possible, I’d have no problems :rofl: My collection has increased by about 50 books this year so far :sweat_smile: and I already know there are several others I will need to get before the end of the year….

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Nice collection :sunglasses: some interesting choices (especially the drawing ones, I have some of those too, just not logged in my current collection) or series I’ve not seen before.

Must resist the urge to buy :laughing:

Are your Legend of Zelda series mangas all in Japanese?
I only managed to get one in Japanese (ocarina of time) the rest are all in English.

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Yup, all Japanese! I think I got half of them from verasia.eu, which is my preferred site but they don’t have much. So the rest I had to get from cdjapan, and two volumes of the Twilight Princess series I had to get secondhand through buyee. I don’t know why volume 9 and 11 are so hard to find, but it sure took some searching!

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Ho my!
Thank you for those sites, as a fellow european myself I was wondering how to get books and manfa for cheap. Those are great option, I will be able to get some real copies of what I am reading digitaly.

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Nice, :sunglasses:
I’ve not used either of those. Most of my collection comes from either Amazon UK, CD Japan or Surugaya, though I was using Orange-design books for a while (where a lot of my really old books are from). They used to occasionally send me free books with my orders but their choices were limited unless you knew what you were looking fir in the seas of random Kanji on book spines :joy:
I’ve also bought a few individual missing books from ebay pretty cheap too.

Your experience with volume 9 & 11 is like my experience with Dragon eye, very hard to find and I ended up having to purchase a full set that came up after I had purchased individual volumes or I’d have never got the last 3 volumes :sweat_smile:

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Alright time to list my progress!
Read 2 chapters of 聞き耳ラヂオ on Tuesday then 3 more yesterday.
I gathered the courage to finish the second story of monogatari, the 3rd part was easier, nearly gave up with the second one last week out of sheer frustration.
Overall a fun story, here is an example of a difficult page.

Can’t wait to start the third and last story so I will reread it then start another one :smiley:
Maybe take more time to read french and english book, I have been dedicating all my free time to learn japanese I am tired and need easy content.

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Personally, I think I’d go for separate sections in the same account - partially for ease of access, partially for the satisfaction of having everything in one place. But that’s me.

No need to push if you’ve got a lot on your plate! Better to take the brief break than to 無理やる and burn yourself out. Especially since it sounds like you’re still reading, too, just not in Japanese for a bit.

To be fair, my personal goal isn’t “don’t buy books,” it’s “read the books I buy.” I don’t really mind/feel bad about purchasing more as long as I’m actually making progress in reading some of what I already have - owning the books brings me joy, too, after all. I just want to make sure they’re not solely decorative, that’s all.

And honestly, it’s also that I know it’ll be much harder to get my hands on Japanese copies for a reasonable price once I return home. I’d rather buy a bunch of them now, even if it forms a backlog, and take them back with me to read at my own pace.

I know that makes me a bit of a bad influence in here, though, so my apologies for that :sweat_smile:

I mean. I think you can see the level of organization mine includes, lol. Honestly the bit I put the most time/effort into was standardizing how the titles show up within my different series so that they sort into the correct order when I sort by title. Don’t ask me how long it took me to figure out the numbering system.

I see the Twilight Princess manga! That’s on my wishlist, I just have to either get lucky or order it online.

VANITAS VANITAS VANITAS GOOD TASTE If you like Vanitas so far you should check out the author’s previous work, Pandora Hearts, I am definitely not biased in giving this recommendation-

Also wow that’s a lot of textbooks. I didn’t actually bother to add my textbooks to mine, since I’m using it more for collection-tracking, but now y’all have me thinking.

The specific phrasing here of a “full” set feels telling…
shoves my scheduled delivery of Dragon Eye and a few other things behind me

:handshake:
I’m not going to count how many books I’ve bought so far this year! Because that would be embarrassing. But yeah, I would also do really well if this thread was like, a book buyer competition or something.
I think I mentioned it previously but my friend and I actually went out in the typhoon we had like two weeks ago to hit a book-off, which was extremely successful but also the concept of going out book shopping in a literal typhoon is so funny to me.

Okay but this was me with volume 32 of 青の祓魔師. I don’t know why, but for some reason there just was not a used copy to be found anywhere! Wound up having to order a new one just to fill out the set.

Also I know y’all mentioned these websites as options for Europe but I’m taking notes for the future when I’m back stateside :eyes:

Good job on the reading! Hopefully pacing yourself with some easier stuff will make it easier to keep a good rhythm going in the long run :muscle:


Today’s update:

  • Finished up the second 2/3ish of かくりよの宿飯
  • About 1/3 of 暁のヨナ volume 4!
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Finally started logging my textbooks, still got about 20 or so books to log once I get home (Japanese from Zero, Marugoto, Genki etc) but currently running at 1240 books total, 122 of which are textbooks, dictionaries, JLPT prep and language resources :sweat_smile:

I also have one book on the way still and about a dozen pre-basketed on CD Japan for series I need the rest of :sweat_smile:

I am not a good role model for how to read books you own before buying more.

I meant to say, the only reason I’ve been tagging stuff and sorting through them is because I wanted a way to be able to specifically search for certain themes or series etc at a glance while away from the shelves. I also had missed several books while originally scanning which meant they were on the shelf but not logged. Also lets me see if I’m missing volumes of a series or what books I have by certain authors.

At the end of the day, your logged collection is great and if it does what you need, you don’t need to add anything else that isn’t suiting your needs :slightly_smiling_face:

I could do, it’s more about how easy that would be to see just my Japanese books but if I tag them with a Japanese tag, I can still do that :thinking: will look at sorting it further down the line when I can access the English versions of my books

Good luck with the renovations. Sometimes it’s best to take a step back or limit the time spent on Japanese to make time for other things. You can always come back to it :slightly_smiling_face:

I most definitely am :rofl: my buying habits will change shortly as I need to focus on other things but I’m quite sure I have enough books now to last me well into retirement regardless of what topics I want to read :joy:

I could check how many but I don’t think I’d like the answer :rofl:

Going out to buy books in a typhoon is the sort of crazy idea I would have :rofl:

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Now most of the sorting is done, I can finally get back to reading: next on my list ごんぎつね 手ぶくろを買いに

I have a reading plan for all my coloured bordered books to try to get more efficient use of my reading time

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Yeah, I basically set mine up for easy reference when I’m out shopping and want to make sure I’m not about to accidentally buy a duplicate of something. The little bit of extra tagging is just to make sorting easier if I’m in one section or another at the store, lol.

I know you can register what language a book is in - is it possible to sort by their listed language? If not the tag would definitely work too.

We had a blast with it - my friend’s going home soon so the main goal was getting her a set of bleach (which we found for a great price), but I also snagged some stuff too.

While we were getting everything situated in our backpacks to take home, the poor 店員 went to offer us a bag and then looked down and saw me whipping out local municipal (plastic) trash bags to put everything in and we could see the realization in his eyes that we weren’t just foreign tourists making an impulse buy XD

Nice! Hope it goes well!


UPDATE - Today’s reading so far:

  • 暁のヨナ volume 4, the last 2/3s!
  • 暁のヨナ volume 5!

I’m probably going through them a bit quicker than I’d be able to regularly, since I watched the anime with my friends a while back - I imagine it’ll go a little slower once I get past the stuff I’ve already seen with English subtitles, lol. I’m guessing that’ll be around volume 7, based off the pace so far, but we’ll see!

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I come back to this thread for the first time in a while and all I see is CRIME

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No crime here! We’re reading!! :innocent:


Edit: More reading!

  • Started volume one of よろしく、俺の花嫁殿。, which I picked up a while ago thinking it would have furigana and then realizing it only has it for a few unusual readings. Got about 1/4 of the way in and realized I mayyyyy not want to read this one at work, so I switched to:
  • Bleach volume 3! About 1/3 of the way through that now, although I think I’ll call it there for today bc my brain is turning into soup.
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This was why I set mine up originally. It’s just evolved since then and I found it easier to search for specific things if I can either search by Japanese title or specific keywords/ tags. It’s also made me realise just how many books I have across different categories by the same authors which will make reading by progressing through difficultly levels more easy if I already know the author and their writing style/ choice phrases.

Good shout! Just checked and If I search for Japanese it brings up everything I’ve logged with that language :joy: so definitely doable. Just didn’t realise that.

Awesome, I love when stuff like that happens :laughing:

I’ve had some reactions from my tutor and language exchange partners when I’ve spoken about certain things either culture wise or such where they’ve kinda had that realisation moment that I’m not just trying to learn the language but also studying the culture as well. It’s a kinda cool reaction.

Glad yous managed to get what yous were looking for. That’s always a good thing

Thanks, I think it won’t be quite as smooth as I would like but we’ll see how it goes :slightly_smiling_face:

Good luck with reading 暁のヨナ

No time for crime when rescanning books!
can’t count ordering missing volumes of series as I can’t leave a series incomplete :joy:

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Hell yeah! I’ve been making sure the languages are correct on mine - auto-filling from Amazon can get a little janky about the “original” and “primary” languages - because I expect it may become relevant in the future, lol. Glad to hear that searching by language works, though!

頑張れ! And thanks!

CLEARLY this is completely innocent behavior. You can’t just leave holes in your collection, after all.


Haven’t gotten to my reading yet today (been knocking out reviews and fixing some librarything tags), but how’s everyone else doing? Any progress?

Update: Got through the manga version of ムジュラの仮面, which felt like more work than I expected - maybe because it covers so much in one volume?

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Yeah, me too. I’ve been bulk updating the language part so it’s correct. Just a pity you can’t bulk update things like author, publisher etc. Seems to only be tags, collections, delete, media, language and where it came from :thinking:

You’re welcome and thanks, I’m definitely gonna need the support :joy:

Leaving gaps in the collection? That’s a complete no-no move. Can’t be having that at all :rofl:


I have had no progress :sweat_smile: though I’m back at work from today so should get at least a few pages done. Been re-watching Apothecary diaries instead to chill out

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If you saw my learn natively update no you didnt

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Yeah Exit 8!
Ho my god, someone else know about Buso Renkin, that’s an OLD serie.
I have read it back in the day but forgot about it it’s still on my shelf I should reread it some day.

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it was only 1600 yen for the whole set at book off too!
Tbh that’s the only reason i bought it, as the author is a bit… hmmm…

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Oh man, Buso Renkin, I haven’t seen that one around in aaaaages.

The energy and motivation is rough today, so I might just take care of my reviews and not push it, unless lunch blesses me with some better やる気.

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Got hit with a stomach bug over the weekend and have been taking it easy so I didn’t end up reading any of my physical books/manga. However, I randomly came across this manga and ended up reading the entire thing (5 tankobon volumes + 10 web chapters) while resting in bed: 子連れバツイチ、最後の恋は沼でした.

The premise seemed a bit questionable at first, but it’s actually a super cute story and kind of scratches the same itch as Kotaro Lives Alone. I’m a bit sad that only the first tankobon volume was published physically and the rest have only been released digitally!

Anyway, feeling better now + long weekend coming up, so hoping to continue reading through my physical book backlog.

@Ayara012 are you reading the manga or light novel of かくりよ? I watched the anime recently and was debating whether or not I wanted to read the continuation of the story from where the anime left off.

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