Haha, if our dates happen to match we should definitely meet up! As I said though, don’t have anything concrete myself yet 
2 Likes
Bought the last two volumes in the からかい上手の高木さん series this morning and read them in the early morning. Now on to decide what to read next. I’m still deciding between reading another series I’ve already read, or a stand-alone book next (mostly because I don’t want to shell out for an entire series at the moment 
). I do still have the spin-off series からかい上手の （元）高木さん on bookwalker, so I am seriously considering reading that one again too, just to have truly “completed” the series. Another option would be Yotsuba&! as I still haven’t read the newest volume, but I doubt it would get here quick enough (though amazon.co.jp is blazingly fast sometimes). The one I most want to read, but still scares me because I don’t know any car terminology is initial D. I bought the whole series a few years back, but after a few failed attempts I haven’t tried picking it up again in a LOOOONG while. This might be the time to try! (Doubt I’ll manage a whole volume / day in the beginning though, but we’ll see)
2 Likes
Awesome job.
Man, it makes me feel bad about my lack of progress with the light novel I selected.
I might quickly jump to some manga and then return with more strength back to the same novel or reconsider one of the other 3 I have too.
2 Likes
You should never feel bad at the rate you’re going, no matter how slow, progress is progress! My very first non-manga book took me several months, and I don’t have any real idea about the story because it is so disjointed in my mind and I took so many breaks because not having pictures to help figure stuff out made me doubt everything I was reading
If you feel like you’re not progressing enough I don’t think it’s a bad idea to switching back to some manga or the like until you feel ready to tackle it again, anyways, you got this!
4 Likes
Then I’m gonna try do your thing and read the whole backlog of Nagasarete Airantou before going back to the light novels! That should give me at least readings for 36 days…
2 Likes
Embrace the insanity! (Also, feel free to keep me updated, would love to hear how it’s going!)
2 Likes
It took me 2 months to read my first Tsubasa Bunko book. The next 2 books also took me a month and half … dont worry about it 
3 Likes
I might have shot myself in the foot with the one I went with too. It’s so cliche and boring. It feels like a cheap Card Captor Sakura.
3 Likes
Awesome idea! As someone that strongly strongly stronggggggly believes that reading is the fastest way to get fluent in any language, I couldn’t support this more!
I usually read about one volume of manga a day before bed (takes about 30 mins) to wind down, and I can say that the words I am exposed to in manga, or in regular books stay with me a lot longer than any SRS words.
I don’t wanna flood you with recommendations, because it is important to find your own rhythm, but if I could give just one tiny recommendation…
Read out loud (if it doesn’t slow you down too much).
Even if you are whispering the words under your breath, it is just as good as reading it out loud. That way your mouth is learning the muscle memory involved in correct word order. Your pronunciation may be a bit off, but that is very easy to fix. The gains you will make in memorizing word order purely through muscle memory will far outweigh any potential time spent fixing pronunciation.
Lastly - I will definitely be following this thread! Keen to see what you’re reading! I am current reading the last few volumes of Gantz that I somehow missed the first time around.
13 Likes
I’m only on the basic graded readers but just started doing this. Eureka moment for me is it encouraged me to read the the entire sentence first.
I was reading and translating a few words and then trying to piece it with the preceeding bit to assemble as I went along. And I’ve found myself not stopping and translating it in my head as much.
6 Likes
That’s a really good idea! I’ve been shadowing sentences through Jalup once a week for a long while now, but I’ve never really bothered reading my other stuff aloud. I really should though! I’ve done my reading for today, but I will definitely try this out tomorrow! Thanks for the suggestion 
3 Likes
It took me 90 minutes to read the first volume of Nagasarete Airantou, and at some point I stopped looking for words in the dictionary and tried to go with context.
Will try that on the next volume, thanks for the recommendation.
2 Likes
This is cool. I set the same goal for myself, but my criteria for counting is a little different. My goal is 100 books and 1000 volumes of manga. I started in January of this year and I am only at 3 books and around 100 volumes of manga. However, one book was Battle Royal and that in itself took me 6 months. With a cast of over 40 characters and not a single furigana to be found in the whole page book, it was quite slow going. Also my reading speed has increased a lot, so next year I should be able to put a larger dent into the overall goal. Good luck to you on your journey.
6 Likes
I was planning on getting started on Initial D, but it was an insane day at work and my mental batteries were running on fumes, so the easy からかい上手の （元）高木さん it is. I did do @Asher 's recommendation of reading out loud (even voicing ) the characters and it was an enjoyable experience, and I do think it was also more beneficial as he stated. I will probably do this for most books I read from now on, at least for a month or so and then reevaluate (though the voicing depends on my mood ).
2 Likes
I’m trying to read one Nagasarete Airantou a day, the kanji font is so small
2 Likes
Haha, I know your pain well! It’s honestly why I’ve mostly switched to digital. Some scans (at least on bookwalker, can’t comment on other sites) are still bad and don’t add any reading value, but if it’s nice and crisp and you can zoom in 
2 Likes
It’s a great idea to differentiate between “real” books and manga, I might steal it if I find I’m still mostly reading only manga by the end Anyways, best of luck to you too, and feel free to post any updates along the way, would love to hear how it’s going for you!
4 Likes
I really want to read Initial D, I may buy the set that is all the 3 in 1 volumes (digital). Soooo tempting!
Definitely reevaluate the reading out loud after a month, I’d be keen to hear how you feel it helped/didn’t help your retention.
3 Likes
I should probably find some easier to books to read to start out with, myself, lol. I’m basically a beginner but I’ve been trying to read the first 2.43 清陰高校男子バレー部 light novel since I got into it when it got an anime this past winter season, but it’s, uh, a fair bit above my reading level. Doesn’t help either that the majority of the characters speak Fukui-ben. Though I did finish reading one of four of the side stories in the side novel a few months ago, and even though I didn’t understand much more than the gist of it, it was still highly entertaining. Right now my only reading goal is to read all the volumes of 2.43
I’m definitely gonna try reading under my breath (at least the parts I can read; though I keep finding there are more words I can read even when I don’t know what they mean, which is exciting!)
5 Likes
Initial D!!! YESSSS!!! If you are into cars, there is nothing better. This is by far my favorite Japanese media of all time. It changed my life. I first saw the anime about 10 years ago, and now I live in Japan and own 2 drift cars (both of which appear in Initial D.) Ive driven to all of the real life locations at least once, and continue to visit my favorite ones regularly. Im pretty obsessed with this story. Please read it!
5 Likes