I will not be able to post in the category “Inhae reads the news” on the 25th because I haven’t read the news during the month of December. I was not really in the mood for some serious news studying after the JLPT and with the holiday season approaching, it was even more difficult to sit at my desk…
But I will be posting about the books I have read in 2019 on the 31th and my schedule should be back to normal on January 1st when I post my reading challenge for 2020!
In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy the last days of 2019!
About
I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read mystery novels and play video games in these languages.
Learning languages has always been one of my favourite hobbies, but I’m not a social person, I don’t like to meet new people and make friends, this is just not me. I keep hearing that languages are meant for communication, that we have to actively use them, talk with natives, etc. and for a long time, I thought it was weird to learn languages just to read books, with zero interest in communication.
Now I don’t really care what people think, and this blog helped me a lot to stop doubting myself and just do what I enjoy doing.
Do you use sites like dokushometer to keep track of the books you read??
I use that and goodreads and I like how they give me stats. For dokushometer it tells me how many pages or books I read on average for the year or the month
今月読んだ冊数
3冊
日平均：0.14冊
週平均：0.95冊
月平均：4.09冊
今月読んだページ
886ページ
日平均：40.27ページ
週平均：281.91ページ
月平均：1208.18ページ
今年読んだ冊数
23冊
日平均：0.06冊
週平均：0.45冊
月平均：1.94冊
今年読んだページ
6099ページ
日平均：17.13ページ
週平均：119.92ページ
月平均：513.96ページ
Looks like I’ll hit my 2 books a month goal this year. I still have a few weeks this left to finish a book. The reason it says I read 3 books this month is because I read the 3 books at the same time so it took me a while
I also make a bookshelf at the end of the year on dokushometer for books that I really enjoyed that stood out among the other books
I didn’t know that they give such detailed stats! The page count is interesting because I always feel like I’m not rewarded enough when I finish a book of 500 pages and it’s just one book read, haha! The problem is that I don’t think I’ll keep up with updating my readings regularly, I’ve tried in the past, but I always ended up forgetting to update it.
Congrats on your 2 books a month achievement! I also have a similar quota, but mainly because I focused on easy mystery novels and read several page-turners that I finished quickly. For 2020, I will tackle more challenging books, which will certainly impact my reading pace.
it also gives me overall info. It’s interesting how I average out to 1 book a month even though there were years where I barely just because I read a bunch of books one summer. I find the number pages really motivating lol. Of course my main motivation is enjoyment
記録初日
2008/08/01
経過日数
4162日
感想数
88
感想投稿率
46.3%
読んだ冊数
190冊
日平均：0.05冊
週平均：0.32冊
月平均：1.37冊
読んだページ
52678ページ
日平均：12.66ページ
週平均：88.60ページ
月平均：379.71ページ
今月読んだ冊数
3冊
日平均：0.13冊
週平均：0.91冊
月平均：3.91冊
今月読んだページ
886ページ
日平均：38.52ページ
週平均：269.65ページ
月平均：1155.65ページ
今年読んだ冊数
23冊
日平均：0.06冊
週平均：0.45冊
月平均：1.93冊
今年読んだページ
6099ページ
日平均：17.08ページ
週平均：119.59ページ
月平均：512.52ページ
what challenging books do you have in mind? i find older stuff like dazai challenging but I love his writing style so I don’t mind. Also I can read it on the kindle so if stuff really bothers me I can look it up with a tap. I’m not interested in classical japanese etc though.
I think that I’m still far from being able to read Dazai in Japanese… I was thinking of nonfiction books, particularly historical nonfiction or things like that. It will be challenging because there will be a lot of new vocabulary, but on the other hand, it will be only that: learn new words, which is not an impossible task. With literature however, it’s sometimes difficult to understand even when vocabulary is not an issue… But I will try some contemporary literature in 2020 (award winners for example).
i was wondering if you found an author with a writing style that’s extremely compatible with you? for me, 本多孝好 honda takayoshi is one of them. i love the stuff he wrote from 1999 to 2008 (??), the stuff he wrote in recent years just aren’t as good. I just remember that when I read his books in 2012 (4 years into learning japanese) he made reading japanese feel effortless and very fun which is something i don’t experience often in english even (I’m not well read anyway lol but i know i hate charles dickens) since it’s hard to find fiction authors that write in a way that’s really resonates with me.
I guess that Keigo Higashino has a writing style that is extremely compatible with me! Everytime I start a book by Higashino, I feel like I’m walking a path that I have walked a hundred times and know by heart. Also, I realised that all the characters in Higashino’s books have exactly the same way of speaking. They all have this polite, clean, textbookish Japanese. Police officers, teenagers… they all speak the same kind of Japanese! I know that teenagers are usually extremely difficult to understand, and in Korean drama, I just can’t understand a word when police officers are talking! This makes the dialogues in all his books extremely easy to read.
I’m aware that Higashino’s style might be too plain, but that’s what makes it easy to read to me.
Happy Holidays!
Get some good rest and have some fun for the rest of the year! After the JLPT study, you must be tired. You still managed to keep up with some readings for this month so that’s commendable. Wrap up some loose ends around your life and let’s start the new decade off fresh. 2020’s resolutions here we come haha
Thank you! Yes I’m mostly reading in English this month and keep my energy and good resolutions for 2020! Happy Holidays!! ☺️