April is over, and I haven’t read much during the month. I have lacked motivation overall, but I did achieve some small things, so let’s focus on the positive.
Site has migrated!
I have successfully migrated my blog, so everything should work well now. There were problems before and the blog was down most of the time during the last weeks.
Spring reading challenge: read Matsumoto
I originally had planned to read two books in April for this challenge: ゼロの焦点 and 黒い画集, but I ended up reading only ゼロの焦点.
黒い画集 has been sitting on my desk for three weeks now, but I never started it….
This means that I have currently 4 books remaining (out of 6) in my challenge. I need to read them all before the end of Spring, so I have a little less than two months left. It’s possible if I read two books per month, but some of them are very long (黒い画集 is 730 pages long and 砂の器 is 950 pages long!), so no more slacking off!
Back to reading Edogawa Rampo!
Instead of reading Seicho Matsumoto, I went back to the Anthology of Japanese detective fiction that I got last year. I’m only on the second tome (out of 12…), so I am progressing very slowly on this one. The second tome contains a collection of Edogawa Rampo’s novels and short stories. I am currently reading 化人幻戯. It is a novel from the Kogoro Akechi series, but it belongs to the couple of novels written after the war, and it feels very different from the rest of the series.
I am just about halfway through 化人幻戯, and after that, there will only be one short story left in this volume: 堀越捜査一課長殿.
Chinese and Korean
My Korean reading has been almost inexistent this month. I started a novel, but I am still pretty much at the beginning. It’s not bad, but I have lacked motivation in general in April, and Korean is the language I find the hardest to read, so it’s no surprise that I have put aside this book.
Chinese has been the only thing that has kept me motivated this month. I only have a little less than 100 pages left in 坏小孩 by 紫金陈 (Zijin Chen). If it was a Japanese novel, I would have said that I am reading it slowly, but given that it is only the third book I read in Chinese, I am more than happy with my progress.
Plans for May
I don’t think that my motivation will suddenly come back in May, and I will certainly have less time to read than usual, so let’s try to do a realistic plan!
- Reading Seicho Matsumoto should be my priority. I must finish 黒い画集 no matter what. I should also read 砂の器, but given how long it is, it is not realistic. Let’s say that I will try to read at least half of it.
- Finishing 化人幻戯 shouldn’t be a problem. Ideally, I also read 堀越捜査一課長殿, so I am done with volume two of the anthology, but I doubt that I will have enough time.
- I will finish 坏小孩 for sure, but I will not have time to start another Chinese novel. Maybe I can find a short story to read instead?
Have a good start in May everyone! 🌼
About
I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read detective novels in these languages. I post about my reading progress and language study here. Best way to get in touch is on Mastodon 🙂
No comments! Be the first commenter?