2024 Bingo Reading Challenge ☑️

enbyboiwonder · August 6, 2024, 2:21am

Aug 5:
no reviews/gradings/ratings on Natively: シンデレラ・ティース

If it weren’t for the MC’s uncle dating one of his patients, who on top of that is a minor, I totally woulda given this 4☆… It was a good book aside from that.

But on the bright side, I’ve now got 4 bings! First and last column, last row, and four corners.

Naphthalene · August 7, 2024, 7:12am

So, my most recent read どこの家にも怖いものはいる | L32?? is a much better match for “fiction of non fiction”. (The author, as himself, is “transcripting” various accounts of supernatural events he “found”, eventually bringing the attention of some eldritch horror to himself and prompting him to warn the reader about reading ahead). It thus replaces ドッグスレッド 2 | L26 for the spot. Not sure what I will use for instead (if I use it).

I’m also going to check “wholesome” with 事情を知らない転校生がグイグイくる。 1 | L22

Previous stuff

mummyvhs · August 20, 2024, 11:02am

Hello everyone! I realized I never formally entered the challenge. I’m quite new to the whole thing but either way here is what I have so far. I only let each book count for one square since that would mean I had to read more (which is my true goal here) and used the “no free space” modifier.

So far I’m very pleased with my progress, considering I only informally started the challenge in the middle of this year and the biggest part of my finished pile is books I’ve read over the course of my life. I just want to have everything in one place and am still adding books whenever I remember This site is so addicting. Sort stuff into things! Numbers! It’s an autistic dream /gen

Additional thoughts

Going purely by what natively thinks, “higher level” is probably going to be 火定, because I don’t know what else to possibly add there.

Since I just pick up stuff I think could be interesting or enriching I already dread having to scrub through everything for the “published the year you started learning Japanese” and “debut work” squares…

P.S.: thanks to @fallynleaf for getting me into this challenge and explaining everything to me! I never read much in a single year before, especially not after pro wrestling started sucking up all my time, but I made an effort this year to read more and fall back on it instead of playing video games or wasting time on social media. It has helped me find a lot of great works (as well as a lot of trash ) and polish my literary understanding.

Naphthalene · August 20, 2024, 11:12am

Your first row has the titles above the box, but everything else has the title at the bottom of the box

but yes, welcome

taiyousea · August 20, 2024, 9:37pm

Haven’t had much motivation to read these past few weeks it took me an embarrassingly long time to finish 光が死んだ夏 1

Recent completions:

Author’s Debut Book: 光が死んだ夏 1 (L28)
I Added it to Natively: たるしば (L16)

I’m looking forward to the next 24-hour Readathon in a few weeks so I can knock out 2-3 more categories

Naphthalene · August 21, 2024, 3:35am

Alright, I haven’t updated in a while since I was traveling.

So, since then, I read a bunch of manga (not sure if I will use them, since I do want to avoid flooding my bingo with those), and also
spicy: 阿修羅ガール | L29 (technically, sex scenes were not exactly happy, but still counts)
Non human portag: 地獄くらやみ花もなき参蛇喰らう宿 | L31 (I didn’t want to use previous volumes just because you have 鬼 instead of humans because it feels too close… but now that it is confirmed that one of the characters is a literal fish made humanoid by magic, I’m going to count it)
No reviews/ratings: 好き好き大好き超愛してる。 | L31

After thinking some more, I will add one manga per series in there.
TBR next in series: 女装してめんどくさい事になってるネクラとヤンキーの両片想い 12巻 | L25
No other adaptation: 30歳まで童貞でいたら魔法少女になりました 1 | L28??
TBR warm colors: 7SEEDS 外伝 | L30

Still no bingo, but getting really close.

Previous stuff

Edit: just realized I also forgot to add 歯車 | L34
It is a short story, but I have added 銀河鉄道の夜 | L31 already, which is also short… Not sure where I should put the cutoff line (I’m definitely not adding stuff that are <20 pages, and probably will add stuff >50 pages, but 歯車 is listed as 41 pages long…)

pm215 · August 21, 2024, 9:32am

I finally finished 奥羽の二人 | L50?? and my gradings brought it in at “level 50??” which qualifies it for “something at a higher Natively level than you’ve read so far” and gets me my first bingo!

I’m going to write a review in a bit, but what made it difficult was:

Historical fiction based on real historical figures and events, so you can easily get lost if you don’t have enough background knowledge
Lots of historical place names and personal names which very rarely get furigana
The author’s style tends to using obscure words

The upshot is sentences full of unknown words where it can be tricky to tell even whether the unknown word is a normal word, a proper noun or a title sometimes.

Plus because it’s short stories, every thirty or so pages you get a completely different set of names to deal with.

The first sentence is not unrepresentative:

安芸国安佐郡金山の城は、代々、甲斐の武田氏の一族が城主であったが、大内義隆の勃興とともに滅亡してしまった。

(You get furigana for 安佐 = あさ and 金山 = かなやま but nothing else.)

Naphthalene · August 22, 2024, 3:40am

Well, just a quick update that I have finished my “TBR longest title”: 魔法使いの引っ越し屋勇者の隠居・龍の旅立ち・魔法図書館の移転、どんな依頼でもお任せください | L30

I would have dropped it if not for this bingo…

GreenSeaTurtle · August 24, 2024, 7:18pm

I finished two more books in my summer holidays.

For the “new to me author” square:

Apart from the dialect the grandmother spoke and I just ignored (the meaning came across nevertheless) it felt like a fairly easy read. A very short book. Apparently, I have a paperback edition that also includes another 80 pages or so with sayings by the grandmother and their background/explanations. The book itself was ok, though not really my cup of tea. But I gave up on the additional sayings pages eventually. Too repetitive - a lot of the sayings I had read already in the main part.

For the “workplace setting” square:

For me, this was great not least because of the unusual setting: The two main protagonists are tax collectors from a Japanese tax office. It is all about how they try to collect overdue taxes from taxpayers and the small and big dramas that evolve around this - both regarding the taxpayers as well as the tax collectors themselves.

I enjoyed this book a lot, especially the latter half. It is the first book in a series, I think I will buy and read (at least) the second volume eventually.

previously filled squares

Voi · August 24, 2024, 11:48pm

I somehow seem to be missing any bingos with my current reading order.

Been a while since I updated. Didn’t get much done this summer between massive amounts of unpaid overtime and my worst hyperfixation in a decade.

But!! I did the math and to finish Tensura 1-3, Bookworm 2-3, and Trinity Blood 1 I only need to read 6k characters a day, which is…technically doable. I’ve been good about it the last week and a half, anyway. Then as long as I sneak in the last bit of Adabana, a manga, and the non-fiction articles, I will have achieved my stretch goal of blackout bingo!

Actually I might swap Trinity Blood 1 with Tensura 4 for “non-human” just so that I don’t have to learn another fantasy book’s vocab. That’s been the biggest hit to my reading speed with Tensura 1–Bookworm 1 did not have nearly the amount of fantasy vocab as Tensura 1 has had in the first 22% of it.

Naphthalene · August 26, 2024, 1:09am

I finished my “most recently published TBR” 本好きの下剋上ハンネローレの貴族院五年生1 | L32??, thus giving me my first bingo on this grid!

I have also now mapped all the stuff I should read for the rest of the grid… I wonder if I will have time to do that before the end of the year

Previous stuff

pm215 · August 28, 2024, 8:26am

I finished 舟を編む | L34 last night, so that has indeed filled in the “workplace” slot for me. The book’s structure turned out to be more “ensemble cast” and not focused only on one main character, so the aspect I mention above that I didn’t get on with isn’t the main thread of the whole book, happily.

Not sure what to do next bingo wise; I only have

won an award (easy, there are so many Japanese book awards, something in my to-read pile will qualify)
non human protagonist
read one volume or story in a single day (very difficult since I’m only counting novels for my bingo card, not single short stories or manga)
read a book chosen randomly

left…

Naphthalene · August 28, 2024, 8:43am

I haven’t checked your book list, but what about ハンチバック | L32 ? It’s only 96 pages long, and a quick read.

nikoru · August 28, 2024, 8:54am

Thanks for letting me know! I do own that book but I‘ve also watched the movie and I know that lowers my motivation quite a bit, so I’m staying clear of it right now.
Instead I started Masquerade Hotel with the WK book club, which also seems to fit the slot quite well.

What is your minimum requirement for the length of a novel? Many of the Akutagawa winners are in the 150 page-range, and there are some that are written straightforwardly (language-wise) on top of that. I don’t know ofc but I would expect you to be able to get through one of those in one day, if you have a bit of time at hand?
Short easy books that I enjoyed a lot are e.g. 蛇にピアス | L30 (128 pages, trigger warnings: sex, gore, generally disgusting stuff), 土の中の子供 | L31 (160 pages, trigger warnings: gore, also involving children), おいしいごはんが食べられますように | L31 (162 pages), or of course a classic like コンビニ人間 | L30 (168 pages).
Do you think a book of that length might be doable for you?

pm215 · August 28, 2024, 9:15am

Mmm, on an easy book I get up towards 30 pages an hour, so in theory a 150 page easy book could be doable in a day. The question is more whether I want to put in five hours of reading in a day – I think that would feel like a terrible slog unless the book was very good, and of course that’s tricky to judge when you haven’t started it yet

(My minimum length requirement is effectively “it has to be a published paper book”, I guess. So a volume of multiple short stories I also count as one book.)

nikoru · August 28, 2024, 10:21am

Oh yes sure, I can relate to that! So I tried to put myself in the position of someone wondering about reading one of my recommendations, and because the first two rank around subject matter that might be offputting to some people, I ended up favoring おいしいごはん - there is also a book club for it over at WK where you can maybe judge the level of entertainment from the discussions we had I also checked the Natively reviews and while some people didn’t enjoy it as much others had a blast - especially @cat’s review started with “I read this book in one day because I could not put it down.”

pm215 · August 28, 2024, 11:02am

I think for a “read in a day” book I would probably want a plot driven story like a mystery, rather than a character based story.

But I just put in a cdjapan order, so I suspect I’ll mostly be reading stuff from my tbr pile for the rest of the year

Naphthalene · August 29, 2024, 1:03am

A few more updates:

TBR random: 十二秘色のパレット第1巻 | L23??
TBR female author: ギンモクセイの仕立て屋上
Read for free: 地獄くらやみ花もなき肆百鬼疾る夜行列車 | L31

I talked about them elsewhere on the forum, so I don’t have anything else to say

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光谷 · August 31, 2024, 3:18am

Hi everyone. I just joined. Do the books I already read this year count?

bungakushoujo · August 31, 2024, 3:44am

Welcome! Sure, why not. It’s the 2024 bingo and it’s still 2024.