I did read some things with the intention to add them in, but upon finishing them realized they weren’t as clear fits as I’d thought.
The only new one I want to mention is もらってください. The one on the “cheapest” spot. I bought it on impulse because of the unusual art style and it’s now my favorite comedy. It is so perfectly unserious. And yet the tender moments still hit. Highly recommend.
So, that “prize winner” looks really pretty, but I see from your library you only gave it 3*. Was it just meh or did you have any reason for that rating?
I felt there was no plot outside the romance and their relationship issues were not complex enough to be stretched out for so long. It’s a problem I have with most school romances, but I thought them being in college made it safe. If you like school romances, childhood friend plots, and nostalgic teenage drama you probably will enjoy it.
Thanks! I made it in PowerPoint. My post is a screenshot of a slide. Switching out images is super convenient on PowerPoint, so that’s why I’m using it.
I’d share the template but I think most people would prefer Word. The features are about the same.
Share away! I think it’s really cool and would like to use it next year for mine! No point in joining for 2024 anymore, I think… I was a bit overwhelmed to at first so I’ll mentally prepare for next year!
I picked this one up to use as my “nonhuman protagonist” square. Only read 15 pages so far, but it seems a fairly straightforward style to read. Incidentally it turns out to be “story of an Asian Giant Hornet”. Wikipedia says “some popular and sensationalist media outlets in Japan also began referring to this wasp as satsujin suzumebachi (殺人スズメバチ, literally, “murder hornet”)” and the protagonist has indeed killed another wasp already in the first 15 pages
I got my “read in a single day” square! I bought 夢について | L30?? specifically for this purpose because of the low page count and because I know Yoshimoto Banana writes in a straightforward style. The nominal page count is 156, but the book is a series of 24 essays which are all about 5 pages each and have a full page illustration each, so when you account for the illustration pages and the pages at the end of essays with only a few lines of text, I reckon the actual full-pages-of-text count is more like 120.
I started this first thing in the morning as I wasn’t sure how much time it would take, but after I’d read the first five or so essays it seemed like they took me about five minutes or so each and so I did the rest in a relatively relaxed way, taking breaks and pauses, and still finished around mid afternoon.
In terms of actual content, reading to a deadline isn’t the best way to appreciate it There are some interesting or funny bits in there, like the essay where the author is cleaning out her old room at her parents’ house and looking at all the things she wrote and owned at the time and realising wow, past-me was the same person and yet also really different to current-me… and then finding a big box of seal-themed goods and plushies and stuff and going “wtf was I thinking as a child” and
and there’s one at the end which is basically a ghost story which I liked. Most of them I didn’t have a strong feeling about, but that’s partly I think because I’m not an enthusiast for the “personal essay” genre.
So I guess I recommend it if you also are looking for an easy to read short book for a “read in a single day” challenge, or if you want something which is all very short predictable length pieces so you can do one a day or something.
Also, I realized that the book I wanted to read for the “added to Natively” square is way too hard for me to reliably finish it this year (and also I’m reading it with one of my language partners which means that we don’t have much time for reading actually, and when we’re reading we need to discuss the contents a lot so progress is even slower ), and so I decided to read 葉桜の日 | L30?? instead in order to fill that square. It consists of two short stories, and so far (~30 pages into the first one) it is very smooth sailing, and I like the atmosphere of the story despite having no clue at all where this will lead to. In a certain way it actually reminds me of キッチン | L30 so far - would be nice if it continues along these lines.
I did it! Which means I can finally create my bingo card! Because that’s totally how this is supposed to be done, right? Although it did provide a good opportunity to look back at what I read this year.
I’m glad I took part in the challenge. It encouraged me to step out of my comfort zone a bit and try out new stuff, which was fun. And I even managed to stick to my rule of no manga/short stories
Details
Read something with no reviews/gradings/ratings on Natively - 満願 | L36
Read something at a higher Natively level than what you’ve read so far - 64 上 | L39
Read something from the free samples/something you can read for free (such as syosetsu, kakuyomu, tonarinoyj, etc) - 何者 | L34
Finish a series (can be either one you are already reading or you can start a new one) - 1Q84 BOOK3〈10月‐12月〉後編 | L35
So I’ve decided I need to sit down and come to terms with the fact that my reading habits just are not aligned with my current bingo goal of “only count backlogged items”, so for these last couple of months of the year, I’m going to relax that requirement. So in that spirit…
Still no bingos, but being able to cross off two more squares feels really nice. I have eight squares left, which is a real stretch in terms of getting a blackout by the end of the year, but I’m still gunning for one or two bingos, at least.
You could read a debut, something in a workplace setting and a book with a bad cover and also finish a series, and you’d be getting a prize for crossing off the most squares while still avoiding a bingo
Here’s an animated-gif version of that (mostly produced as an experiment in how well chatgpt did at writing python scripts – the end result was about 70% chatgpt, 10% bugs fixed by chatgpt when I pointed them out, and 15% me fixing the last bugs by hand):
(yes, the script has messed up the aspect ratio of the covers. oh well)