Ah, I could die happily in that room, crushed to death by an avalanche of books. XD Is this a used bookshop?
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Yes! Everything is second hand, so cheaper than usual, which is really not helping with my impulse to buy the entire store.
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Is that a reference to 本好きの下剋上? 
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That gives me a headache personally - way too cluttered… Glad you found a place you enjoy tho 
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Overall, this was a really productive month for me for language learning, particularly for Korean. I am happy to say that I have read 26 out of 29 days in Korean this months! As for Spanish and Italian however, it wasn’t as great.
Korean
This month, I broke my record for most pages read in a month, with a total of 1807 pages! It’s not as impressive as it sounds, because a lot of these where children books, but still. My statistics are also slowly shifting, and the higher levels are becoming more and more prominent. I’ve been reading a lot more full text books, as opposed to picture books. However, I also haven’t been finishing those that quickly. Some short children’s books, sure, but full length novels are a lot harder.
I have also started another novel, 마녀를 잡아라 | L22?? which is a translation of The witches by Roald Dahl. And surprisingly, I can actually read it pretty easily! I do need to do the occasionnal look up, to fully understand what’s happening, but the good thing is that the book usually stays on the same topic for several paragraphs. So, say I need to look up 5 words in that initial paragraph, I most likely won’t need to look up anything for the rest of the page. Because I’ve been spending time reading this though, I have become a bit late for some of my bookclubs. I’ll try to catch up this month, but I also just started a new internship, so who knows if I’ll have the time.
Book Clubs 
Book  Week  |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
소리를 보는 소년 | ||||||||||
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이상한 과자 가게 전천당 1 | ||||||||||
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또다시 같은 꿈을 꾸었어 | ||||||||||
|
전우치전 (outside of Natively) |
Spanish
I have done some reading for Spanish this month, but mostly at the beginning of the month. My readings include a novel, a children’s book that was free so I figured why not, and two short stories. One in particular was… special to say the least. And quite hard to read through as well, but tbh I’m not sure I’d be much better at reading texts filled with religious jargon in French or English either.
The Spanish bookclub for La Ciudad de las Bestias | L30?? is starting soon (mid march), so I should be doing more active studying this month. I don’t think I’ve done any active studying for Spanish since… summer of 2018 probably. So that’ll be a change.
Italian
I haven’t done as much as I wish I had with Italian. So far, I’ve read through 17 of the LingQ mini stories. I have also gotten Olly Richard’s short stories for beginners in Italian, and I read the first chapter. So far, so good, although I’m pretty sure that the fact that I’ve already read it in Korean is helping a lot. I’m hoping to be able to either finish it this month or to catch up to the point I read to in Korean. I’d rather my first read be the Korean version, so that would mean I’d have to finish it in Korean first before doing the same with the Italian one.
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It wasn’t, I just really like books. I haven’t participated in this bookclub since I joined Natively after it’d already started, not to mention that the level was, and still is too high for me. This is definitely going into my reading list though, and hopefully I’ll be able to read it soon!
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My comment was for @eefara re: crushed to death by an avalanche of books.
I still never managed to finish 本好き (my most recent attempt derailed b/c of a scene in the audiobook that happened to be triggering for me), but it’s a good book. Hope you enjoy it whenever you get to it!
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I also adore books and I love Honzuki! I highly recommend checking it out when it’s more in your reach; I’ve read 8 volumes so far and am working on number 9 (in Japanese - I would absolutely die if I tried to read it in Korean with my level haha).
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A bit of a mid month update:
I have bought quite a lot of books since the beginning of the month. My book budget may or may not have exceeded my food budget at this point. And the weekly used book sale and multiple bookstores right next to my appartment are not helping.
I managed to get some books from my grandma from back when she used to teach Italian though. So at least I don’t have to buy any Italian textbooks!
I feel like I’ve been less productive than last month with language learning. It’s just a lot going on, and when I come back home after my day I’m too tired to do much. I’ve fallen a bit back on bookclubs, so I hope I’ll be able to catch up soon. Two new bookclubs are starting next week, one in Korean and one in Spanish! The Spanish one at least should not be too time consuming. I’ll be doing some active reading (for probably the first time ever for me in Spanish, I just never bothered to) but hopefully it won’t slow me down too much.
Book Clubs
| A | Book Week |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
소리를 보는 소년 | ||||||||||
|
이상한 과자 가게 전천당 1 | ||||||||||
|
또다시 같은 꿈을 꾸었어 | ||||||||||
|
전우치전 (outside of Natively) | ||||||||||
|
죽이고 싶은 아이 | ||||||||||
 |
La Ciudad de las Bestias |
Good news for Spanish however, I started reading Los detectives salvajes | L42. I felt a bit apprehensive at the level at first, but it isn’t actually too hard for me to read right now. By the time I’m finished, I should reach (or almost reach) the 4000 pages mark. And then I’ll have other books waiting for me to continue! I’ll see if I’m crazy enough to go for Rayuela | L45 or Don Quijote de la Mancha | L45?? right after.
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My house is getting this way 
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I’ve been hyper focused in the past week or so on finishing 마녀를 잡아라 | L23. I was supposed to start another bookclub for Korean, and catch up on my other bookclubs. Also, I haven’t really been reading in Spanish in this past week. But hey, I managed to read 239 pages of either children’s novels (마녀를 잡아라 and 구멍놀이 친구 | L19) or a B2 graded reader (전우치전 | L22).
I’m really glad that I decided to entirely log my reading speed for this one. I can visually see my progress through that curve of reading speed, as I was becoming more and more familiar with the vocab and needed to look up less and less words.
I’ve just hit 5000 pages for Korean! Technically, I’m at 5114 pages, but well, I was determined to finish 마녀를 잡아라 before posting about it here.
Also, a thought for @brandon. I have been struggling (and failing) to get an R code to run for this past week. I solve one bug and then it gets stuck again right away with another one, so I am slowly turning crazy. That being said, kudos to you for sticking with this, dealing with all the bugs that just keep reappearing out of nowhere.
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A recap for the month of March!
For Spanish, I didn’t do much, only 188 pages read, which isn’t great on it’s own, however, almost all of that was a L42 book, so I’m counting it as a win anyway.
Italian I am hoping to get the motivation to tackle more starting this month, as I’ve barely listened to a couple LingQ ministories.
Korean is where I spent most of my time. Despite that, this is actually my lowest month since I joined Natively in terms of pages read, with “only” 604 pages. And that is actually a good thing because it shows that I’m well on my way to transitionning from picture books to novels! This is also present in my level stats, as I read 337 pages in the L20-26 bracket.
Just compared to my post on March 1st, where I was at 10% pages in the L20-26 bracket, this is crazy!
Most of what I read this month can be attributed to a couple novels:
Among these, I’ve finished the first two, and I’m almost finished with the following two. What’s great is that I can finally enjoy sitting down and reading something interesting, without having to stop to think about every single word or sentence. A lot of things still cause me trouble, but I’m able to ignore most of it and continue on with a broad understanding of what’s happening, that I didn’t even have before.
| A | Book Week |
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
소리를 보는 소년 | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
이상한 과자 가게 전천당 1 | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
또다시 같은 꿈을 꾸었어 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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전우치전 (outside of Natively) | ||||||||||||||||||||
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죽이고 싶은 아이 | ||||||||||||||||||||
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La Ciudad de las Bestias | ||||||||||||||||||||
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https://learnnatively.com/book/a278577fca | ||||||||||||||||||||
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해리 포터와 마법사의 돌 | L30?? |
Lots of bookclubs, this is starting to look a bit crazy but hopefully I’ll manage to finish some of them soon, so that I can tackle the other ones.
Edit: I also just started a Storytel subscription, so I hope that I’ll be able to make use of it to get more listening practice in. The gap between my reading and listening level for Korean is starting to get a little too wide for comfort.
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Since I’m trying to push myself to take Italian more seriously, I bought some graded readers!
I’ve just realized that I was sorta tricked, because all four off them are supposed to have audio, but while for two of them the audio is available online for free, you need to buy a separate CD for the other two. Of course, no one told me at the bookstore, and there were no CDs to be seen, so I don’t know what happened to them. I even paid the full price anyways, so yeah, not great.
So far, I’ve read two very short stories from “Dieci raconti”, by Marco Dominici. This is one of the books where I don’t have any audio. Besides that, they’ve been as fun as you can expect 2-3 pages long stories with simple vocab to be. They’re built as actual short stories, so you get a nice plot twist at the end too. What’s nice is that they’re clearly built with language learners in mind as well, so there’s some repetition of sentence structures, with a couple things that change, so it’s great for figuring out vocab from context and to get used to the grammar as well.
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I’ve just finished my first audiobook in Korean that isn’t a graded reader and where I hadn’t read the book first, 책이 사라진 날 | L20. So, so far, this Storytel subscription has actually been useful! I wasn’t expecting that it would make me this tired though, but I should’ve. After all, there is a reason as to why I almost never watch anything without subtitles.
Also, some funny stats I thought I’d share here. I’m at exactly one book a day! Plus, after almost five months on Natively, I’ve barely missed a couple days of reading each month in Korean.
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I figured I would read a little before going to bed, just a couple pages in Spanish, nice and easy, right? And yet this is the monster sentence that I ended up finding. Now why do I feel like Los detectives salvajes Hispánica | L42 is messing with me?
(Not to scare anyone away from reading this, it’s great, just know that the high level is NOT exaggerated.)
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Wow; does that manage to be an entire page, if it weren’t split over two?
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About that yeah I think.
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As I’ll be moving tomorrow, I’ve gathered all of the books that I’ve bought since I got here, seven weeks ago. And while I knew I got a lot of books, I didn’t think it would be this much. Somehow, I have obtained 23 physical books (a mix of new and second hand books), plus 3 ebooks bought, and storytel of course. Among those are 10 books in Spanish, 7 in Korean and 4 in Italian. Luckily I’m moving to a slightly larger apartment, so that means more space for books!
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I’m just realizing that I forgot to do a mid-month update between all the craziness that was my personal life this month. But hey, at least, I managed to bring all of my books with me, and reunite with some books that I’d left in various cities. (I also no longer have an excuse not to finish Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners | L12, that I actually started reading as a beginner! I really find the plot that boring, but at least now I should be able to get through the rest of it pretty quickly.)
Now come the bigger news. I’ve been eyeing the Japanese section of Natively for a while, telling myself that it’s not reasonable to start learning yet another language now, when my level of Korean is still not B2, and when I just started Italian as well. I figured I would start next year, but as it turns out, my willpower for this sort of thing isn’t strong enough. Or rather, my passion for languages (and books!) overcame everything else. So here I am, just starting to learn Japanese.
Funnily enough, I have a feeling that it’s actually going to help me somewhat with Korean, because through learning kanji, I’ll finally be able to recognize more hanja! I just started on Wanikani, and well, let’s just say that I now understand why learning those chinese characters stroke by stroke is tedious and seems downright impossible sometimes, and why I was mostly failing at learning hanja that way. So I might just start a system where for every new kanji, I check to see if there’s a corresponding hanja and what words it’s in, killing two birds with one stone.
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I was just eyeing the Korean side of Natively yesterday, and googling things like “does knowing Japanese make learning Korean easier?” despite the fact that my French is supposed to be a B2 before I can start a new language… I have a bad feeling that I will be following your lead soon 
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