hi! I only read your original post (saw your Korean bingo and followed the link over here 
) so maybe your opinion has changed since, but I just wanted to say that I don’t think reading with a pop-up dictionary is cheating at all! I probably read 30-40 Korean books with minimal or no lookups, most of those being paperbacks that I just powered through, and I genuinely don’t think I learned that much from it (or rather, as much as I could have had I had a pop-up dictionary). Of course, I got way better at reading, and I got better at composing sentences, and I did learn some vocab, but there are also words I must have seen a hundred times that I still didn’t pick up. Now I use kimchi reader, which has a popup dictionary like LingQ and mining support, and I feel like I’m getting so much more out of my books with the lookups haha. We learners have to take every advantage we can get! :')
- Hole in the wall
- Kona’s big adventure
- Akiko’s American Foreign Exchange (has easier version)
- Kiki-Mimi Radio (has easier version, probably hardest in general)
Fwiw I think Satori is aimed at a higher level than where you’re at right now (wrt vocab). So it’s probably going to be a challenge in any case
Spring Equinox Readathon
I’ve been meaning to sit down and write this recap for over a week now, but the time has come to finally review what I did during this reading challenge!
In the spirit of this being a Wanikani challenge, I initially thought that I would give my best effort to Japanese, and finish the day with Korean as I didn’t think my reading endurance for Japanese would be much. As it turns out however, I was wrong, and I actually got through almost 5 hours of reading! I am slightly disappointed that I didn’t notice I hadn’t passed the 5 hour mark, I definitely could’ve read for 5 more minutes, but well, that just means I’ll get the opportunity to do better for the summer solstice!
| Book name | Start page | Current page | Time spent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 蜘蛛の糸 | 12 | 35 / finished | 44 mins |
| 圭太とネコ石1 | 0 | 30 / finished | 1h 20 mins |
| 圭太とネコ石2 | 0 | 34 / finished | 1h 2 mins |
| 圭太とネコ石3 | 0 | 34 / finished | 41 mins |
| うくろう | 0 | 15 / finished | 7 mins |
| 手ぶくろを買いに | 0 | 4 | 30 mins |
| 子どもたちと池の鳥 | 0 | 10 / finished | 13 mins |
| ハピネス 1 | 0 | 17 | 18 min |
| Total | - | 163 | 4h 55mins |
Since I couldn’t read in Korean on the same day, I also did a mini readathon on Saturday for Korean. And I say mini because I was definitely still exhausted from the Japanese readathon, so I didn’t end up reading as much as I hoped I would, only two hours total. This did motivate me however to finish some books that I’d been neglecting, mainly 뜻밖의 계절 | L25 from the book club that I really wanted to finish before we started our new book. So overall, I’m pretty happy about that, and about my reading speed as well, which ended up being rather high, although to be fair 뜻밖의 계절had a lot of dialogue.
Now I just need to finish 밤을 건너는 소년 | L26 from a previous book club I hadn’t really participated in but did buy, should be doable in the next 5 days 
| Book name | Start page | Current page | Time spent |
|---|---|---|---|
| 뜻밖의 계절 | L25 | 141 | 280 / finished | 1h 7 min |
| 뛰어! | L24 | 53 | 136 / finished | 53 min |
| Total | - | 222 | 2h |
Overall, I’m super happy with this, I can’t wait to do it all again in June.
Congrats on doing the Korean readathon the next day, the 5 hours must have been draining!
If you managed to surpass your expectations this time, I’m sure your Summer Readathon will also be impressive 
Q1 recap (January - February - March)
For this quarter, I mostly focused on Korean, Japanese and Mandarin, with Mandarin more towards the beginning of this quarter, and Japanese towards the end.
January started out great, with a total of 7 non manga/webtoon books finished in Korean. That’s when I also crammed quite a bit of Mandarin, and kept up Wanikani as well. On February however, my health was already not great from January, so I figured that I’d stop most energy intensive activities, and try to see if that improved things. It did not, and I’m pretty sure I’ve been doing worse since, but it was worth a try. So I ended up only finishing the one novel in Korean, and dropping mostly everything else. And the came March! Most of my time was actually spent in the second half of March, as I was still attempting to rest during those first two weeks.
So, a bit of a focus on March. This month went pretty well, I went through those overdue reviews on Wanikani, and I’m currently almost done with level 7. Continuing with Japanese, I have gone back to review the Genki I grammar I’d already studied, and started studying the rest, so I am now up to unit 9, following Tokini Andy’s Genki I grammar made clear videos.
In Korean, I have managed to finish 12 prose type books, among which one audiobook, five children’s books, two short stories, two YA novels, one novel that isn’t YA and one nonfiction. Added to that are 9 mangas, mostly 나 혼자만 레벨업 1 | L27. So despite the setbacks due to my health, I ended up achieving a lot in this first quarter! In fact, my initial goal for the year was 20 books excluding mangas, 25 as a stretch goal because 25 books in 2025 would be more satisfying. With 12 books already, that means I’m three fifth of the way there, and almost halfway through for the stretch goal.
I am lowkey tempted to do 52 books as grand goal for the year, we’re in week 14 and I have a few books I should finish soon, so I’m not that far off . That is, as long as I can keep this rythm.
Goals for Q2 and beyond
Korean
5 non manga books
(stretch) 7 non manga books
(huge stretch) 13 non manga books
TOPIK II mock test
2 audiobooks
10 mangas
1 lightnovel
Japanese
Wanikani till L12
(stretch) Wanikani till L15
Finish B level Sakura graded readers
(stretch) Finish C level Sakura graded readers
1 manga
Finish Tokini Andy’s Genki I playlist
Finish Tokini Andy’s Genki II playlist
N5 mock test
N4 mock test
Mandarin Chinese
Find a good resource to follow for grammar, stick to it
10 podcasts from GraceMandarinChinese
(stretch) 20 podcasts
Anki
Italian
Finish the Caffè Italiano con Manu playlist
FInish a novel
(stretch) Finish two novels
Spanish
5 novels
(stretch) 10 novels
Also, and this is so ridiculous on my part it deserves its own post, I’d somehow forgotten about the existence of Yomitan 
. So I expect reading will actually be much smoother now, considering I won’t have to manually look everything up. Somehow, in the midst of switching to a new computer a while ago, I just never remembered to set up Yomitan again and just forgot about it.
And with this new found power of instant lookups, I’ve begun reading 私の夫は冷凍庫に眠っている | L28, aka freezer husband. I’m extremely slow, but that part doesn’t matter, as long as it keeps me hooked. My ability to parse through things above my level is surprisingly high, but then I reckon Korean actually helps me a lot here. Ironically, I can read through freezer husband faster better now than back when I tried joining the 소리를 보는 소년 | L29 book club when I was a high A2, even though I know vocab wise or even grammar wise, I’m definitely not there yet for Japanese.
I’m looking forward to updates and impressions
Quick update for Spanish, I think I’m officially out of my Spanish reading slump! I started by rereading Yo no la maté | L26, which somehow I only vaguely remembered, but it was fun and got me going to try to read a few more short stories. I ended up picking up LA OTRA ORILLA FG (FORMATO GRANDE) | L42 by Julio Cortazar, somehow I mistakenly thought that I’d already read books from him, turns out I haven’t? I do own a physical copy of Rayuela | L45 though, so that’s probably where this confusion comes from. Which, this book is also absolutely massive and that’s half of the reason why I haven’t started it yet, it’s just ridiculously heavy, I wish I’d gotten the ebook instead
Back to La otra orilla though, I just finished the first part of three, that is, 5 short stories, and wow was it fun. I enjoy magical realism and some of those short stories really hit the spot on that one. (If anyone has recs for novels/short stories in that genre, please share! ). One of those short stories in particular, Puzzle, was impressive. I read it, reread it and then went to read the analysis and I am now more confused than I was the second time I read it, there’s just so much depth to this. For anyone interested, here’s the analysis. The person that made this analysis also posted a poll so people can vote on whatever they think is going on in this story, and I love that all of them are equally possible options 
.
Adding a trigger warning, but also spoiler, for implied cannibalism , for Puzzle. Do with that what you will, and read at your own risk
