Since Natively’s so reading focus, and this is starting tomorrow I was curious if anyone was planning on joining the Tadoku reading competition.
It’s a friendly reading competition where you measure the points you submit yourself across various reading media (manga, novels, VNs, etc) and is meant to encourage building up a habit of reading regularly in your second language. For me this thing has been a godsend. Something about the accountability of reporting in every day to say what I read in a place everyone can see, combined with the light competitive banter with the people I know in the competition, and the fact that it gives me something to measure my progress against over a period of months since it isn’t constantly running really does something to my brain that motivates the heck out of me. This kind of setup isn’t for everyone, but I really love looking back at my progress over the competitions this year and seeing how far I’ve come since January, so maybe there are others around that are easily motivated by seeing numbers go up like me
I’d love to hear if anyone else is joining and what their goals/plans are if they are!
I have been keeping track of my reading for the past couple of years, using tools like bookmeter and natively (and a thread on the WK forum, although I’m not using it much at the moment). So I don’t feel like adding another tracking thing to the list
Plus, the way I like to read stuff is a huge disadvantage in that kind of competition: I really like to subvocalize (which slows down reading) and I also like to put down the book I am reading to think about what is going to happen next (usually pacing around the room while I do this). I’m only doing the latter when I am enjoying the book, though, so I could increase my speed by only picking up stuff I don’t like (but that sounds like self-harm, so I won’t ).
I agree that goals and seeing numbers go up is great, though!
(I’m going to put mine behind a drop down because no one cares, I guess)
My goals for the year and current status
I separate my goals for 活字 and manga, since they have a very different text density.
I further separate between light novels and “anything else”, since light novels tend to be easier to read and have poorer writing, but their shiny colorful covers make me pick them up more frequently (so I should force myself to read something else).
In numbers:
Books with mostly text: 65/100 (including non LN: 5/12)
Manga: 88/100
I’m on pace for books, but lagging behind in terms of “non-LN” books. I can probably reverse that easily by focusing on the Red Data Girl series (6 volumes).
For manga, the challenge so far has been to find series that I actually like But it’s going to be fine, I guess.
I joined last competition until half way through. I found a few things a mood killer:
The fact that it doesn’t separate scores by language, so if someone reads a book in English (or something else) and that’s not their native language, it counts.
People adding reads without even bothering to put the title or what they are reading.
Also what Naphthalene said, adding it to another (4th for me) place daily for the return I was getting, it became annoying. Maybe someday we can have reading competitions within natively (cc @brandon)
As for the objectives topic
Lately I’ve been busy with work and I’m having trouble finding some time to read every day. I’m trying to replace LNs for Manga until I find enough time to seat and continue on my 世にも奇妙な商品カタログ (series) | L24 . The idea is to finish it before the year end but it’s starting to look unlikely, as a new volume is coming up in September, and before I was busy, the best speed was like 1 volume a month.
I am on a discord server where you can log your different activities and depending on the activity you get points and it has a leaderboard and stuff… it’s just a bit of fun and might be something that’s quite easily implementable at some point on natively without anyone having to organize a challenge…
Speaking of bots, I wonder if I could just write a user script for Natively that would automatically log it to the tadoku challenge too…
Ah, but looking at their explanations, I see that
Tadoku is supposed to motivate people to read more, and in order to keep things fair updates should be somewhat regular. Participants who keep posting irregular (large) updates will be removed from the contest
Since I only log finished books, I might not meet those requirements
By the way, I’ve actually found Red Data Girl a little more challenging than expected. (I find it harder than 本好き and (so far) 狼と香辛料.) Not that I expect you to be challenged by it though.
Have you tried Chihayafuru? It just finished publication, and I think in terms of characters and content you’d probably enjoy it.
On the specific topic of the thread, I won’t join as I prefer to not set goals. I prefer to simply read whatever I want, whenever I want. I also don’t do tadoku well since I subvocalize and look up a lot of words.
I have, yes. The first volume was free to read on booklive for some time last year-ish. It was okay, but I didn’t finish it. Maybe it gets more interesting when they get older?
Well, they don’t really get much “older” since it follows them in high school. Oh, I guess you’re referring to the flashback part. Yeah, I think it’s much more interesting once they are in high school, which doesn’t take long to get to. I will add that the romance aspect between the main character and her two male friends does become more prominent later, if that interests you. (I have no idea if it ends well since I haven’t read the manga and the anime only adapts about 60% of the manga.)
I’ve seen this competition before and haven’t wanted to join because, like others, I’m already tracking my reading in several other places. But I’ll give it a try this round! I was really good about reading constantly in June and July, but in August I barely read at all. So maybe this will help me get back on track with all my unfinished books…
Yeah, totally get this one. One day I finished a book and after going to update Tadoku, AniList, Bookmeter, Natively, and Goodreads I questioned a bit what the point of it all was lol
But then, the problem is that none of these captures all of my reading since none of them have every reading medium so I never decide which to drop. (Tadoku does I guess, but I never thought of it much as a tracker in itself since it’s not up all the time).
Its interesting to know I’m not alone in this I like to read out-loud alot of the time and try to adjust my voice depending on the character and their current emotions.
Oh, just thought of something. Have you tried reading 乙嫁語り (series) | L23? Just based on the setting it seems like something you might like. (I haven’t tried it myself yet.)
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I like to read out-loud alot of the time and try to adjust my voice depending on the character and their current emotions.