I added a poll in the second post.
Mark your participation so that we can see how big each team is going to be, and how much organization will be needed, if any.
Edit: I did not intend to limit the choices to 3, that was an error 
I don’t know if it’s worth redoing the poll now, as probably not many people are likely to do more than 3 anyway, but if so, let me know and we’ll see what we can do…
Since CDJapan didn’t have the youkai book (the second, but not the first), I think I’m gonna do my own thing and read at least one story from 意味がわかるとゾクゾクする超短編小説 54字の物語 | L25 a day since that’s been on my shelf for forever. There are… 90, I think, which doesn’t divide evenly, so I’ll be doing it sort of 適当に lol
(I know the book club one is a joke option, but why the hell is it so tempting. If it’s “start reading a different preexisting book club pick every day” it’s not like I could do it anyway since I only read physical and I ain’t ordering more books for a while, but if it’s “create a new book club every day” then most of them would probably be so informal I’m the only one reading, so it wouldn’t matter that I’m not sure how many books/series I have that others might be interested in in the first place…)
Oh no. I think I am more than half-considering the informal reading club thing.
(Would that be annoying…?)
24 of them? Really? I’m more impressed than anything else 
and a little bit freaked out at what I may have set in motion. 
Well if I counted correctly, I have 20 manga series that I either have yet to start or have barely read any of, so the majority would be those, but the last few would be novels. And maybe I could pick the top few that’ve been most distracting and at least get starting them out of the way, then maybe I could concentrate better on finishing books rather than keeping myself from trying to read everything simultaneously… (Or maybe I just need to stop myself from buying shiny new books. Only missing volumes of series I already have! I bought CDs off CDJapan to make up a fair part of the min. to use the coupon and still ended up with completely-new books aside from the GL club pick, ay.)
But yeah I’d set up the home thread for the chip-away-at-my-積読 (“積読削り”?) read-along(?) probably tomorrow and would be open to suggestions of which ones to read and when if anyone else is interested in any of them, but it’ll likely just be super informal
Okay, judging from the poll, it looks obvious to me that the Aozora, Mystery and Yokai advents (at least) will each need their own thread. People can still post here things like “I read today’s portion” of fill in calendars and such if they like, but for discussing the actual content, and for the sake of people coming later, who might be interested in the books/stories but not the advent side, a separate thread makes the most sense. I’ll set up the Mystery and Yokai threads in the next few days. @cat , will you take care of the Aozora thread?
Can do! I’ll try to get to it this evening if I have time, but before the end of the week for sure
Yokai Advent thread is up!
妖怪穴 - A Yokai Advent (2023) 
- Reading / Book Clubs - Natively Forums (learnnatively.com)
And the Mystery Short Story thread:
❅１２月１日❅
I read the first 4 stories from 意味がわかるとゾクゾクする超短編小説 54字の物語 | L25. I’d meant to only read 3, but I hadn’t realized until afterward that the この本の楽しみ方 counted as one (they aren’t numbered except in the 目次, which comes after the 楽しみ方), but there are 90 in total, so I’ve got some leeway. They’re amusing, and each story has a one-page 解説 when you turn the page, and while I’ve read those explanations, I haven’t needed them for understanding yet.
Today’s informal book club is for a volleyball manga, VS.アゲイン
❅１２月２日❅
I read 4 more of the 54字の物語.
Today’s informal book club is for a cooking slice-of-life manga, おうちでごはん
❅１２月３日❅
I read 4 of the 54字の物語. Partly because they’re so much easier than expected to read several in a row and partly because I don’t trust myself to remember whether I need to read 4 or 3 on a given day (I can’t keep track of anything to save my life), I ended up sticking notecards between each day’s section. Now I don’t need to worry about accidentally blowing through them before Advent’s over!
Today’s informal book club is another slice-of-life manga, キラメキ☆銀河町商店街
How is everyone going with their individual advents? Feel free to post here about what you’re up to!
Several people voted for the Mystery Story Advent but haven’t made an appearance, so I wanted to make sure everyone knew that the Aozora, Yokai and Mystery advents have their own threads, linked in the second post. Late joiners also welcome! 
It has been interesting to have so many people joining the Aozora Advent, last year it was me and one other person who was a native Japanese speaker 
It’s fun to be able to talk about the stories with others, but also oddly stressful as Aozora is a complete grab-bag and I worry about people being annoyed when they get something like an essay on pens or how they just don’t make tofu like they used to 
Both of those actually sound fascinating to me (if I could read at a high enough level to follow them)! I love those kinds of snapshots of a certain place and time.
I had to drop out of every advent challenge because work got surprisingly hectic and 月の裏側 is taking up all my remaining energy since it sped up 
I will probably read both the mystery and yokai advents a bit later on when things settled down a bit. 
❅１２月４日❅
I read 3 of the 54字の物語.
Today’s informal book club is a middle school choir manga, 少年ノート ーDays of Evanescenceー
❅１２月５日❅
I read 4 of the 54字の物語.
Today’s informal book club is actually not a manga today: it’s a children’s volleyball novel, 金色の羽でとべ
I read 4 of the 54字の物語, and though it’s a couple days late now, I also read 走れメロス from the Aozora calendar.
Today’s informal book club is for the 4-koma manga はんだくん (also ばらかもん technically, though I don’t own that one).
I read 4 more of the 54字の物語.
数分間の格闘の末、彼が釣り上げたのは小さなゴム片だった。世界中の海面が少しずつ下がり始めたのはこの日からだ。
I thought he’d decided to single-handedly fish up all the trash in the ocean (I pictured Animal Crossing tbh), so the water level goes down a tiny bit each time because of the water that the trash had displaced. Especially if he also extracts the big stuff like sunken ships and all those rubber tires that had been dumped in the ocean.
But that small piece of trash wasn’t meant to be just any ordinary piece of trash but a stopper—the man fishes it up, not knowing how important it is, and all the water starts draining beneath the Earth’s crust like a giant bathtub! Good thing this is fiction; that would be pretty terrifying…
I guess the clue is that it’s a several-second struggle to fish up a small piece of trash. Though I could see something being stuck in sand or silt or tangled up in seaweed or something and be difficult to fish up because of that.
The fourth one I needed the 解説 because I don’t know geography lol (also I didn’t notice the kanji mix-up…)
Today’s informal book club is for the LN and manga series 宝石商リチャード氏の謎鑑定
I read 4 of the 54字の物語. The last one involved some wordplay that tbh I’m not sure I would have gotten even if I hadn’t gotten caught up on “Wait, but that isn’t a word, what.” It involved a missing radical, of all things. The characters were trying to talk about a theft, but the thief had stolen plates—including the plate radical! So every instance of 盗 turned into 次. I do know the kanji, but I still doubt I’d have made the connection.
Today’s informal book club is for the sci-fi manga 彼方のアストラ
I read 3 of the 54字の物語.
Today’s informal book club is for the cooking/child-raising not-actually-BL manga, パパと親父のウチご飯
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to those who celebrate. (It’s on 24th here 
)
I fell behind on the youkai calendar, but managed to keep up with both aozora options and X’mas Stories: 一年でいちばん奇跡が起きる日 | L35??
This was fun thx to everyone who ended up hosting a club. 
