The 2023 Advent Reading Club(s)! 🎄 ⛄ ❄

For what it’s worth, I’m definitely doing both :grin:

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That youkai book looks awesome!

Although… maybe still too hard for me :cry:

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For what’s supposed to be a kids’ book there’s precious little furigana, I admit.
We could help each other out though. If it’s only one entry a day (instead of, say, 4-5), then the text isn’t really too much, hopefully.

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Ugh, now I want to read the youkai book AND the short mysteries book :sweat_smile:

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I don’t really want to add another book, next to the aozora stories (which I plan to join), but I found this series on audible and might just try to listen to them: 市朗妖怪百科 :thinking:

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Youkai book club when? :rofl:

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Absolutely yes! For some reason I lost track of this thread (maybe when it moved to all languages). I would love to learn more about yokai because I feel like references to them pop up everywhere! And having a December yokai-a-day with a group sounds even more fun :slight_smile:

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Great! So far it looks like the Aozora, Yokai, and Mystery a Day calendars will probably need their own thread each as they’ll have several people participating and talking about the same(ish) thing, while the rest of the calendar posts can probably be kept in this thread.

I’ll set up a poll in the second post to gauge participation on the 15th or so. Meanwhile, keep posting ideas if you have them. (Last minute ideas also accepted of course :slight_smile: )

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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.

:christmas_tree: :snowflake: :snowman_with_snow:

Edit: I did not intend to limit the choices to 3, that was an error :person_facepalming:
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…

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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…)

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Oh no. I think I am more than half-considering the informal reading club thing.

(Would that be annoying…?)

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24 of them? Really? I’m more impressed than anything else :star_struck:
and a little bit freaked out at what I may have set in motion. :see_no_evil:

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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

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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?

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Can do! I’ll try to get to it this evening if I have time, but before the end of the week for sure

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It is done :sparkles:

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Yokai Advent thread is up!

妖怪穴 - A Yokai Advent (2023) :japanese_goblin: :christmas_tree: - Reading / Book Clubs - Natively Forums (learnnatively.com)

And the Mystery Short Story thread:

ちょっと探偵してみませんか - A Mystery Short Story Advent (2023) - Reading / Book Clubs - Natively Forums (learnnatively.com)

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❅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

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❅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

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❅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

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