It was one of the beginner book club books, yeah. I happened to run a lot of the book clubs back then, but I didn’t really “start” it. 
Hopefully the book club helps!
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Great, thank you! Another one to put in my amazon jp shopping basket until a timely moment 
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A little update from me… I am almost finished with わたし、定時で帰ります。 | L36 (learnnatively.com)
It’s a really good read! The blog jtalkonline said it was a very accurate picture of Japanese office culture, and to be honest even as UK worker lots of things are familiar 
the author is really good at writing in a nuanced way: for instance, the after-effects of the bubble are explored, and the problems it created for the workforce and the economy, but she also expores the negative aspects of working during the bubble. There are a couple of outrageous moments, but the comedy and relatability really carry this one through. Definitely recommend!
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Today I started reading モブサイコ100 1 | L25?? which is one of my favorite series of all time. Back in high school it was the first manga I tried reading in Japanese, but it didn’t work so well since it was way too difficult for me then.
Usually, I like to do a mix of intensive and extensive reading, a nice in-between where I don’t care so much if I understand every little bit but also I’ll still look up some things. But this time I decided tried to read super intensively, breaking down each sentence and really trying to focus on the grammar. I’ve felt like I really need to focus on grammar lately, so I’ve been planning on reading Mob Psycho this way for a while.
But… I’m only 3 pages in and I’m already so bored. I thought picking something I loved would make this style of reading more fun, but all I want to do is read it like normal. So maybe this method of reading just isn’t for me.
Anyway I’m also planning on reading more 僕が愛したすべての君へ | L30 today. I’ve caught up to this week’s reading, but the next week’s about to start, so I’ll be behind again if I don’t hurry up and read 
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I personally can’t read by breaking everything down because I get so frustrated and resent the text 
I keep grammar studies in their lane with SRS and exercises, but I try and keep reading as fun as possible since it’s the biggest challenge!
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I did that recently with a book that I know would be a challenging read (半落ち | L39), and it was a great exercise, but I think 2 things in my case were different:
- I knew I’d enjoy the book, but I’d never read it before (love the author, though). Therefore deeper understanding = deeper enjoyment, not a rehashing of something I already knew well
- I would make a note and move on if I didn’t totally grasp something after a good effort and then I posted it in the book club for the other members to try to help with.
Intensive reading is not for everyone though, and certainly not something I could stomach doing with every book.
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Thank you for the advice! I picked the manga I did specifically because I know it so well, but maybe I should try it with something I haven’t read like you did. A book club book would be a good choice for this… I definitely couldn’t do that with every book though
That’s how I feel too! I figured it would be more fun since I love the book so much, but it’s so frustrating (doesn’t help I’m reading a physical copy too…). Might try it again with a book club book, but if it doesn’t work out I’m sticking to Bunpro for grammar
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I’m about 1/3 of the way through 魔法少女育成計画 limited (前) | L36 and enjoying it so far. One thing I appreciate about this series is how each volume is so different. The first chapter in this one was misleadingly easy (I was like, did I get better or did the author just pick an easier style this volume), but it went back to its typical harder difficulty in the second chapter. It’s not that hard I guess, but there are occasionally really long sentences I need to read multiple times to get, and still a ton of lookups. Which seems to indicate that I have not in fact gotten much better at reading in the last 1-2 years. 
Guess I shouldn’t be surprised since I haven’t really done any studying in that time.
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Still struggling along with のんのんびより 1 | L22 though bouyed by the fact I find most of the actual conversation parts easy enough to follow (with lookups) - like with 14歳の恋 1 | L23??, it’s mostly the narration boxes that I find more difficult. Still, it’s quite a jump in time per chapter compared to something more in my current ‘breezy’ level range like からかい上手の 元 高木さん 3 | L17 … but at least I have, like, another 10 volumes of that to tide me through the rough times!
Actually, given I’m trucking along with のんのんびより at about the same rate as ぼっち、maybe I shouldn’t shelve Bocchi necessarily… just add it to the slow rotation.
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I am having the same issue. With European languages after a certain point you can literally just read and will get better (speaking from experience), but it seems Japanese does require dedicated studying at all levels to see improvement. 
The only thing I noticed is a bit of transfer? transferrral? transference? (English, please! 
) from reading to speaking/writing… which is nice… 
But I will never be satisfied...
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That’s kind of a relief to know (re romance languages) if I ever decide to take one up, lol.
Maybe French…
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I’m trying my hand a キノの旅 again. Hoping this time I’ll make it through and actually understand it with some intensive reading
Also using time at work to re-read through some of the higher level graded reader short story collections again so I can still read during breaks etc.
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100 pages into 再就職先は宇宙海賊 | L22?? and there is still no sign of any space pirates. Starting to feel a bit baited.
So far it’s very low-tension, rather serious science fiction about searching for alien technology on an asteroid with dodgy equipment. It’s interesting enough, but I could really go some conflict. Maybe a bit of action? While I appreciate learning words for “bedrock”, “sediment”, and “propellant”, my attention span when reading Japanese is not great and some space pirates would be welcome about now.
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I wanted something light to read today, so I ended up binge-reading all of お兄ちゃんはおしまい! 7 | L21. I rarely read a whole manga volume in a single day, but once I got through 7/10 chapters I decided to just finish it off!
Besides that I made some more progress on 魔法少女育成計画 limited (前) | L36. Now on the third chapter and getting introduced to a third set of characters. It’s like reading the first chapter of three new books instead of one.
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I’m sure you and @seanblue have improved, it’s just hard to notice looking back. I think everyone will feel like that if they don’t look at data and actually see how much they improved 
.
I wouldn’t say “at all levels”, but it’s certainly harder to get to that point in Japanese. Recently I’ve been dabbling in Spanish and Chinese, and it’s just minblowing how many times more I’m able to absorb in Spanish just by listening as a beginner. But I don’t think fundamentally there should be any difference in being able to improve with just interacting with the language, at least when you get to intermediate and beyond.
Anecdotally, after failing in the JLPT, I did nothing but read and listen stuff for a year. After that, everything was so much easier and managed to pass. I guess you could count Anki as studying, but that was a relatively small part.
Speaking about transference, I feel like listening transfers really well to reading, surprisingly. Listening really trains that “Japanese processing” part of your brain directly, whereas reading is kind of an extra, different step before that (obviously they are interlinked). Maybe you won’t learn super hard words, but I think the immediacy really shapes how you approach the language. And it’s much easier to listen a lot. When you think about it, all natives already have that covered before they learn to read.
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Oh yeah, point of this thread was what I have been reading. Finished 地球星人 | L30.
Well that was a wild ride. Managed to break my recent downward spiral of leaving books unfinished, since it was so gripping. Really enjoyed it! That ending really took a turn, though. Guess I have to read more Murata, when I can get my hands on some.
Started 86―エイティシックス― | L37 to see if it really is as hard as JPDB lists it 
. So far it’s just very kanji and katakana heavy with some military stuff, nothing too terrible. I extracted the vocab to Anki and sure, there’s so many new vocab cards, but a lot of it is pretty guessable from context.
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Finished 思い出のマーニー this weekend, and the second book was even easier (and better) than the first one, look-ups sank to 2.6 per page. So I decided that I need a confidence crusher once again and started 狼と香辛料. And as expected reading velocity sank (and look-ups rose) by a factor of 6. Let’s see how far I get before I take a pause and read some easier book in-between 
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Working my way through ソードアート・オンライン26 ユナイタル・リングV (Sword Art Online 26)
Also started NEW GAME! 8 | L23
Thinking about trying 魔女の宅急便 1 | L26 once I’m done with SAO 26, or just going on to SAO 27
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It’s that time, ladies and gentlemen! I have purchased the book, and will be trapped on a plane later tonight/tomorrow! While I’d love to see if I could go through it in one sitting, I’m going to be limiting my goals to “started and finished おいしいごはん and コンビニ人間 during this trip”, mostly because I’m hardly ever on long flights and I’m not sure how badly my brain is going to rebel. 
I will update here on my thoughts on the books at some point later. 
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I finished 青い鳥文庫ができるまで this morning! This felt significantly harder than the first Aoitori I read (しあわせになった捨てるねこ), partly because (about 90% sure) the sentences were longer and more complex in structure, and partly because this had more jargon (which makes sense - this is a book about the publishing industry). I also did a quick font comparison and this book’s font looks smaller, to the point that I counted the characters per line to check (they were the same). I’d have to reread しあわせに捨てるねこ to be sure of how large the difficulty gap is, but I’m pretty certain there is one, and a significant one to boot.
There are also very few illustrations - a handful of diagrams in the main text and at the end. I thought the author’s afterword wrapped things up very nicely at the end, though.
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