1 physical/ebook (potentially 2 if one is a short story collection or non-fiction)
1 audiobook
(1 manga but rarely)
but with most bookclubs I can read the “assigned” pages in a day or 2, so with bookclubs I am OK doing multiple at once, though usually I try to do no more than 2 bookclubs so I stil have time for my own TBR and a bit of a buffer. 
Inspired by others’ organizational skills here, I thought I’d try my hand at my own Gantt chart. It’s not as pretty as the other ones, but I couldn’t make the website cooperate, so this one is entirely manual:
I guess this also answers the question about how many books at the same time 
At the worst I’ll have seven books (none of which is a manga) at the same time at the end of October/start of November, which should be doable (
) if I read a different book every day of the week. 
The greyed out books are books I’m reading on my own, so really, I can just set them aside in the unlikely case () that the book clubs prove difficult to keep up with.
By the way I normally read only one book at a time, and finish it within a few days before moving on to the next one. This madness started with Japanese. I blame the book clubs.
Famous last words. 
I like your chart. 
Tbf, I prefer manual charts, but the online one was just quicker.
this works well, and if you have it for the full duration, it even looks like a gantt chart… 
I almost have to physically restrain myself from starting new books sometimes lol. If I could read faster, I might have a little less of a problem since I’d have a greater chance of finishing one before the next starts clamoring for my attention too loudly to ignore, but as it is, well.
But I have ADHD, and while sometimes it does mean I have difficulty focusing on anything, sometimes it just means I can’t focus on one book but I can focus on another, and it’s a lot easier to lean into that and just book-hop instead of forcing myself to read one that’s not holding my attention at present even if I do actually want to read it, which often just gets me nowhere and/or makes it unpleasant. (And sometimes it means I hyperfocus on one book and finish it in 3-4 days.)
It does sometimes mean that a book will end up falling to the wayside for a while, yeah, but I get to read more this way, so it’s worth it. And unless I set it aside to take a break from it because I wasn’t enjoying it, I finish them all eventually anyway.
In any case, it looks like I have 5 going right now, though 1 I haven’t touched in quite a while. I don’t have any book club books currently (read ahead and finished one and haven’t joined any others yet). Unless one sucks me in and/or grabs me in a stranglehold, it’s usually 2 that get most of my attention, and not always necessarily the same 2. Rarely do I read some of 3+ of them in a day (excluding book club books), but it’s been known to happen. Normally it’s 0-2.
This is also just novels. Individual volumes of manga I tend to finish in a day or two and don’t read more than one at a time (again excluding book club books), but series… I don’t think I wanna count how many series I have unfinished despite owning the next volume
I also tried to come up with a graph, but I used a burn-up graph for a change:
Edit: Managed to convince Google Docs to cooperate more nicely 
The vertical axis shows the weekly page load.
I must say looking at this, this is waaaay less scary than I had imagined it to be.
If the mental load of the parallel books does not do me in, seems like I’m actually looking forward to some other reading on the side 
I usually read one novel/LN and 1-3 manga at a time. I am often reading one 4-koma and one non-4-koma manga since they are so different (to me) and occasionally I’ll be reading a third, but I can’t read more than one novel/LN in Japanese at a time without effectively dropping the first one.
And in conclusion that’s all there was to it. I just started volume 3 (last volume published) which seems to be still at the same “okay entertainment” level (I mean, it’s not like I had my hopes up).
I guess I would not be reading it if it wasn’t available from my local library (and I’ll probably completely forget about it once I am done) but as a plus point the series does not contain anything I find typically annoying in light novels (in particular, there’s zero fan service AND the main character (
) isn’t garbage)
Soooo turns out I’m liking また、同じ夢を見ていた | L24 more than I initially thought (which means I think of it as a generous 3/5 now rather than 2/5 XD) just because there are some pretty sweet scenes. (Previous point remains though.) I think I’ll finish it this weekend and then see where my wishlist takes me. I’d love to read 准教授・高槻彰良の推察 民俗学かく語りき | L31 next but since I gave myself the rule to have no more than 20 books on my wishlist+ currently reading I think I’ll cross off さよならすべてのブルー | L28 first since it’s short and seems easy to go through, so I can hopefully finish it within a week and then move on.
Feels great to finally be out of this reading slump for sure! If I keep this up I feel like I’ll actually be able to join and keep up with a bookclub or two for once LOL
I’ve unfortunately decided to drop 残像に口紅を | L37 after making it 200 pages in. The premise of meta fiction and each of the 五十音 slowly disappearing was promising, but this felt like more of a literary experiment than a fully realized novel. It was interesting how well the author used substitutions and maintained his distinct style all the way up until the point where I stopped, but the premise got stale and it alone wasn’t enough to make me care about the narrator. In short, if you are very interested in Japanese as a language and would enjoy something experimental that pushes its boundaries, this may interest you…but if you like engaging stories or characters this isn’t it. 
I joked about 残像に口紅を replacing 時をかける少女 | L25 as a beginner book since they’re both by 筒井康隆, but besides the fact the book isn’t very engaging, it’s also fairly hard to read and continues a large amount of unique vocabulary due to all the substitutions. So, I don’t think it’ll replace 時をかける少女 any time soon!
I’m now going to start 水たまりで息をする | L29 which I have been wanting to read forever! Hopefully it won’t let me down but I have a lot of faith in 高瀬隼子. Basic summary: The narrator’s husband decides to stop bathing one day and life starts falling apart?!
Hope you enjoy! Out of the two books, I thought おいしいごはんが食べられますように was the stronger one, but I did like both. Looking forward to your thoughts.
In addition to the usual, I started reading through ホリミヤ again. The problems is had with earlier volumes are mostly gone, or actually being addressed, and there’s been a lot more arcs centered on the supporting characters, which I really love. I’ve realized that I like the main couple a lot less than I did in the beginning (tho the last volume or two has been better), and really like the supporting characters’ arcs a lot more.
I’ve been reading it a bit lazily, in terms of comprehension, but also feeling likd it’s a bit harder than I’d previously given it credit for, and I might go back and reevaluate done of my gradings
I just started reading https://learnnatively.com/book/60b8676d8d/ again and I’ve got to say I’m surprised by how easy it feels 
I feel like I haven’t really ‘studied’ Japanese this year given my Anki looks like this…
and I’ve only just recently broken 5000 pages for the year, but wheels must have been turning in the background as I continued to consume content as this book feels so much easier this time around. It will probably end up around ~37.
Anyways, ages ago I nominated it for WK’s Profoundly Weird Book Club and I do think it’s a great fit despite only be ~10% done. I’m going to try to finish it out on my vacation this week and next.
I was prompted to make this post by this line I came across (zero spoilers, just weird):
いつか、よし香が言っていた。「ジュウォン様は子宮にくる」
which as a phrase I just love and hate It also led me to discover an article titled “85％が経験アリ！子宮が「キュン」としたら恋の始まり？”
Now I need to figure out how to ask my tutor how normal it is to talk about your uterus like that…
My first thought was that you would never say something similar for men (by which I meant telling them if they are falling in love or not) but then my brain went more literally in the “wait, which body part would make what noise in that case” direction.
My immediate thought…
Okay, I don’t think it’s necessarily related with love, but that made me laugh.
Didn’t feel like reading my currently running novel tonight, so I finished ロジカとラッカセイ１巻 | L21 instead. This series is nicely filling the 少女終末旅行-shaped whole in my life (but with some more concrete worldbuilding/backstory at the end) and I’m looking forward to continuing the series.
I went to the library thinking of picking up volume 3… and it turns out it was rented already. Not only that, but there’s one more person waiting for it. I was a fool! I saw it a few days ago (when I picked volume 2) and thought I could just come back anytime to get it. If no one is reading volumes 1-2, volume 3 should be safe, right? Wrong.
The good news though was that ベルサイユのばら was available, so I started reading it and… it’s Lady Oscar?!? I watched part of the anime as a kid and somehow never made the connection…
(Fun fact, my impression of the series as a kid was “meh, nobles are cringe”; I wonder how it will be this time around 
)
Nice! Hope you enjoy 
and yes it seems the European dubs are called Lady Oscar (at least in Germany, I guess France too?) - it’s the same オスカル様！
I already have it (both book and audiobook) and was hoping we might read together at some point, but I don’t think there’s a way I can fit it in the next two weeks. (or can I? 
)
Yes, in France too!
According to Wikipedia, some stuff have been censored in the French version, but it’s not like I remember anything anyway.
