新しい本と次の多読

こんにちは、ブライアンです。

The next round of Tadoku (an "experimental" 2-week sprint) starts this coming Sunday. And since someone upstairs has a good notion of dramatic timing, I opened the mailbox to find a (larger than usual) package this morning.

New books!

- とある科学の超電磁砲 2-5
- とらドラ！ 1&2
- 狼と香辛料
- アイアン・サンライズ (J-translation of Charles Stross' "Iron Sunrise")

アイアン・サンライズ is a monster of a novel, 650 pages (with very thin margins.) The original English book is among my favorite books ever (the temptation to start reading it when I had the translation on order was unbearable) but nonetheless it's kind of intimidating.

Silent (Tadoku's 管理者) says this round's score doesn't count on the overall total, so I'm going to concern myself less with my pages goal (set at 700, just under half of what I got in the full month of January) and more with getting through some books. I *still* have not finished a novel since January's Tadoku -- whereas if I'd kept up the pace I set there I would have another 4-5 read by this point. Not sure what I need to do to fix this... perhaps log my reading on a daily basis regardless of Tadoku.

In any case, my goals for this Tadoku:
- 700+ pages read
- 200+ pages minimum in アイアン・サンライズ
- Top 5 for novel pages read
- Stay on top of Anki reps throughout

Looks reasonable to me.

Before all that I need to finish 涼宮ハルヒの退屈, however.

そのわけで、読みます。またねぇ。

多読２０１２年１月

久しぶりです・・・本当に６ヶ月になりましたか？

Still progressing with Japanese, and participated in the 多読 contest last month. (For those who don't know, 多読 is a foreign-language reading contest.) To put some things in perspective, I finished RTK1 in February 2011; I've been reading Japanese (for various values of "reading) for almost a year now. However, it wasn't until December that I finally finished reading a complete novel in Japanese. Now, after a month of 多読, I'm a few dozen pages short of finishing my sixth novel.

I set myself what I thought was an ambitious goal -- 1500 pages. But while I only just reached it, submitting my last pages with 30 minutes to spare, I *could* have done a lot more. (Blame falls squarely on Battlefield 3 being so goddamned addicting.)

So, here's what I read this month:

Novels:
俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない。③ (Complete)
涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 (Complete; already started prior to 多読)
涼宮ハルヒの溜息　(241/275 read)
あの日見た花の名前を僕達はまだ知らない（上） (Complete)
隙間女（幅広） (Complete)
ギフテッド (80/347 read)

Manga:
とある科学の超電磁砲　第１巻 (Complete)
Various 同人誌 and other assorted manga.

In the end, I landed 10th place on the overall ranking. (7th for Japanese.) Near as I can tell, I was in the top 5 for novel pages read. (Which strikes me as pretty incredible for my first time.)

More importantly, I gained a much better feel for Japanese. Large blocks of text are becoming less and less intimidating; I'm able to push on through now without looking up every word, and still grasp the overall meaning. My reading speed is ridiculously faster now -- what took me a full day of reading to do before now takes a few hours. I have not reached the point that I could increase my vocabulary simply by reading, but I haven't fallen behind on vocab despite having ignored Anki all month. Simply put, I feel far more comfortable with Japanese now.

And isn't that the goal anyway?

以上。